The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School (Santee, Nebraska), 1928-05 - 1928-06

              The Word Carrier
OF
Santee Normal training School.
VOLUME   LVI
HELPING THE   RIGHT, EXPOSING THE "WRONG
NUMBER 8
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
May-June, 1928
FIFTY CENTS PER YEAR
Our  Platform
For Indians we want American Education! We
want American Homes! We want American
Rights! The result of which is American Citizenship! And the Gospel is the Power of God for
their Salvation!
The Most Successful Mission
of the
American Board
Rudolf Hertz
IN the early days of the Board, no
group of people was more on the
conscience of missionary enthusiasts than the American Indian. In
consequence, a number of missions
were started among Indian tribes.
The first ones were naturally among
those Indians who had come into intimate contact with whites. Some people, however, looked beyond the borders of civilization toward those tribes
which had not yet been changed, favorably or otherwise, by contact with
the whites. To be sure, there were
many people who thought it was entirely hopeless to win the wild Indians
for Christ. By reputation, if not in
actuality, the Dakota or Sioux were
the wildest and, therefore, presumably
the hardest tribe to convert. The few
soldiers and fur traders who had made
contacts with them, had confirmed
this rumor.
Two young brothers, however, Samuel and Gideon Pond, members of
the Congregational Church, of Washington,    Connecticut,    conceived   the
STEPHEN   RIGGS
idea of becoming missionaries to
these Indian tribes of the far West.
As no missionary society was'
ready to send them, they went out
as volunteer missionaries paying
their own way and making their
own living while the American
Board sent out Dr. Thomas S.
Williamson on a tour of exploration with the special purpose of
inquiring into the advisability of
starting a mission among the Dakota Indians in Minnesota. Dr.
Williamson was a young physician
who had planned for some years before to offer himself for missionary
work, but several small children
made bis wife hesitate to embark
upon so hazardous an enterprise.
When God, however, called home
these   children,    Dr.   Williamson
SAMUEL   POND
STEPHEN   AND   MARY   RIGGS
was ready to go. His report to the
Board was favorable, and the following year, he became the first commissioned missionary of the American
Board to the Dakota Indians. Two
years later, a young minister, Stephen
Return Rigjjs, and his wife received
an appointment to the same mission.
With the help of the Pond brothers, they were able to master the native language. An outstanding mixed
blood fur trader, Joseph Renville, after whom counties in both Minnesota
and North Dakota have been named,
was also a great help to them. He
aided them in their first Bible translation, and, although a Roman Catholic, he and his family became some of
the first leaders of the native church.
But progress was slow. After twenty-
five years of intensive work, the missionaries had succeeded in g-athering
but a small group of native Christians
around them while the greater bulk
of the Dakota nation, at least thirty
thousand of them were still in the
darkness of heathenism. Then came
the Sioux Uprising of 18H2 when
for the last time the eastern Sioux
tried to kill or drive out all the
white men from their ancient hunting grounds. In the short space of
one month over one thousand homesteaders lost their lives. All the
mission buildings were destroyed and
the missionaries barely escaped. The
situation was desperate. The work
of a generation seemed wiped out.
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PRISON   CAMP   AT   FORT   SNELLING
GIDEON   POND
The newspapers of those days
showed the intense feeling in Minnesota. One day an advertisement
appeared in a St. Paul paper reading something like this, "Twenty-
five dollars reward for the first
five Sioux scalps.    Deliver at the
office of Dr. ."    One of the
missionaries protested in the next
issue saying that making war
upon dead people was the very
thing to which Christians objected
in the Indian manner of fighting.
An editorial replied to this protest by telling the missionaries
that they had had their chance
and had failed; they had better go
back East where they came from;
the citizens of Minnesota knew
how to handle the Indian problem;
they had always told the mission-
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