Twenty-seven years of labor among the Dakotas were past. The results had been encouraging--gratifying. Dr. Williamson's eldest son, Rev. John P. Williamson, born into the missionary kingdom, had recently come from Lane Seminary, and joined our missionary forces. But suddenly our work seemed to be dashed in pieces. The whirlwind of the outbreak swept over our mission. Our houses and churches were burned with fire. The members of our native churches--where were they? Would there ever be a gathering again? But nothing could discourage Dr. Williamson, for he trusted not in an arm of flesh, but in the all-powerful arm of God. He found that he at least had the consolation of knowing that all the Christian Indians had continued, at the risk of their own lives, steadfast friends of the whites, that they had succeeded in saving more than their own number of white people, and that those of them who were unjustly imprisoned spent much of the time in laboring for the conversion of the heathen imprisoned with them. It required just such a political and moral revolution as this to break the bonds of heathenism, in which these Dakotas were held. It seems also to have required the manifest endurance of privations, and the unselfish devotion of Dr. Williamson and others to them in this time of trouble, to fully satisfy their suspicious hearts that we did not seek _theirs_ but _them_. The winter of 1862-63, Dr. Williamson, having located his family at St. Peter, usually walked up every Saturday to Mankato, to preach the Gospel to the 400 men in prison. "That," said a young man, "satisfied us that you were really our friends." Sometimes it seems strange that it required so much to convince them! History scarcely furnishes a more remarkable instance of divine power on human hearts than was witnessed in that prison. For a particular account of this the reader is referred to the monograph on Rev. G. H. Pond. Ever since the outbreak, Dr. Williamson has made a home for his family in the town of St. Peter and its vicinity. For two years of the three in which the condemned Dakotas were imprisoned at Davenport, Iowa, he gave his time and strength chiefly to ministering to their spiritual needs. Education never progressed so rapidly among them as during these years. They almost all learned to read and write their own language; and spent much of their time in singing hymns of praise, in prayer, and in reading the Bible. They were enrolled in classes, and each class placed under the special teaching of an elder. This gave them something like a Methodist organization, but it was found essential to a proper watch and care. This experience in the prison and elsewhere made it more and more manifest that, to carry forward the work of evangelization among this people, we must make large use of our native talent.