Mary and I: Forty Years with the SiouxRiggs, Stephen Return
History
Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux
Riggs, Stephen Return
Dakota Indians -- Missions; Riggs, Stephen Return, 1812-1883
"This is the first effort of the kind. Heretofore our own missionary
boards have fathered every such attempt. The support of native workers
has come in part or entirely from white people. Now in this new
attempt all this is changed. The native Christians send and support
their own man. We thank God that they are ready to do this.
"The new missionary will have for his special field the Standing Rock
agency, though during the colder winter months he will probably spend
the most of his time in the neighborhood of Fort Sully and Cheyenne
agency. To those in official position, as well as all others whom he
may meet, we commend him for the work's sake and the Master's."
MISS MARY C. COLLINS' STORY.
"We had just come from a region where they are still abiding in the
shadow of death, and where they are just beginning to learn that they
may have life and have it more abundantly through our Lord Jesus
Christ. No wonder that when I saw so many rejoicing in his love I
felt like exclaiming, 'God has said, Let there be Light,' and all the
powers of earth can not withhold it, for God's time is at hand. Could
all the Christians in our land have beheld with me such a multitude
partaking of the Lord's supper and obeying that loving command, 'This
do in remembrance of me,' their hearts would, I think, have been
filled with thanksgiving, and a long and earnest shout of 'Glory to
God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,' would
have resounded through the land.
"They have the spirit of Christ, and are not satisfied with being
saved themselves only, but desire the salvation of their benighted
brethren. They have organized a missionary association and raised in
one year about two hundred and fifty dollars to support a missionary.
He is sent forth from this meeting, and how it must have rejoiced the
hearts of those good men who have grown gray in the service, to see
this young man arising from the degradation of his forefathers,
standing on the Christian platform, receiving the blessings of his
people, and pledging himself faithfully to perform his work toward
them and to his God. They must have had feelings akin to those of
Simeon when he beheld the Saviour, 'For mine eyes have seen thy
salvation.' When I saw the work these women had done to help sustain
their paper, again I was amazed. Twenty dollars' worth of fancy work
was sold, and the women had done it all themselves. Well may we say,
'They have done what they could.' They only have one paper, the _Word
Carrier_ and it was about to fail for want of means to carry it on,
and these women, with a truly Christian spirit, went to work to
sustain this important disseminator of truth. That was far more for
them to give than for our Christians at home to subscribe for the
paper and make it self-supporting. On Sabbath there was not room in
their large church to hold the people, and we were obliged to hold
services in the open air, and seven or eight hundred Dakotas were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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