Fort Yates

Letters from Miss Collins

No facts in this field can be of more interest to the readers of the Missionary than those contained in the following thrilling account of the conversion of three young Indians in Miss Collins’ mission field. We give the facts as written by this self-sacrificing missionary. Last Sabbath, Mr. Riggs came up from Oahe and we had communion, and there were five children baptized and seven grown people, and seven more were examined and advised to wait till the next communion. It was a most interesting season. Three of the young men were the leaders in the Indian dance. They … Read more

Perils of Missionary Life

Perils Of Missionary Life Rev. T.L. Riggs, our missionary at Oahe, Dakota, thus describes the loss of a team and the peril of his fellow missionary, Rev. J.F. Cross: “I wished to cross my team on the ice to the west side of the Missouri and keep it there for use during the breaking up of the river. Being very busy with some writing, I asked Mr. Cross to take my team over when he started to return to the White River, sending a man with him. Mr. Cross’s team went over safely, but mine, which Mr. Cross himself was … Read more

Conference with Indian Commissioners

The Annual Conference of the Board of Indian Commissioners with the representatives of the various religious bodies having charge of Indian Missions was held in the parlors of the Riggs House, January 8th. The presence of Senator Dawes, Representative Cutcheon, and other distinguished persons, gave weight to the deliberations, and special interest was added to the meeting by the troubles now prevailing in the Dakotas among the Sioux Indians. Commissioner Morgan, Captain Pratt of the Carlisle School, General Armstrong of Hampton, and the Secretaries of the Missionary Societies presented an array of facts and of recent information that gave a … Read more

One Day’s Missionary Work

A Trip Among the Out Stations The out-station work among the Indians is a feature almost peculiar to the Indian Missions of the A.M.A. These stations are the picket-lines pushed forward into the Reservations beyond the line of established schools and missions. Each one consists of a cheap home connected sometimes with a cheap school-house, and these are occupied by one or two native Indian missionaries who teach and preach, and thus accomplish an immediate good and lay the foundation for the more permanent church and school. The Association has about twenty such stations on the Cheyenne and other rivers … Read more

Missionary Life Among the Dakota Indians

By Mrs. J.F. Cross It is hard to get the most interesting experiences of a missionary’s life, because they belong to the daily routine and so are often unmentioned. But here is a description of life and travel among the Indians, by the wife of a missionary just going to the Dakotas: The land of the Dakotas—what a distance! How long the miles seemed from my home! How frightful the land seemed to me, from the tales of blizzards and cyclones! How strange to go to live among the Sioux Indians, known to me principally for the Minnesota, Fort Fetterman … Read more

Christmas at Fort Yates, Dakota

Our readers will be glad to welcome Miss Josephine E. Barnaby to her new field of work, and to a place in the pages of the Missionary. She is of the Omaha tribe, was a student at Hampton, then spent some time in a training school for nurses in New Haven, Connecticut, and is now the assistant of Miss Collins at the Grand River Station. Miss Collins writes of her: “Josephine is very much interested in her work. She said to-day, ‘I wish every one interested in Indians could come here and stay long enough to see how the foundation … Read more