The messenger who brought word to us at Lac-qui-parle of the sudden death of our brother, Robert Hopkins, brought also to me a pressing invitation from the commission to attend the making of the Treaty. I at once mounted a pony and rode down. It gave me an opportunity of seeing the inside of Indian treaties. On my return, I was in advance of the Indians, and, coming to the Chippewa alone, I found no way of crossing its swollen tide but by swimming. In the middle of the stream, my horse turned over backward, and we went down to the bottom together. He soon, however, righted himself, and I came up by his side, with one hand holding his mane. I remember well the feeling I had when in the deep waters, that my horse would take me out. And I was not disappointed. This event has ever since been to me a lesson of trust. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." CHAPTER VIII. 1851-1854.--Grammar and Dictionary.--How It Grew.--Publication.--Minnesota Historical Society.--Smithsonian Institution.--Going East.--Mission Meeting at Traverse des Sioux.--Mrs. Hopkins.--Death's Doings.--Changes in the Mode of Writing Dakota.--Completed Book.--Growth of the Language.--In Brooklyn and Philadelphia.--The Misses Spooner.--Changes in the Mission.--The Ponds and Others Retire.--Dr. Williamson at Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze.--Winter Storms.--Andrew Hunter.--Two Families Left.--Children Learning Dakota.--Our House Burned.--The Lord Provides. A grammer and dictionary of the Dakota language had been going through the process of growth in all these years. It was incidental to our missionary work, and in the line of it. The materials came to us naturally in our acquisition of the language, and we simply arranged them. The work of arrangement involved a good deal of labor; but it brought its reward, in the better insight it gave one of their forms of thought and expression. To begin with, we had the advantage of what had been gathered by the Messrs. Pond and Stevens, and Dr. Williamson, in the three years before we came. Perhaps an effort made still earlier, by some officers of the army at Fort Snelling, in collecting a vocabulary of a few hundred words of the Sioux language, should not be overlooked. Thus, entering into other men's labors, when we had been a year or more in the country, and were somewhat prepared to reap on our own account, the vocabulary which I had gathered from all sources amounted to about three thousand words.