Biography of John P. Williamson, Missionary

CHAPTER XCIV

JOHN P. WILLIAMSON, MISSIONARY.

	The first missionary to locate among the Indians in South Dakota was Rev. John P. William-son.  He located at Crow Creek in 1863; He was a Presbyterian, and under appointment of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.  Other missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, had previously visited and preached to the Indians.  The most noted of these was Father DeSmet of the Catholic church, who went up the Missouri river almost every summer, stopping at trading posts to hold services, and administer mass to the employes, who were mostly Canadian French and their mixed-blood descendants.

	The boat on which Mr. Williamson came up the river had on board thirteen hundred Minnesota Sioux, in charge of Col. C. W. Thompson, who located them at Crow Creek. They arrived there May 31, 1863.  The country was full of hostile Indians, and not a house within fifty miles.  Soon after two more steamboats arrived with two thousand Winnebagoes, also expelled from Minnesota, and were located alongside of the Sioux.  That summer Colonel Thompson erected for the use of the agency about a dozen commodious frame houses, sawed out of green cottonwood. Around this he made a cedar stockade for the protection of the agency from the savages.  This was known for a time as Ft. Thompson but is now known as Crow Creek Agency. The stockade is now gone, but a number of the buildings remain.

	Mr. Williamson devoted the most of his time to the instruction of the Minnesota Sioux, who after this were called Santees. They were mostly women and children and in a sense prisoners. He found the Winnebagoes strongly opposed to the white man's religion. But the Sioux, partly because he talked their language and was more or less acquainted with them, and partly because they had had a terrible whipping in Minnesota and felt very much humbled, were quite ready to listen to what he had to say. With their help he made an arbor of brush, that would hold a thousand people. There he instructed them daily in religion, church music, and the reading and writing of their own language.  A few were advanced to the study of English. The attendance was good and for Sunday services the booth was crowded. Scores professed to be converted and, with their children, were baptized.  They were eager to receive all the Christian rites.  On one occasion Mr. Williamson preached on marriage, and at the close called upon all who were prepared to come forward and be united in holy marriage.  A large number came forward in a bunch and on counting them he found there were sixteen men and only fifteen women.  It took some time for him to get them paired off so he could tell which was the odd man.  Then the fifteen couple were happily united by one service.

	The following winter was one of terrible suffering to the Crow Creek colony, and is still known by them as the winter they lived on cottonwood soup.  Steamboats failed to bring expected supplies from St. Louis. Late in the fall a contractor started to bring some over from Minnesota with teams, but snow came and only a small part reached Crow Creek.  The situation was desperate. Four months till spring and three thousand Indians to feed on one month's rations.  Colonel Thompson ordered a tank made alongside of the sawmill boiler, with a capacity of six thousand quarts.  Every evening it was filled with water and the reduced ration for the tribe. The steam from the sawmill kept it foaming all night, and the next morning the long string of pails received two quarts of the compound for every soul.  The flavor of the green cottonwood tank gave name to the soup. About one-fourth of the Santees died that winter, and a smaller proportion of the Winnebagoes.  How-ever, starvation was not all that caused their death.  Of the three hundred Santees in prison at Davenport, as large a proportion died.  Indians have feelings, and "the way of the transgressor is hard."

	The school and mission work was kept up that winter notwithstanding the woeful surroundings.  Indeed they were the more needed. As cold weather came on the booth had to be abandoned and Colonel Thompson offered the use of a large frame structure for mission use, if Mr. Williamson would finish it.  As it was barn-like, with only one thickness of boards, he lined it inside with adobes, which made it very warm, so that it was an attraction for the thinly-clad children to come there to keep warm. Thus Edward R. Pond and wife, who had come over from Minnesota to assist Mr. Williamson, had all the pupils they could manage.

	In 1865 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions appointed H. D. Cunningham and wife as lay missionaries to the Yankton Indians at Greenwood, South Dakota. They labored there for a part of two years, but on account of ill health abandoned the field before seeing any direct fruit.

	In 1866 the Winnebagoes having all run away from Crow Creek, and the Santees being dissatisfied with the location, the government moved them down to Niobrara, Nebraska.  Mr. Williamson, having secured a wife in Minnesota, returned and made that his headquarters for the following three years.  He continued, however, to visit the Indians in South Dakota, at Greenwood, Big Sioux Point and other places.

	In March, 1869, Mr. Williamson took up his permanent location at Greenwood, where he still resides.  That summer he erected a house of hewed cottonwood logs which he still occupies. The agency for the Yankton Indians had then been located there ten years, and consisted of a long warehouse near the steamboat landing, three double log cabins on the bank of the river in a string, and back of them a blacksmith and a tin-shop, a large barn, a blockhouse, a stone building and the agent's residence. The last three had been built only a short time, and the agent was Maj. P. H. Conger, of Iowa.  The agent kindly gave Mr. Williamson the use of the half of one of the log cabins for his family to live in, and the council-room, which was in oue end of the warehouse for church and school purposes except when needed for other assemblies.

	The Yanktons were all on the reservation at the time, and the missionary's coming was generally announced.  A council of the leading men was called to consider the stand the tribe should take as to this new doctrine.  No one knew enough about it to give any reason why they should favor it, but the medicine men had heard enough to know that it meant the destruction of their craft, so they cried out against it and carried the day.  A delegation soon waited upon Mr. Williamson and notified him to leave the reservation or suffer consequences. The agent was also waited on and told to see that the missionary did leave. Heralds were also started around the camps to announce that no one would be permitted to attend on the teachings of the newly arrived holy-man.  However, the agent pointed to the waving stars and stripes and said that meant that religion was free and the missionary could do as he pleased.  It pleased the missionary to remain. The attendance was very small for a time, because it was unpopular and those who came were ridiculed and picked at.  The old chief, Strike the Ree, though deeming it unwise on the start to oppose the public sentiment in council, showed his good sense by sending his grandchildren to the school and meetings right along. There were inquisitive young men from the start who would drop in, and take a lesson occasionally.  Many of these developed interest and became regular attendants. They were first taught to read and write their own language, which took three months or more.  The younger ones were then started in English.  The older ones, who could not be expected to stay but a few months, were given some lessons in arithmetic, geography and the Bible, in their own language.  The school increased in numbers from year to year until it required two teachers.  Mr. Williamson also had three other day schools running part of the year at different points on the reservation. The Indians then still depended on the buffalo for the major part of their living, and so were gone from the agency more than half the time, which was a great drawback to the schools. The mission day- schools, however, were continued for nearly twenty years till the agency boarding school was started, and then the mission closed its schools.

	True education is a handmaid to Christianity, so when the schools prospered the church grew. The first church organized among the Yankton Indians was the Presbyterian church of Yankton agency, which was organized at Greenwood, South Dakota, March 18, 1871, by Rev. John P. Williamson, and consisted of eighteen members, all Indians, of whom fourteen were male and four female, and David Tonwanojanjan and Philip Walter Ikdi were chosen and ordained elders. The church has steadily grown until it now numbers one hundred fifty-two members.

	Mr. Williamson did not confine his labors to the agency, but had several outstations where meetings were held, and when there was more work than he could do he selected the best of the Indian converts and set them to work.  These outstations gradually developed into churches. Hill church, thirteen miles southeast of Greenwood, was organized in 1877 and now has seventy-six members.  Cedar church, fifteen miles northwest of Greenwood, was organized in 1887 and now has sixty-seven members.  Heyata church, fifteen miles northeast of Greenwood, was organized in 1893 and now numbers forty members.  Thus there has been developed four Presbyterian churches among the Yankton Indians, with a united membership of three hundred thirty-five, besides  the children of the members.

	The Presbyterian church is not the only one that has done mission work among the Yankton Indians. In 1870 Rev. J. W. Cook, an Episcopal minister, located at Greenwood.  He was the second missionary of any denomination to settle among the Indians of South Dakota, and he labored faithfully and successfully for thirty years, till he died.  He labored along the same lines as Mr. Williamson in school and church work, and as a result of his efforts there are now three vigorous churches of the Episcopal faith among the Yankton Indians.  The Episcopal church also conducted a boarding school for Indian boys at Greenwood for many years, called St. Paul's School, but it is now closed.

	We cannot here enter into details of the early mission work among the Indians at other places in South Dakota.  A brief outline must suffice. In the winter of 1863-4 there was a company of General Sibley's Indian scouts wintered at Buffalo Lakes in northeastern South Dakota. The most of them were Christians, and they held meetings every Sabbath. Rev. John P. William son visited them that winter. As they had then no settled abode, no mission station was established; but they were looked after by Rev. Thomas S. Williamson and Dr. S. R. Riggs, of Minnesota.  Two years afterwards the government assigned them, and others, the Sisseton reservation, and Rev. Dr. Riggs took charge of the mission among them.  He established the boarding school at Good Will, which still exists. Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Morris were in charge of it for many years, but Rev. D. E. Evans is now superintendent. At the time of Dr. Riggs' death, in 1883, there were five Presbyterian churches among the Indians of Sisseton reservation, and each one was ministered to by an Indian preacher. The most prominent of these Indian preachers was Rev. John B. Renville.  He was ordained in 1865 and was the first Sioux Indian to become a preacher. Mr. Renville was the son of Joseph Renville, a French half-breed, who was probably the best known trader among the Sioux Indians a century ago.  In 1805, when Lieut. Z. M. Pike (afterwards General Pike), under commission of the United States, ascended the Mississippi river from St. Louis to inspect the territory that gives rise to that stream, he met a large body of the Sioux at the mouth of the Minnesota river, and concluded the first treaty which the United States ever made with the Dakota Indians, in which the Sioux nation ceded to the United States nine miles square for a military post at the mouth of the St. Peters river, which post was afterwards known as Fort Snelling. In the consummation of this treaty Joseph Renville figures as interpreter, and during that generation in all the dealings of the whites with the Sioux his name is conspicuous. He took a special interest in missions, and when Rev. T. S. Williamson settled near him he was delighted, and when the missionary would come to him with verses of scripture to translate, John B., the son of his old age, was still hanging to his father's knees, and there learned the truths of eternity that he never forgot.  After preaching nearly forty years, he died in December, 1903.

	For the last twenty years Rev. John P. Williamson has been general missionary for all the Dakota-speaking Indians.  Besides the churches already mentioned at Yankton agency, he has, with the help of only Indian preachers, succeeded in gathering and organizing the following Presbyterian churches:  Two more churches among the Sisseton Indians ; one among the Indians at Flandreau, South Dakota two among the Lower Brule Indians on Rosebud reservation ; two on the Crow Creek reservation; one among the Indians near Granite Falls, Minnesota  and two among the Indians of Devil's Lake, North Dakota.