missionaries met frequently for conference, study and translation of the word of God. Here, September 30, 1844, the original Dakota Presbytery was organized.

For several years most of the members of this congregation were women. Once in the new and then unfinished church edifice, more than one hundred Indian men were gathered. When urged to accept Christ and become members of this church, they replied that the church was made up of squaws. Did the missionaries suppose the braves would follow the lead of squaws? Ugh! Ugh!!

For the first seven years, at Lac-qui-Parle, mission work was prosecuted, with marked success in spite of many grave hindrances. But for the four years following—1842-46—the work was seriously retarded. The crops failed and the savages charged their misfortunes to the missionaries. They became very ugly, and began a series of petty yet bitter persecutions against the Christian Indians and the missionaries. The children were forbidden to attend school; the women who favored the church had their blankets cut to pieces and were shut away from contact with the mission. The cattle and horses of the mission were killed, and for a season the Lord's work was stayed at Lac-qui-Parle. Discouraged, but not dismayed His servants were watchful for other opportunities of helpful service.

In 1846, the site of the present, prosperous city of St. Paul, was occupied by a few shanties, owned by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort," sellers of rum to the soldiers and the Indians. Nearby, scattered over the bluffs, were the teepees of Little Crow's band, forming the Sioux village of Kaposia. In 1846, Little Crow, their belligerent chieftain, was shot by his own brother, in a drunken revel. He survived the wound, but apparently alarmed at the influence of these modern harpies over himself and his people, he visited Fort Snelling and begged a missionary for his village. The United States agent stationed there forwarded this petition to Lac-qui-Parle with the suggestion that Dr. Williamson be transferred to Kaposia. The invitation was accepted by the doctor, so in November, 1846, he became a resident of Kaposia (now South St. Paul). To this new station, he carried the same energy, hopefulness and devotion, he had shown at the beginning. Here he remained six years, serving not only the Indians of Little Crow's band, but also doing great good to the white settlers, who were then gathering around the future Capital City of Minnesota. Here in 1848, he organized an Indian church of eight members. It increased to fifteen members, in 1851, when the Indians were removed.

Then followed the treaty of 1851, which was of great import, both to the white man and to the red man. By this treaty, the fertile valley of the Minnesota was thrown open for settlement to the whites. This took away from the Sioux their hunting-grounds, their cranberry marshes, their deer-parks and the graves of their ancestors. So the Dakotas of the Mississippi and lower Minnesota packed up their teepees, their household goods and gods, some in canoes, some on ponies, some on dogs, some on the women, and slowly and sadly took up their line of march towards the setting of the sun.

No sooner did the Indians move than Dr. Williamson followed them and established a new station at Yellow Medicine, on the West bank of the Minnesota river and three miles above the mouth of the Yellow Medicine river. The first winter there, was a fight for life. The house was unfinished; a very severe winter set in unusually early, the snows were deep and the drifts terrible; the supply-teams were snowed in; the horses perished, the provisions were abandoned to the wolves and the drivers reached home in a half-frozen condition. But God cared for His servants. In this emergency, the Rev. M. N. Adams, of Lac-qui-Parle, performed a most heroic act. In mid-winter, with the thermometer many degrees below zero, he hauled flour and other provisions for the missionaries, on a hand sled, from Lac-qui-Parle to Yellow Medicine, a distance of thirty-two miles. The fish gathered in shoals, an unusual occurrence, near the mission and both the Indians and the missionaries lived through that terrible winter. Here, an Indian church of seventeen members was organized by Dr. Williamson. It increased to a membership of thirty in the next decade.

In March, 1854, the mission houses at Lac-qui-Parle were destroyed by fire. A consolidation of the mission forces was soon after effected. Dr. Riggs and other helpers were transferred from Lac-qui-Parle to a point two miles distant from Yellow Medicine and called Omehoo (Hazelwood). A comfortable mission home was erected. The native Christians removed from Lac-qui-Parle and re-established their homes at Hazelwood. A boarding school was soon opened at this point by Rev. M. N. Adams. A neat chapel was also erected. A church of thirty members was organized by Mr. Riggs. It grew to a membership of forty-five before the massacre. These were mainly from the the Lac-qui-Parle church which might be called the mother of all the Dakota churches.

There were now gathered around the mission stations, quite a community of young men, who had to a great extent, become civilized. With civilization came new wants—pantaloons and coats and hats. There was power also in oxen and wagons and brick-houses. The white man's axe and plow and hoe had been introduced and the red man was learning to use them. So the external civilization went on.

But the great and prominent force was in the underlying education and especially in the vitalizing and renewing power of Christian truth. So far as the inner life was changed, civilized habits became permanent; otherwise they were shadows. Evangelization was working out civilization. It is doing its permanently blessed work even yet.

About this time occurred the formation of the Hazelwood Republic.

This was a band of Indians somewhat advanced in civilization, who were organized chiefly by the efforts of Dr. Riggs, under a written constitution and by-laws. Their officers were a President, Secretary and three judges, who were elected by a vote of the membership for a term of two years each. Paul Maza-koo-ta-mane was the first president and served for two terms. This was an interesting experiment, in the series of efforts, by the missionaries, to change this tribe of nomads from their roving teepee life to that of permanent dwellers in fixed habitations. The rude shock of savage warfare, which soon after revolutionized the whole Sioux nation, swept it away before its efficiency could be properly tested. Surely it was a novelty—an Indian band, regulated by written laws and governed by officers, elected by themselves for a term of years. It now exists only in the memory of the oldest of the tribesmen or the missionaries.

In 1843, a new station was established at Traverse des Sioux (near St. Peter, Minnesota,) by the Rev. Stephen R. Riggs. This station was doomed to a tragic history. July 15, 1843, Thomas Longley, the favorite brother of Mrs. Mary Riggs, was suddenly swallowed up in the treacherous waters of the Minnesota and laid to rest under what his sister was wont to call the "Oaks of weeping"—three dwarf oaks on a small knoll. In 1844, Robert Hopkins and his young bride joined the workers here. In 1851, July 4, Mr. Hopkins was suddenly swept away to death by the fatal waves of the Minnesota and his recovered body was laid to rest under the oaks where Thomas Longley had slept all alone for seven years. Thus the mission at Traverse des Sioux was closed by the messenger of death. It was continued, however, in the nearby frontier town of St. Peter, whose white settlers requested the Rev. M. N. Adams, one of the missionaries to the Sioux, to devote his time to their spiritual needs. He complied and founded a white Presbyterian church and it is one of the strong Protestant organizations of Southern Minnesota.

In 1843, also the Pond brothers established a station at Oak Grove, twelve miles west of the Falls of St. Anthony. It was never abandoned. For many years it was the center of