During these passing years, the educational work among the Dakotas was progressing beyond what it had done previously. Our boarding-school at Hazelwood, in charge of H. D. Cunningham, was full and doing good service. Our civilized and Christian community had come to desire and appreciate somewhat the education of their children. At Dr. Williamson's, also, several were taken into the family, and the day-school prospered. Miss Jane S. Williamson, a maiden sister of the doctor, had come to the land of the Dakotas when Mary and I returned in 1843. From the association and connection of her father's family with slavery in South Carolina, she had grown up with a great interest in the colored people. She had taught colored schools in Ohio, when it was very unpopular, even in a free state, to educate the blacks. When she came to the Dakotas, her enthusiasm in the work of lifting up the colored race was at once transferred to the red men, and she became an indefatigable worker in their education. She often carried cakes and nuts in her pocket, and had something to give to this and that one, to draw them to her school. The present race of Dakotas remember Aunt Jane, as we called her, or Dowan Dootawin, _Red Song Woman_, as they called her, with tender interest, and many of them owe more to her than they can understand. At this time, a translation of the first part of John Bunyan's Pilgrim, which I had prepared, was printed by the American Tract Society, and at once became a popular and profitable reading-book for the Dakotas. CHAPTER X. 1857-1862.--Spirit Lake.--Massacres by Inkpadoota.--The Captives.--Delivery of Mrs. Marble and Miss Gardner.--Excitement.--Inkpadoota's Son Killed.--United States Soldiers.--Major Sherman.--Indian Councils.--Great Scare.--Going Away.--Indians Sent After Scarlet End.--Quiet Restored.--Children at School.--Quarter-Century Meeting.--John P. Williamson at Red Wood.--Dedication of Chapel. By the northern line of Iowa, where the head-waters of the Des Moines come out of Minnesota, is a lake, or group of lakes, called the "Minne Wakan," _Mysterious Water_, or, as the name goes, Spirit Lake. Sometime in 1855, this beautiful spot of earth was found and occupied by seven or eight white families, far in advance of other white settlements. In the spring of 1857, there were in this neighborhood and at Springfield, ten or fifteen miles above on the Des Moines, and in Minnesota, nearly fifty white persons. During the latter part of that winter the snows in Western Iowa and Minnesota were very deep, so that traveling on the prairies was attended with great difficulty.