In 1837 missionaries sent out by the Evangelical Society of Lausanne, Switzerland, arrived, and located at Red Wing and Wapashaw's villages, on the Mississippi, and about the same time a Methodist mission was commenced at Kaposia, but they were of brief duration and soon abandoned. In 1836 a mission was established at Pokegama, among the Chippewas, which was quite successful, and afterwards, in 1842 or 1843, missions were opened at Red Lake, Shakopee, and other places in Minnesota. During the summer of 1843 Mr. Riggs commenced a mission station at Traverse des Sioux, which attained considerable proportions, and remained until overtaken by white settlement, about 1854. Mr. Riggs and Dr. Williamson also established a Mission at the Yellow Medicine Agency of the Sioux, in the year 1852, which was about the best equipped of any of them. It consisted of a good house for the missionaries, a large boarding and school house for Indian pupils, a neat little church, with a steeple and a bell, and all the other buildings necessary to a complete mission outfit. These good men adopted a new scheme of education and civilization, which promised to be very successful. They organized a government among the Indians, which they called the Hazelwood Republic. To become a member of this civic body, it was necessary that the applicant should cut off his long hair, and put on white men's clothes, and it was also expected that he should become a member of the church. The republic had a written constitution, a president and other officers. It was in 1856 when I first became acquainted with this institution, and I afterwards used its members to great advantage, in the rescue of captive women and the punishment of one of the leaders of the Spirit Lake massacre, which occurred in the northwestern portion of Iowa, in the year 1857, the particulars of which I will relate hereafter. The name of the president was Paul Ma-za-cu-ta-ma-ni, or "The man who shoots metal as he walks," and one of its prominent members was John Otherday, called in Sioux, An-pay-tu-tok-a-cha, both of whom were the best friends the whites had in the hour of their great danger in the outbreak of 1862. It was these two men who informed the missionaries and other whites at the Yellow Medicine Agency of the impending massacre, and assisted sixty-two of them to escape before the fatal blow was struck.