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
In the meantime, Mary and I had undertaken our second trip to the
East. Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who had been away awhile on account of Mrs.
Adams' health, were now back at Lac-qui-parle, associated with Mr. and
Mrs. Pettijohn. We commenced our journey across the prairie about the
first of September. The waters were still high, and we found it
necessary to make a boat which should serve as a bed for one of our
wagons, and be easily transferred to the water.
Our children now numbered a round half-dozen. The baby, Henry Martyn,
about two years old, must be taken along, of course. The boy, "Good
Bird," now about fourteen, we would take down with us and send to
school in Illinois. Isabella we concluded to take on to the mother's
mountain home in Massachusetts. The two little girls were kindly
cared for in the family of Rev. E. D. Neill of St. Paul; and the
little boy, Thomas, was to stay in Dr. Williamson's family, at
Kaposia. Thus the distribution was finally made.
The mission meeting took place this year at Traverse des Sioux. Among
other consultations, it was adjudged wise for Mrs. Hopkins and her
three children--the father and husband being gone--to accompany us on
their return to her friends in Southern Ohio. The brothers Pond and
Rev. Joseph Hancock, who had joined the mission and was stationed at
Red Wing, all had their horses, and, the travel by land being
difficult, they put them on board our good mission boat _Winona_, and
so we had a full cargo down to St. Paul.
From there we had a steamer to Galena, where we took passage in
freight wagons that were going to Elgin, the terminus of the railroad
that was then being made west from Chicago. This trip across the
country we all greatly enjoyed, stopping at Freeport over the Sabbath,
and listening to the somewhat celebrated revivalist Elder Knapp. We
crossed Lake Michigan, and by the Michigan Central to Detroit, and
then took a lake boat to Cleveland. That night we encountered a lake
storm; and, while almost every one was sea-sick, Mary and I stood on
the fore deck and enjoyed watching the mountain waves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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