y6 AMONG THE SIOUX.
Their trials were many and sore, extreme scarcity of food in mid-winter, savage threats and bitter in-snks. Thev were ''in journeying-s often, in perils of waters, of robbers, by the heathen and in the wilderness." All this she endured contentedly for Christ's sake and the souls of the poor ignorant savages around for the evangelization and salvation of the degraded Dakotas,—lost in sin.
She possessed great tact and was absolutely fearless. In 1857. during the Inkpadoota trouble, the father of a young Indian, who had been wounded by the soldiers of Sherman's battery, came with his gun to the mission house to kill her brother. Aunt Jane met him with a plate of food for himself and an ofifer to send some nice dishes to the wounded young man. This vv^as effectual. The savage was tamed. He ate the food and afterwards came with his son to give them thanks. Scarcely was the prison-camp, with nearly four hundred Dakota prisoners, three-fourths of them condemned to be hanged, established at Mankato, ^/hen Aunt Jane and her brother came to distribute paper and pencils and some books among them.
When their lives were imix^rilled, by their savage pursuers, during the terrible massacre^ Aunt Jane calmly said; "Well if they kill me, my home is in Heaven." The churches were scattered, the work apparently destroyed, but nothing could discourage Aunt Jane. She had, in the midst of this great tragedy, the satisfactory knowledge that all the Christian Sioux had continued at the risk of their own lives, steadfast in their lovaltv, and had been instrumental in
SOWING AND REAPING. -jj
saving the lives of many whites. They had, also, influenced for g-ood many of their own race.
TIT—TTiE CrX)SING YEARS OF HER LIFE.
After that terrible massacre the way never opened for her to resume her residence among the Dakotas; but she was given health and strength for nineteen years more toil for the Master and her beloved Indians. Her home was with her brother, Dr. Williamson, near St. Peter, until his death in 1879, and she remained, in his old home several years after his death. During this period, slie accomplished much for the education of the Indians around her and she kept up an extensive and helpful correspondence with native Christian workers. All the time she kept up the work of self-sacrifice for the good of others. In 1881 she met a poor Indian woman, su fife ring extremely from intense cold. She slipped ofif her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a severe illness, which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness from which she never recovered. In 1888 she handed the writer a $5 gold coin for the work among the ireedmen with this remark: '* First the f reedman ; then the Indian." Out of a narrow income she constantly gave generously to the 'boards of the church and to the poor around her. She spent most of her patrimony in giving and lending to needy ones.
The closing years of her life were spent with her nephew the great Indian missionary the Rev. John P. Williamson D.D. at Greenwood, South Dakota. There at noon of March 24, 1895, the light of eternity dawn-
; 8 AMONG THE SIOUX.
ed upon her and she entered into that sabbattic rest, which remains for the people of God. Such is the stors' of Aunt Jane, modest and unassuming—a real heroine,, who travelled sixteen hundred miles all the way on horseback and spent several months that she might rescue two poor colored persons whom she had never seen or even known.
Without husband or children, alone in the world, she did not repine, but made herself useful, wherever she was, in teaching secular learning and religiou.s truth, and in ministering to the sick and afflicted, the down-trodden and oppressed. She never sought to d^-any wonderful things,—but whatever her ^hand found to do, she did it with her might and with an eye to the honor and glory of God. Hers was a very long and most complete Christian life. Should it ever be forgotten? Certainly not. while our Christian religion endures.
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works do follow them."
—Rev. 14: 13.
ARTEMAS, THE WARRIOR PREACHER
He was one of the fiercest of the Sioux warriors. He fought the Ojibways in his youth; danced the scalp-dance on the present site of MinneapoHs, and waged war against the whites in '62. He was converted at Mankato, Minnesota, in the prison-pen, and for thirty-two years, he was pastor of the Pilgrim Congregational church at Santee, Nebraska.
Artemas Ehnamane was born in 1825, at Red Wing, Minnesota, by the mountain that stands sentinel at the head of Lake Pepin. ''Walking Along" is the English translation of his jaw-breaking surname. As a lad, he played on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. As a youth, he hunted the red deer in the lovely glades of Minnesota and Wisconsin. He soon grew tall and strong and became a famous hunter. The war-path, also, opened to him in the pursuit of his hereditary foes, the Chippewas. He danced the scalp-dance on the present site of Minneapolis, when it was only a wind-swept prairie.
While in his youth, his tribe ceded their ancestral lands along the Mississippi and removed to the Sioux Reservation on the Minnesota River. But not for long, for the terrible outbreak of 1862, scattered everything and landed all the leading men of that tribe in prison. Artemas was one of them. He was convicted, condemned to death, and pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. While in the prison-pen at Mankato,
Su AMONG THE SIOUX.
he came into a new life ''that thinketh no evil of his neighbor." The words of the faithful missionaries, Pond and Williamson and Riggs, sank deep into his heart. His whole nature underwent a change. Arte-mas once explained his conversion thus:
. *'We had planned that uprising wisely and secretly. We had able leaders. We were well organized and thoroughly armed. The whites were weakened by the Southern war. Everything was in our favor. We had prayed to our gods. But when the conflict came, we wTre beaten so rapidly and completely, I felt tlliat the white man's God must be greater than all the Indians' gods; and I detemiined to look Him up, and I found Him, All-Powerful and precious to my soul."
Faithfully he studied his letters and learned his Dakota Bible, which became more precious to him than any record of traditions and shadows handed down, from mouth tO' mouth by his people. He soon became possessed of a great longing to let his tribe know his great secret of the God above. So when the j>rison-ers were restored to their families in the Missouri Val-Iv in Nebraska, Artemas was soon chosen one of the preachers of the reorganized tribe. His first pastorate was that of the Pilgrim Congregational Church at Santee, Nebraska, in 1867. It was also his last, for he was ever so beloved and honored by his people, that they would not consider any proposal for separation.
No such proposition ever met with favor in the Pilgrim Church for Artemas finnly held first place in the affections of the people among whom he labored so earnestlv. He served this church for thirtv-two vcars
and passed on to take his place among the Shining Ones, on the eve of Easter Sabbath, 1902.
Artemas seldom took a vacation. In fact there is only one on record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They were strong and hostile.