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An Overview of the Life
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Interview with Mary Myrick Hinman LaCroix
Interviewed by Betty Paukert Derrick
February 8-14, 1980, at LaCroix’s home in Rapid City, South Dakota
of the Reverend Samuel Dutton Hinman,
Episcopal Missionary to the Santee Sioux Indians
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from 1860 to 1890
Forward
The oral history interviews which provided the framework for this overview of the life of
Reverend Samuel Dutton Hinman, first Episcopal missionary to the Sioux [Dakota] Indians,
were recorded February 8 through 14, 1980 at his daughter's home in Rapid City, South
Dakota.
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I had met Mary Myrick Hinman LaCroix in the fall of 1979 when she visited the Bishop
Whipple Mission at the Lower Sioux Community near Redwood Falls, Minnesota - the
mission started by her father in 1860. Later, she agreed to these recorded interviews.
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It was a privilege for me to visit with Mary LaCroix in her home in Rapid City, South
Dakota. I was graciously received by both Mary and members of her family. It was
especially pleasant to be a guest at family dinners the first two evenings I was there - one at
the home of Mary's daughter, Agnes [Mrs. Ray] Mousel, and the second evening at the
home of her son Art LaCroix, who is mayor of Rapid City. I was welcomed and openly
received as if I were a long-time friend.
But these two evenings of relaxed conversation in a family setting resulted in frustrations
when I actually started the interviewing and taping process. Mary has a remarkable memory
and a sharp intelligence that belies her 90-plus years. The animated conversations around
the dinner table those first evenings seemed to spontaneously trigger her memories.
However, when it came to the actual taping, the spontaneity was lost, and her responses to
my questions seemed almost guarded. I surmised that this was a natural reaction by
someone whose earliest perceptions of life's realities came to her through the eyes of her
mother and grandmother who had lived through one of the darkest episodes in American
Indian history.
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After the first efforts at interviewing, I sensed that with the introduction of the recording
equipment, I had lost the trust level that had been developed. I realized that I would have to
become a much greater part of the interviews than I had planned. At that point, I delayed the
interviews for a couple of days while I concentrated on shifting through my primary data
and selectively organizing it into a chronological pattern that I could then read to Mary and
elicit her responses. The following manuscript is the result of these narrative interviews.
Betty Paukert Derrick
Table of Contents
Page
1
Chapter 2
Uprising described
5
Chapter 3
Hinman family, Mary’s growing-up years,
and reservation life
9
Mary’s marriage, land allotments,
and the LaCroix family
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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Other missionaries
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Transfer to Niobrara
22
Grandmother’s deep sense of religion
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Hinman’s missionary work at Niobrara
27
The clouds gather, Bishop Hare’s arrival,
and accusations and trial
39
Reconstruction at Birch Coulee
(Redwood County, Minnesota)
44
The Bishop Whipple Mission after 1890
47
Bibliography
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Crow Creek, Dakota Territory
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Chapter 12
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Chapter 4
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Introduction, and discussion of a brief
biography compiled by Henry Whipple Hinman
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Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Introduction, and Brief Biography by Henry Whipple Hinman
Derrick: Today is February 8, 1980. I am Betty Paukert Derrick, free-lance research-writer
from St. Paul, Minnesota. This taped interview is the first of a series of interviews that I will
be doing with Mary Myrick Hinman LaCroix in her home at Rapid City, South Dakota.
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Mary is the 90-year-old daughter of Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, and his second wife,
Mary Myrick. Rev. Hinman was the first Episcopal missionary to the Minnesota Sioux
Indians, and founder of the Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist - now known as the
Bishop Whipple Mission - at the Lower Sioux Community near Redwood Falls, Minnesota.
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Rev. Hinman's second wife, Mary Myrick, was the daughter of the Lower Sioux
Community trader, Andrew Myrick, and his Indian wife, Nancy. Myrick was the oft-quoted
storekeeper in the Minnesota history books who in 1862, when refusing credit to the
starving Sioux Indians, supposedly said, "Let them eat grass." His body was found after the
uprising with his own mouth stuffed full of grass.
These interviews are being done under the auspices of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota
and are financed in part by the grant from the Minnesota State Historical Society.
I became acquainted with Mary Hinman LaCroix after writing an historical narrative on the
life of her father, Rev. S. D. Hinman. This narrative was produced from primary sources for
Anne Webb's "Historian as Investigator" class at Metropolitan State University, St. Paul,
MN, in the spring of 1979. I am indebted to Marlan Gooderum of Morton and Minnesota,
MN for my introduction to Mary LaCroix. A life-long history buff, Gooderum had traced
the ownership of his home in Morton to Robert Hinman, had discovered some of Rev. S. D.
Hinman's books in the attic, and then located Mary living in Rapid City.
Today's interview will be biographical and will give a broad overview of Mary's own life
and the Hinman family.
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Mary, today I'd like to set a time frame around your father's work with the Santee Sioux and
get a brief history of your own life and that of the Hinman family. To do this, I'll keep
referring to the unpublished biography of your father which was compiled by your oldest
brother, Henry Whipple Hinman in 1943. I believe you copied this manuscript in 1975, and
it is in your possession.
O
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LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: The five-page biography is entitled : History of the Reverend Samuel Dutton
Hinman; Missionary for Thirty Years; Interpreter; Government Agent; Member of
Commission for Treating With Sioux Tribes; Superintendent of Indian Censuses; Etc. 1860
- 1890. Do you know when Harry decided to write this?
LaCroix: I really don't know.
Derrick: Harry was the second child of your father and his first wife, Mary Bury Hinman.
He was named for Bishop Whipple, yet you called him "Harry," didn't you?
LaCroix: Yes, everybody called him Harry. I don't know why.
1
Derrick: Here's what the biography says:
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Samuel Dutton Hinman was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., January 17, 1839, to
parents of New England Colonial descent. Educated at institutions of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, Cheshire Academy in Connecticut and
Seabury Divinity School in Faribault, Minnesota, was ordained Deacon in
the church in 1860. Married to Mary Ellen Bury, native of New York City,
of Dutch ancestry, on October 2, 1860. In this month of 1860, the Bishop of
the Diocese [Henry Benjamin Whipple] appointed him a Missionary to the
Sioux Indians on the Lower Agency in Redwood Falls County, Minnesota,
where he established the Mission of St. John...
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The Sioux Massacre of 1862 started on this Reservation and he narrowly
escaped with his life, therefrom, fleeing to Fort Ridgely, twelve miles
distant, where together with scores of other white refugees, was besieged by
the wild Indians for nearly two weeks, until rescued by State Troops under
General Sibley. The Mission buildings and new stone Church were
completely destroyed by the Indians, also all the records, he, getting away
with only the clothes on his person. After this setback, he continued his
work among the Indians at Fort Snelling, Mankato, and Faribault, where
they had been rounded up by Troops in Interment Camps.
In 1863, this young couple experienced their first great sorrow in the death
of their first child, Mary Jewett at the age of two years.
In the spring of 1863, the Government commenced transporting the friendly
Lower Sioux Indian Bands of Wabasha, Good Road, Wakute, Passing Hail,
and Red Leg to the Missouri River in Dakota Territory. On May 4, 1863, the
first contingent were embarked on the Steamboat Davenport, to take them
down the Mississippi to St. Louis, and then up the Missouri to destination.
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Describing this incident, the Saint Paul Pioneer, under date of May 6, 1863,
said, "The Reverend S. D. Hinman, zealous Missionary to the Dakotas, who
was in charge of the Mission of St. John at Redwood (Lower Sioux Agency)
at the time of the breaking out of the Indian war, accompanied the Indians
who left on Monday evening on the Steamer Davenport, and will remain in
charge of them on their new Reservation, near Fort Randall, Dakota
Territory."...
In 1866 he moved to Santee Agency, Nebraska with the Santee Tribe, and
brought his family by boat to Sioux City, Iowa where he left them for some
time, pending the erection of a residence at Santee. His family at the time
consisted of his wife and sons, Henry Whipple, born in 1863, and Samuel
Dutton, Jr., born in 1865, and Miss Emily West, the Missionary teacher.
The year 1867 found him busily occupied in the building of a church, school
house, hospital, and parsonage, at Santee. In 1868, moved his family from
2
Sioux City to Santee Agency. A third son, Robert Clarkson was born....
In July, 1868, Hinman was appointed Special Sioux Interpreter by the Board
of Indian Commissioners....
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In 1869-70, a second catastrophe overtook him, a cyclone destroyed all the
new Mission buildings referred to above, killing one mechanic, and injuring
several others, including Mrs. Hinman and baby Robert. As in the case of
the Indian uprising in 1862, all records, correspondence, and personal effects
were destroyed....On August 15, 1870, the fourth son, William Welsh, was
born.
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Eighteen-seventy to seventy-two, Hinman established churches and schools
at the different Agencies, i.e., Santee, Yankton, Choteau Creek, White
Swan, Botins, Lower Brule, Cheyenne, Flandreau, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, etc.
On August 18, 1872, a fifth son, Thomas Bury, was born.
Eighteen-seventy-three, furnished Indian Scouts to Gen. Custer. March 27,
1873, was appointed Member of the Commission, in conjunction with Rev.
John P. Williamson, and Dr. J. W. Daniels, to treat with the Indians,
regarding building of the Northern Pacific Railroad through the valley of the
Yellowstone River....
Eighteen-seventy-five, February 20th, the sixth and last son, Joseph
Carrington was born. On March 1, 1876, the most terrible blow that can
come to a father and small children occurred in the death of his beloved wife
at the early age of 34 years, after a long illness, occasioned by the shock and
injuries received at the time of the cyclone....
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Soon after his wife's death, he was appointed to the Sioux (Black Hills)
Commission as interpreter. From 1876 on he served as confidential agent of
the Commission of Indian Affairs, keeping on the go, most of the time,
investigating disturbances among the wild tribes in far away places, all over
the Northwest.
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In 1880, was appointed Census Enumerator for all the Sioux Tribes....In the
early 80's, the second Church and Mission house built by him at Santee was
destroyed completely by fire...
In 1884, he was again named as Interpreter for another Sioux Indian
Commission, consisting of Governor Edmunds, Judge Harman and James
Teller of Yankton....
From 1882 to 1885 was also engaged in work for the Smithsonian
Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, dealing with Indian traditions, folk-lore,
etc.
In 1884, was married at Springfield, D.T., by the Rev. Chas. Secombe, to
Mary Myrick, daughter of Andrew Myrick, a friend who was killed by the
3
Indians in the massacre of 1862 at the Lower Sioux Agency....
In 1886, he gave up all his interests in Dakota and Nebraska and returned to
the site of his first Mission [at Redwood Falls, MN] of 1860, and started the
building of still another Church and School.
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On August 27, 1889, Bishop Whipple laid the cornerstone of the new
Church, assisted by Mr. Hinman. The services were in the Indian language,
Mr. Hinman acting as interpreter for the Bishop's sermon. His congregation
was made up of many of the same Indians who had lived there prior to
1862...these Indians had bought farms and returned to their old homes.
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On July 19, 1889, a daughter, Mary Myrick, was born, his eighth child. He
did not live to see the completion of this, his fourteenth Church, as though in
vigorous health, he was stricken with pneumonia and entered into rest on
March 24, 1890, at the age of 51 years.
Derrick: This is the end of Harry's brief biography of your father. After your father died,
Mary, what became of you and your mother?
LaCroix: She eventually moved back to Nebraska to the Reservation - sometime after
about two or three years.
Derrick: Did she have relatives back in Nebraska at Santee?
LaCroix: Oh yes, her mother and sisters were living there.
Derrick: Samuel Dutton Hinman first went to the Lower Sioux Agency at Birch Coulee in
1860. The Uprising was in 1862. Can you tell me something about your grandmother's
family at that time - Andrew Myrick's wife and her parents. Were they full-blood Indians?
LaCroix: Yes, as far as I know, my great-grandmother and grandmother were full-blood.
Derrick: Did your great-grandmother live with Andrew Myrick and his wife?
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LaCroix: Yes, my great-grandmother lived with my grandmother and Andrew Myrick - and
my mother was just a tiny babe, seven months old at the time of the Outbreak. She was born
in 1862. She had a sister who was two years old.
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Derrick: You have pictures of your grandmother and great-grandmother. What were their
names?
LaCroix: My great-grandmother was Julia Stone, and my grandmother's name was Nancy.
Derrick: Do you know what chief's village they would have been from?
LaCroix: No, I don't.
Derrick: Mary, when did you first meet your grandmother? Did she visit at Birch Coulee
[the Lower Sioux Community] during the time that your mother and father lived there?
LaCroix: I don't know whether she did or not - she probably did because they were there
quite a number of years before I was born.
4
Chapter 2
Uprising Described
Derrick: Did you ever hear your grandmother tell what the happenings were at Birch
Coulee the day of the Uprising?
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LaCroix: Well, she said a few days before that an old Indian came there and warned that
the Indians were planning this outbreak. And that they should flee to Canada, because
Myrick was from Canada. But my grandmother said that they didn't take his warning too
seriously. But the morning of the outbreak there were two Indians -- yes, the morning of the
outbreak the Indians came there early in the morning and warned them that the Indians were
going to start this outbreak that morning. So my grandmother and her husband went to the
trading post - and while they were in there, she looked out of the door and she saw two
Indians coming with guns. So, she hid behind the door and my grandfather - evidently they
had a trap door in the ceiling - went up through this trap door onto the roof of the trading
post and he tried to escape. He jumped off the roof, but before he could get to the ravine,
why, this one Indian stepped inside the trading post and the other one went around the
corner of the trading post - and before my grandfather could get to the ravine, why, he shot
him.
Derrick: And your grandmother saw all of this, I presume?
LaCroix: Well, she heard the shots, of course, but she was hiding behind the door and there
was another halfbreed behind the counter - he had gone to the store, too. But he didn't try to
escape because he figured, him being part Indian, they wouldn't hurt him. So this other
Indian that stepped through the door, shot him and blew his brains out. My grandmother
saw that.
Derrick: Where were your mother and her sister at this time? Were they at the trading post,
too?
ry
LaCroix: Well, my mother's grandmother lived with them. She was in the log cabin with
the two children; my mother was a baby - seven months old. And her sister, I think, was
about two years older than she was.
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Derrick: Is there anything else that you remember her telling you about that day?
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LaCroix: After the Indians had shot Myrick and this other man, my grandmother went back
to the cabin, and held my mother on her lap, and she felt that they might come in and try to
kill her, too. But she said, "I was ready for them - I had my knife ready for them - I was
going to get them too, if they tried to kill me."
Derrick: Where did your family go after that - do you know if they stayed in the cabin after
this happened?
LaCroix: I really don't know. I don't know just how long they stayed there - and, of course,
the Indians didn't kill any of their own people; so they might have just stayed there until it
was quieted down a little.
Derrick: Mary, after the Uprising had quieted down and the whites were released from
5
Camp Release, where were your mother and grandmother at that point? Were they taken
prisoner along with the rest of the Sioux that were brought back to Fort Snelling?
LaCroix: I don't remember just exactly what they said happened then, but my
understanding was that what they call the "friendly Indians" were separated from the hostile
ones - the hostile ones they had imprisoned.
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LaCroix: They probably were. I really don't know.
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Derrick: Yes, the hostile ones were imprisoned at Mankato, but then there was another
whole group of Indians that were taken to Fort Snelling and spent the winter there. Do you
know if your grandmother and mother were among them?
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Derrick: And then in the Spring of 1863, these friendly Indians were loaded on to the
steamer Davenport and shipped down the Mississippi to St. Louis, then back up the
Missouri to Crow Creek, Dakota Territory and your father, Rev. Hinman, journeyed with
them.2 Were your mother and grandmother with that group of Indians?
LaCroix: Yes, they were there at Crow Creek - at least for a while.
Derrick: You don't know if they went by way of steamer, or somehow overland?
LaCroix: I imagine they went by steamer, because how else would they have gotten there?
Derrick: Mary, the reason I wanted to talk about your grandmother a little bit at this point is
to establish that you really had an opportunity through your growing up years to know your
grandmother quite well. How long did you live in close proximity to her?
LaCroix: Well, from the time that my mother and I went back to Nebraska after my father
passed away [Mary was eight months old when her father died] until I was of school age,
we lived with my grandmother. If not in her house, we were in the same neighborhood. And
then I went to boarding school, but I was always back during the summer months. So I
knew my grandmother until she passed away and was in close touch with her.
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Derrick: How old was she when she died?
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LaCroix: As near as we could figure out - they never kept any records in those days - she
was in her 90s.
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Derrick: So you knew her a number of years?
LaCroix: Oh sure!
Derrick: And how old was your mother when she died?
LaCroix: She would have been 97 if she had lived just ten days longer.
1
H. B. Whipple Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, Division of Archives and
Manuscripts, St. Paul, Box 37, list of 154 confirmands presented to Whipple by Hinman.
The name Nancy appears on this list and would indicate Mary LaCroix’s grandmother
was at Fort Snelling.
2
Kenneth Carley, The Sioux Uprising of 1862, 2nd Ed. (St. Paul, 1976), pp. 79-80.
6
Derrick: And all those years you were quite close to your mother and kept in constant
contact with her?
LaCroix: Oh yes, yes I was.
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Derrick: So, while the subject of these interviews is your father's life and the life of the
Santee Sioux during their dispersion to Crow Creek and to Santee, and then back to Birch
Coulee, MN, although you didn't experience it yourself, you certainly had first-hand
knowledge from hearing both your grandmother and mother talk about these things.
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LaCroix: Oh yes.
LaCroix: Yes.
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Derrick: That is really what we wanted to establish. Now, I think I'd like to get back to
talking about the Hinman family. You were born in 1889 - at that time the youngest child
from your father's first marriage was 14 years old, having been born in 1875, is that right?
Derrick: When the Rev. Hinman was left a widower in 1876, there were six sons: Henry
Whipple Hinman, born in 1863; Samuel Dutton Hinman, born in 1865; Robert Clarkson
Hinman, born in 1868; William Welsh Hinman, born in 1870; Thomas Bury Hinman, born
in 1872; and Joseph Carrington Hinman, born in 1875. There was also the first-born child, a
little girl, also named Mary - is that right?
LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: And she died at the age of two, in 1863, the spring after the Indian uprising.
LaCroix: Yes, some time that year.
Derrick: Were your brothers back in Minnesota with your father at the time you were born?
LaCroix: I think they were - at least part of them. I think Henry was away at school in some
college or something, but Robert and Will lived with my father and mother for a while.
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Derrick: And that was at Morton. Now when we say Morton or Birch Coulee, we mean the
same place, don't we? The Lower Sioux Community in Redwood County, just adjacent to
Renville County.
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LaCroix: Yes. And I think that at that time my brother Sam was already married and living
in Nebraska.
Derrick: Was he farming in Nebraska?
LaCroix: Yes, they lived on a homestead.
Derrick: Was that close to Santee?
LaCroix: It was closer to Yankton than to Santee.
Derrick: How about the other two, Thomas Bury Hinman and Joseph Carrington Hinman?
LaCroix: Well, Thomas died when he was fourteen, and Joseph was adopted by an aunt in
Montana.
7
Derrick: Was he adopted soon after his birth, and do you know the aunt's name?
LaCroix: Well, at the time that his mother passed away, he was the baby in the family, and
she came and took him and raised him. They lived in Livingston, Montana. I don't
remember the aunt's name but she was a sister of Mary Bury Hinman.
Derrick: Did you know him as you were growing up?
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LaCroix: No, I never met him. And I don't think that the rest of the family kept in touch
with him too much, with them being so far apart.
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Derrick: Did you maintain contact with the rest of your brothers during the years?
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LaCroix: Well, I did with my brother Sam, because they lived down there in Nebraska.
And I stayed with my brother Robert for a while when I was 14, and I had some contact
with them more or less - more than the others. In later years when I got married and moved
up here, why then my brother Harry and I corresponded quite a bit - I got letters from him,
and Agnes used to get letters from him, too.
Derrick: Agnes is your daughter here in Rapid City?
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LaCroix: Yes, Agnes Mousel.
8
Chapter 3
Hinman Family, Mary's Growing Up Years, and Reservation Life
Derrick: Mary, when you and your mother went back to Santee after your father died, could
you describe for me the type of housing arrangements you had? It was on the reservation
and you first lived there with your grandmother, is that correct?
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LaCroix: Yes, we did. After the land was allotted out to the Indians, the government built
houses on it - but they were no mansions. Just two rooms, and that was it. When the people
needed more rooms, they set up a tent or teepee outside to make more room.
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Derrick: Who was living at your grandmother's place when you and your mother went
back? Was there room for all of you in the two rooms that she had?
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LaCroix: Well, I don't remember when we first went back who all were there - but later my
mother was married again and then we lived by ourselves on the reservation.
Derrick: Did she marry one of the Indians on the reservation?
LaCroix: Well, he was part Indian - I think about half. His name was Daniel Westerman.
Derrick: Did she have more children?
LaCroix: Oh yes, I have four more brothers.
Derrick: All boys, again? You then had ten half brothers. Six half brothers from the
Hinman side, and the four from your mother's second marriage. Mary, could you tell me a
little about where you went to school?
LaCroix: I went to the government school at the Santee Agency. We didn't have any day
schools or anything, and so, when we wanted to get an education - we had to go to a
government boarding school. This was about ten miles from home.
Derrick: How many students were at the school?
LaCroix: About two or three hundred, girls and boys both.
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Derrick: How long did you attend school there?
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LaCroix: I think I went there through the grades, but I did go one year to the Hope School
at Springfield - it's now called St. Mary's. It was right across the river from Santee. That was
when I was third or fourth grade.
Derrick: Was that an Episcopal school?
LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: Did your father start that school?
LaCroix: Yes, that's one that my father had started at Santee, and then it was transferred
over to Springfield, S.D. It's still a girl's school. Here a while back I got a brochure from
somebody who used to attend school there when they had their 100th anniversary inviting
me to attend, but I wasn't able to go. After I attended there one year, I came back to the
government school.
9
Then, before I attended high school I went back to my brother Rob's at Birch Coulee for a
year. He was the day school teacher at the Lower Sioux Community. I was thirteen when I
went back. I attended school at Birch Coulee for a time, and then I went to High School in
Morton. I left the following year and went back home. Then I attended the Congregational
school at Santee, at the Riggs school. It was called the Normal Training School.
Derrick: Which Riggs was it that started the school?
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LaCroix: Alfred Riggs.
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Derrick: Alfred Riggs was the son of Stephen R. Riggs, the Congregational minister that
served at the upper Sioux Agency before the Uprising.3 How many students were attending
high school at that time?
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LaCroix: Oh, I can't remember, it was probably about 200-250 all together. It was both
boys and girls.
Derrick: I believe that you met your husband at this school, would you tell me a bit about
that?
LaCroix: He was a day scholar - his folks lived at the Agency and his father was a
carpenter, employed by the government there, so he came to school as a day scholar. His
name was Oliver LaCroix. We were in the same class - he was about three-eighths Indian.
I went to the Riggs school for two years, and then I went to Haskell Institute in Lawrence,
Kansas where I took a two year business course.
Derrick: What kind of school was Haskell?
LaCroix: It was a government Indian Institute - a boarding school. At the time I went there
I think there were about 92 different tribes represented there. They were from all over the
United States. Almost any state you could mention had some scholar there.
Derrick: And, you said the curriculum was really quite good?
to
ry
LaCroix: Yes, it was - they had the lower grades too; from the grades up through high
school, and then a two year business course on top of that.
lh
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Derrick: How was the tuition paid?
O
ra
LaCroix: We didn't have tuition - the government paid the tuition - it was a government
school.
Derrick: Did your husband go there, too?
LaCroix: Yes, the year after I graduated he went down there to go to school, but the climate
didn't agree with him, so he only stayed a few months and had to come home.
Derrick: Mary, during your school years, were you allowed to speak the Dakota language
in the schools that you attended?
3
Roy W. Meyer, History of the Santee Sioux (Lincoln, Neb., 1967), p. 176.
10
LaCroix: No, not when we first started at the boarding school. Of course, I spoke both
languages, but a good many of the children that attended there only spoke the Sioux
language. So, in order to get them to learn the English language, they would be punished if
they were caught talking the Sioux language. So they had to learn English in a hurry.
Derrick: What kind of punishment was meted out to them?
ro
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LaCroix: Oh, I don't remember just what it was. If you were out on the playground and they
heard you using Sioux words, they would take you inside and stand you in a corner.
LaCroix: I knew both languages.
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Derrick: Did those restrictions apply in high school, too?
La
C
Derrick: Did you ever get stood in the corner?
LaCroix: No, those restrictions were for those just starting to school - they wanted them to
learn the English language, and that was an effective way of doing it.
Derrick: Mary, when you went to school, did you ever have an Indian as a teacher?
LaCroix: No, we didn't. No, come to think of it, there was an Indian teacher at the Riggs
school - he taught the Sioux language. I just didn't happen to be in that class - but you could
take courses in the Sioux language.
Derrick: During the time that your own children were going through school in South
Dakota, which would have been around Wall, and then Rapid City, did they have any
Native American teachers?
O
ra
lh
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to
ry
LaCroix: No, I don't think so.
11
Chapter 4
Mary's Marriage, Land Allotments, LaCroix Family
Derrick: When were you and Oliver LaCroix married?
LaCroix: After I graduated from Haskell. We were married in 1910, I was 21 years old. We
lived on his father's allotment at Santee, down on what they called Bazille Creek.
Derrick: Did you live in one of the government houses.
La
C
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LaCroix: Yes, those houses were built by his father - him being a carpenter - he built the
house that we lived in. And at that time, his father had passed away, so his mother lived
there with us for a while.
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Derrick: At this time perhaps we should interject religion. You were baptized at the St.
Cornelia Mission, Birch Coulee ( the Bishop Whipple Mission) - I know your baptismal
records are there; you were baptized as an Episcopalian.
Yes, but I wasn't baptized in St. Cornelia Church, the Church wasn't built yet when I was
baptized - it was just in the process, so I was baptized by Bishop Whipple in the parish
house.
Derrick: But you are a Catholic now.
LaCroix: Yes, I'm a Catholic now - my husband was Catholic and when we were married I
became a Catholic - a convert, and my family has been brought up in the Catholic faith.
Derrick: How long did you and your husband live on the reservation?
LaCroix: Well, first we were on his father's allotment, and then we rented two or three
different farms near there for a number of years before we moved out to South Dakota.
Derrick: When you and Oliver LaCroix first farmed on his father's allotment on the Santee
Reservation, how many acres was that?
LaCroix: One hundred and sixty acres.
ry
Derrick: How were those allotments given out at the time they were divided up?
lh
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LaCroix: It was, I suppose, right after the reservation was formed, and each head of the
household got 160 acres, and the other single ones only got 80 acres.
O
ra
Derrick: And did that divide up the entire reservation at that time?
LaCroix: Yes, and eventually they ran out of land, so when my husband and I came along,
there wasn't any more land for us.
Derrick: So, as the families that lives on the reservation multiplied, there wasn't any more
land?
LaCroix: There wasn't any more land available unless they went out and bought land
themselves.
Derrick: How many children did you and your husband have?
12
LaCroix: Nine. Seven were born in Nebraska and two in South Dakota. We moved to
South Dakota in 1923, I believe.
Derrick: Why did you decide to move?
ro
ix
LaCroix: We were farmers, and my husband had made a trip up here the year before with a
couple of other men and they looked around at the country, and they thought it was good
farming country. They figured they'd do better up here - so we sold what we had on the farm
and moved up to South Dakota.
C
Derrick: Did you sell the farm itself with the allotment?
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LaCroix: No, the allotment is still in my husband's name. It has never been sold, it is still
down there in Nebraska.
Derrick: Then when you moved to South Dakota, was it reservation land that you came to?
LaCroix: No, we rented a farm about ten or twelve miles north of Wall.
Derrick: how many acres did you have?
LaCroix: I don't remember, probably around 160 or something like that - it wasn't all farm
land, it was some pasture and grazing land.
Derrick: Did you raise cattle there?
LaCroix: Oh yes, we had cattle and raised crops. That is supposed to be wheat country - my
husband planted corn and the farmers around there said "you'll never raise any corn," but he
had the prettiest corn field around -those big ears and the tall stalks. But along the latter part
of August we got a hail storm - and when the storm was over, we didn't have any corn at all.
Derrick: Did he try to grow corn after that?
LaCroix: Oh yes, we could grow corn there, and the crops were successful if we got the
rains.
to
ry
Derrick: I think you mentioned the drought in the 1930s. Were you also plagued with
grasshoppers at that time?
O
ra
lh
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LaCroix: Oh yes, the drought years were bad, but we weren't bothered by grasshoppers at
that time - but mosquitoes - ooh - they were worse than grasshoppers.
Derrick: When did you move from Wall?
LaCroix: We farmed two or three different places around Wall and then we finally moved
east of Rapid City and we raised sugar beets.
Derrick: Do they still have sugar beets in this area?
LaCroix: I don't believe so. It's so settled. The places that used to be farms and fields - there
are trailer houses and people building out there now.
Derrick: When did you last farm?
13
LaCroix: In about 1935 we moved into Rapid City. During the rest of the Depression years,
my husband worked on the WPA.
Derrick: After his WPA work, what did he do?
LaCroix: He applied at the Sioux Sanitarium and got a job as orderly up there.
Derrick: When you say Sioux Sanitarium, was that a tuberculosis sanitarium?
ro
ix
LaCroix: It was at that time but is isn't any more. They furnished government housing up
there, so we moved our family into one of the houses there.
La
C
Derrick: Is the sanitarium here in Rapid City?
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LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: Did your children all go to high school here in Rapid City?
LaCroix: Yes, they went to the Catholic school - to the Cathedral school.
Derrick: You mentioned that you had nine children - are all living?
LaCroix: No, three sons are deceased.
Derrick: And how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren do you have?
LaCroix: Forty-seven grandchildren and 94 great-grandchildren, and two more on the way.
Derrick: You son, Art LaCroix, is currently serving his third term as mayor of Rapid City is that a two or four year term?
LaCroix: A two year term - he's in his sixth year.
Derrick: Mary, since I've been visiting you and meeting members of your family, I've
gotten the feeling that you are a very close-knit family.
LaCroix: We are. We've always been very close.
ry
Derrick: Do you suppose that is some of the Indian family tradition that has stayed?
lh
is
to
LaCroix: It could be, but as far as we're concerned, we never paid much attention to Indian
traditions - I knew of the traditions, but I didn't live accordingly. But it's just the way we
raised out family.
O
ra
Derrick: Well, it's very nice, and it's one of the things that I've certainly felt during the time
that I've been here.
Mary, before we go on from this brief review of your life, I'd like to fill in one thing. When
we talked earlier, you mentioned something about Sarah Hurd who was a sister of Mary
Bury Hinman, where did she live?
LaCroix: I really don't know where she lived earlier, but when I was a small child, she
lived in St. Paul.
Derrick: And the way you knew about her was by hearing your brothers talk about her?
14
LaCroix: Yes, and then I went and stayed with her for a few months when I was about five
or six years old.
Derrick: Where in St. Paul did she live?
LaCroix: Oh, I don't recall, but it seems to me it was Walnut Street.
ro
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Derrick: I recall that last fall when you were in St. Paul, you asked me if I knew where
Walnut Street was.
C
LaCroix: Yes, it was years afterwards when my brother Harry mentioned Aunt Sarah's
living on Walnut Street - so I figured that was the same place that I had been at.
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Derrick: Did you see anything more of her, or know anything more about what the family
did?
O
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to
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LaCroix: No, not after my mother came after me and I left there.
15
Chapter 5
Life at Crow Creek
ro
ix
Derrick: Mary, we talked a bit previously about the friendly Sioux having spent the winter
of 1862-63 in a stockade at Fort Snelling, and then in the spring of 1863 they went by
steamboat to St. Louis and up the Missouri to Crow Creek. I know you said you didn't know
first-hand whether your grandmother and mother were with that group or not, but you
imagined they were. Do you know from hearing them talk about it, if they were at Crow
Creek?
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Derrick: How large an area do you suppose that covered?
La
C
LaCroix: Yes, they were. There at Crow Creek they had this stockade built around their
teepees, so they wouldn't escape, you know. They were sort of prisoners yet.
LaCroix: Well, I don't know, but it must have been quite an area because there were quite a
few of them that went down there.
Derrick: In Carley's book The Sioux Uprising of 1862, page 79, he states:
Quite a few Sioux Captives died during the winter and early spring in the
cold, inadequate encampment near Fort Snelling. For those who remained,
concern about their fate added to their frustration. A bleak picture began to
unfold for them in early May 1863 when the Indian office prepared to ship
them off like so many cattle....Immediate arrangements were in the hands of
special agent Benjamin Thompson, brother of the Superintendent. To be
deported were slightly more than 1300, of whom only about 125 were men
capable of bearing arms.
On May 4, some 770 Indians accompanied by Rev. Hinman and 40 men of
Company "G" of the Tenth Minnesota as an escort, boarded the river
steamer "Davenport," which was only 35 feet wide and 205 feet long, for the
trip down the Mississippi to St. Louis.
lh
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ry
Then later during the trip they were joined by another group that Rev. John Williamson was
with and they all did end up out by Crow Creek, Dakota Territory.4 Now, can you go on and
tell me what you know about the stockade at Crow Creek. You think the stockade was
really to protect the Indians at that time?
O
ra
LaCroix: Yes, more for protection because, naturally, the white people all over the country
were more or less, you know, upset over the uprising. My grandmother said that one day
someone threw a rock over the stockade and it happened to hit my father on the head and
knocked him out.
Derrick: That was in the stockade at Crow Creek?
LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: I asked because I know that he was beaten unconscious when he was in Fort
4
Carley, p. 79.
16
Snelling acting as chaplain during the winter of 1863 - some thugs broke in and beat him
up.5
LaCroix: Yes, he was hit on the head with a rock that someone threw over the stockade and
knocked him cold, I guess.
Derrick: What were the living conditions like at the stockade?
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La
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LaCroix: From what my grandmother told me, they were nearly starved. About all they got
to eat was soup of some kind, and she said they built a trough leading from outside of the
stockade into the inside, and they would make the soup and pour it into this trough. The
Indians had to take their pails and their cups, and whatever they could put the soup in and
dip it out of the trough. This trough was made out of green cottonwood lumber, and by the
time they got their soup, it had taken the taste of the green lumber and it was almost
impossible to eat. But, she said that's all they had to eat, so they ate it.
Derrick: Were they in the stockade all the time that they were at Crow Creek?
LaCroix: I really don't know about that part - but they were there for three or four years
before they moved out to Santee, Nebraska, from my understanding. I think that it was
about 1865 or 1866 that they were able to move to Santee.
Derrick: Mary, we paused for just a moment and you remembered another incident that
your grandmother told about walking from one place to another - can you go on with that
now?
LaCroix: Well, they were marching them from some place - I don't remember just where
they were going or where they came from, but along the way they had rested a little My
mother was strapped into one of these cradle things that the Indians carried their babies in,
and they laid her by the road, or whatever the trail was, and somebody driving a team of
oxen came down the road and just about ran over my mother. When they turned around and
saw the oxen coming, my grandmother ran and grabbed her out of the way just in time.
ry
Derrick: Do you suppose they actually knew that the baby was there?
O
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LaCroix: They probably didn't see it, you know, with a team of oxen with their big heads
and horns - it was hard to see what was beside the road - there probably was grass there, too.
Anyway, they had her in the road - they had her propped up some way so I imagine those
roads were rutty, you know, deep ruts. She was probably braced up against the side of the
rut so she was upright and the drivers didn't see her.
Derrick: Did you ever hear your grandmother say how many children died on the trip to
Crow Creek, or at Crow Creek?
LaCroix: No, I don't remember - she probably did.
Derrick: In a letter from G. W. Knox, former Superintendent of Schools for the Winnebago
5
Wm. J. Barnds, “The Ministry of Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, Among the Sioux,”
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 38, p. 401.
17
Indians, to Bishop Whipple, he states that 600 children had died during the time he was
with them. The letter was dated March 25, 1864.
LaCroix: Well, I suppose there were quite a number that died along the way - of course at
that time nobody kept figures or counts of anything. But my grandmother did tell about the
hardships and all.
C
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Derrick: Mary, I'd like to read a couple of letters to you. The originals are in the Bishop
Whipple manuscripts that are kept at the Minnesota Historical Society Archives and
Manuscripts Division. I referred to the first one just a moment ago. It was written from
Washington, D. C.
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Dear Sir: In reply to several interrogatives from yourself in regard to my
knowledge of the country in which the Minnesota Indians have been located,
and the condition there, I have to reply that I accompanied them in their
removal there in May, 1863 and remained there until November, last.
The country where they are is totally unfit for the habitation of any human
beings. It is a desert to all practical purposes. There are but few streams in
the entire country; the soil is destitute of moisture, and swept by hot winds
that make it almost unbearable. What little grass may start in spring is
withered and scorched ere it can reach its growth. It is destitute of timber
save in small strips along the Missouri. The timber in the whole country will
not last the Indians five years. It never can be made fit for agriculture no
more than the great Sahara of Africa. It is a vast plain of sand without water,
without grass, without timber, and but little game.
ry
Over 600 children alone died while I was there with them owing to lack of
vegetables and wild fruit. Rather than remain in that place over the winter,
about 1,000 made canoes and scattered among the tribes of more hospitable
Kansas and Nebraska prior to my departure. The place where they are is
perhaps as good as any in that country, but that portion of Dakota is certainly
unfit for the location of any tribes that may wish to engage in agriculture.6
O
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to
This letter is from your father, S. D. Hinman, written from Fort Thompson, Crow Creek,
January 6, 1864. It, too, is addressed to Bishop Whipple. It's quite a lengthy letter, but it is
very descriptive.
My dear Bishop: We have now so few opportunities for sending our mail
that I fear you do not hear from us often as you ought. I am glad to hear from
Mary and also from the young men at Davenport that you have made a visit
to the Indian bison.
About two-thirds of the Indians here are under our influence, and our cause
is really suffering from want of buildings and missionary teachers. I am
afraid that the location of the Indians in this desert is a stern reality that
6
Whipple Collection, Box. 3.
18
cannot be changed. I would God it were otherwise. Much money has already
been squandered here and they are about to ask another large appropriation
this winter for the purpose of further binding the location. The present
administration will soon go out, and this is the place chosen where Col.
Thompson and parties at Washington may make their last and best effort to
repair their fortunes.
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C
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I think I have already told you that the 100 tons of freight advertised to be
brought over for the Indians turns out to be less than 50 tons. Much less, for
it is already about exhausted. Four Hundred cattle are all that have been of
any lasting benefit to the Indians. In fact, the bulk of the train was composed
of wagons loaded for [the trader association's name could not be made out
precisely], Winnebago traders. The swindle is an awful one because it is
now causing so many innocent and helpless people to suffer.
I have sometimes thought that these matters might be bettered, but it may be
a dream. There seems to be a great humanity loving heart in our nation, but
it may be but too true that it only beats for good when led on by the
selfishness of party leaders. There are many reasons why we deserve better
things at the hands of the government.
First, our people rescued the captives and broke the backbone of the Sioux
war in Minnesota. Second, their trials have begotten in them an earnest
desire to improve in a sense that to follow the ways of the white man is the
only salvation of the Indian. Thirdly, they have always been farmers, and all
the teachings of the government have been intended to urge upon them the
absolute necessity of abandoning the chase and devoting themselves to the
cultivation of the soil. Today they are almost driving these Indians go gain a
livelihood by the chase. But that, too, where the game is not abundant, and
where all the surrounding tribes are hostile - openly so to the white and the
friendly Indians.
lh
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to
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It is the uniform testimony of all settlers in the country that the land is good
for nothing for agricultural purposes - that corn will grow only one year in
three, and that no other crop can be raised - and this I know to be true.
O
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What then is to be the result of this starvation feeding policy of the Secretary
of the Interior? Simply this, that a large tribe of Indians, many of them
Christians, most of them far in advance of any other of the Western tribes in
civilizations and improvement - a tribe too desirous of further progress - is
to be scattered to the winds, joining by compulsion the hostile Indians or
dragging out a miserable existence among the buffalo-hunting Indians of the
plains.
Is this then the object for which all their money has been spent for so many
years? By no means. They were not advanced in civilization merely to be
cast down at the will of a few heartless speculators. I hope, I pray, we all
19
pray that a righteous God will look upon us in pity and compassion. My dear
Bishop, can it be impossible when so much sympathy is manifested for the
poor Black in his bondage that the hearts of the people can be moved so that
they will consent to look after the interest of the Indian, also? Why not have
a Christian Commission for them, also?
La
C
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It is the stern law of races that the weaker must either disappear before the
stronger, or else be lost in it. Why push these poor people in their darkness
to destruction and eternal mire? Are not we responsible? And can any
Christian man be guilty of willingly seeing them go to darkness and to
death? They have all the powers and capacities of men, and being men, we
are treating them like beasts. How long oh Lord, how long?
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There is an increasing desire among these Indians to make somewhere a
Christian settlement. Why cannot this be gratified? Why cannot our people
be interested to ask this of the Department and of Congress? Men are
already engaged in cutting logs for our mission house and church to be built
next summer. The Department will give us the outside lumber. I am having
cedar cut for the inside work. Our nail provisions for the year will have to be
bought below. It will also be necessary for us to have a team of horses or
mules for hauling lumber, wood, water, etc.
I cannot get along without at least two teachers. These things will increase
our expenses, but yet, I am happy to say that they are absolutely necessary. I
am very well and happy. It is useless, however, to deny that the
inconveniences here are great. I live like an Indian, and we have no stoves.
With much love to all. Asking your prayers, (signed) S. D. Hinman.7
Derrick: And that's a letter from your father, Mary, that was written on January 6, 1864,
from Crow Creek. And so, your mother was there -LaCroix: Sure.
to
ry
Derrick: As a baby--
lh
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LaCroix: She was only a little more than two years old.
O
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Derrick: And your grandmother. Do you suppose your great-grandmother was there, too?
LaCroix: Oh, sure. She went along with them wherever they went. They all lived together
after they got to Santee.
Derrick: Do you know anything more about the existence at Crow Creek?
LaCroix: No, that's all I remember my grandmother talking about.
7
Ibid.
20
Chapter 6
Other Missionaries
Derrick: Before we talk about the move from crow Creek to Santee, Nebraska, I'd like to
fill in for our listeners some background about the other missionaries who were working
with the Sioux at the same time.
La
C
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In Minnesota there was Dr. Thomas S. Williamson who had established a mission at Lac
Qui Parle on the Minnesota River in 1835.8 In 1837 he was joined by Stephen Riggs.
Williamson's son, John, also became a clergyman. He accompanied a second boatload of
Indians from Fort Snelling to Crow Creek at the same time your father left on the
Davenport. Stephen Riggs' son, Alfred, joined Williamson in the Dakota territory in the late
1860s.9
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These missionaries were supported by the American Board of Commissioners of Missions,
sponsored by the Congregational/Presbyterian churches. They had been working with the
Upper Sioux Indians for nearly 25 years at the time that Bishop Whipple visited the Lower
Sioux Community, approximately 30 miles away. At that time Chief Wabasha and other
requested Bishop Whipple to send a missionary to them, explaining that they needed a
teacher.10
Also, Riggs had started a small settlement called the Hazelwood Republic in 1854 which
was located about half-way between the Upper and Lower Sioux areas. The Hazelwood
Republic, although it didn't last very long, does occupy a place in Minnesota history because
it was a unique experiment to see how the Sioux Indians would relate to a constitutional
form of government. They platted out lands and modeled it after a white farming
community.11
ry
So when the Rev. Hinman came to the area in 1860, there were natural rivalries that arose
between the two missionary groups. I was able to get the theological background for this
rivalry from the Rev. Ed. Sheppard, former historiographer for the Minnesota Episcopal
Diocese and current vicar at the Bishop Whipple Mission Church, located on the site of
your father's original mission at the Lower Sioux Community.
O
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to
Rev. Sheppard states that Hinman was very much a High Church Episcopalian for that age recall the surpliced choirs that Hinman refers to in one of the letters.12 He cordially disliked
the combined Presbyterian/Congregational camp - the ABC missionaries. This, according to
Sheppard, was almost a theological stance. Hinman came from Connecticut which was
traditional High Church. The ABC people were very assimilationist culturally. They wanted
to make the Indians look like good Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. They were very disdainful of
8
Theodore C. Blegen, Building Minnesota (Boston, 1938), p. 105.
Meyer, p. 176.
10
Whipple Collection, Box 3, clipping, “Missionary finds Bishop Whipple Letter,”
undated.
11
Blegen, p. 105.
12
Whipple Collection, Box 5, letter of February 29, 1868, to Whipple from Hinman.
21
9
the Indian culture and spirituality, while Hinman was defender of the traditional political
model - Indians chiefs, etc.
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Because of this ideological stance, Sheppard says Hinman undoubtedly had problems
relating to bureaucracy. The Indian Bureau and the Church were all intermingled at that
time. Especially was this true during the Grant Administration from 1869 through 1877.
There was no real separation of church and state on the reservation - it was all mixed up
together with no clear definition of whose authority was whose.
in
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M rvi
in ew
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so it
ta h M
H a
is ry
to M
ric y
al ric
So k
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et m
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an
La
C
The religious undertones of the two camps were basic evangelicalism vs. catholic.
Evangelical with a small "e" meaning militant zeal and spreading the "truth" vs. catholic
with a small "c" meaning broad and comprehensive, all-inclusive. The Low Church
Episcopalians and Presbyterians could get along quite well during the last half of the 19th
century. But Hinman was High Church, and within the Episcopal Church, this was the time
that the High Church was being hit with a vengeance. It was hit from within by the low
church faction, and from without by other Protestant groups.
Sheppard says he feels that Hinman's stance towards his missionary work was derived from
his cultural background. He came from a traditional background in the East, and then at
Faribault, MN, he studied under Dr. Lloyd Breck who was very much a High Church
Episcopalian.13
The following letter that your father wrote to Bishop Whipple on January 6, 1862 indicates
that there were early rivalries between the two missionary bodies:
...Early Christmas morning they began to come to shake hands with their
minister, and at 10 o'clock our small mission house contained 150 Indians,
mostly children....The men all stayed away except Paul, who made an
excellent, earnest, practical Christmas address to the congregation telling
them about the day and its blessings.
O
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to
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He informed them, also, that his minister did not keep Christmas. I don't think that there is
any danger of the children going there after that plain truth....All the good things that we had
prepared were thankfully and joyously received....All the children of the reservation were
here, and they are ours....I have never spent a happier day.14
13
14
Rev. E.L. Sheppard, oral interview.
Whipple Collection, Box 3, letter of January 6, 1862, to Whipple from Hinman.
22
Chapter 7
Transfer to Niobrara
Now, Mary, with that background about the other missionaries in the area, we'll get back to
the Santee at Crow Creek, Dakota Territory and the decision to move them to what is now
the Santee Reservation at Niobrara, Nebraska. This was done in early June, 1866. At that
point, also, the men prisoners who had been held captive in Davenport, Iowa were finally
released. Meyer says:
in
te
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so it
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So k
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C
ro
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After the pardoning of 30 or 40 [prisoners] in 1864, T. S. Williamson and
others had worked actively for the release of the rest. Commissioner Cooley
was kindly disposed towards them, saying in his report of 1865, "The only
offense of which many of them appear to have been guilty is that of being
Sioux Indians and of having, when their people committed the outrages in
Minnesota, taken part with them only so much as to fly when pursued by the
troops."...In 1866 the number of fugitives that had been captured since 1863
almost equaled the number of deaths in Davenport prison. The number of
deaths in Davenport prison were 120, so that number of captives was still
177.15
As for the people at Crow Creek at this time, Meyer says that when Agents Stone took
charge in 1865, he found only 1,043 Indians -- more than 900 of them women and children.
Many of the Indians still lived in the cloth teepees they had brought from Minnesota, or in
bark shanties which were described as totally unfitted for winter. Finally, when Stone saw
that so many were starving to death at the time he took over, he allowed the 100 or so able
bodied men in the group to be permitted to hunt off the reservation. It was at this time that
the move to Niobrara from Crow Creek was planned.16
Meyer goes on to say that the prisoners were brought from Davenport to Crow Creek in the
spring of 1866.
O
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lh
is
to
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But when the boat that transported them failed to bring 100 sacks of flour as
it had been expected to do, it left the people at Crow Creek in a difficult
plight. With supplies on hand for only ten days, Reed, serving as special
agent decided to send the old and infirm in wagons with some provisions in
hopes of reaching Fort Randall before their supplies ran out. They were sent
May 28th, and the rest of the population went on foot and horseback,
reaching Niobrara on June 11th.17
Derrick: So, they had a long walk again, Mary, didn't they. From Crow Creek down to the
Santee Reservation at Niobrara, and with very meager supplies. Did your grandmother ever
tell you anything about that trip?
LaCroix: No, not that I can recall.
15
Meyer, pp. 156-157.
Ibid, p. 153.
17
Ibid, p. 157.
16
23
Derrick: Let's look at a map and see exactly where they went from Crow Creek to the
reservation. It was on the Missouri River -- here's Fort Thompson, and then down to the
Santee Reserve -- how far does that look to be?
LaCroix: You mean from Crow Creek to Niobrara? Around 100 miles or so.
C
ro
ix
Derrick: Evidently the Indians were not welcomed by the white settlers in the area of
Niobrara. Meyer says, "When the white settlers along the Missouri River heard that the
Santee Indians were to be moved down to Niobrara, they were referred to as those `hellhounds of Minnesota notoriety.'" Meyer describes the physical arrangements at the new
location as follows:
in
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M rvi
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so it
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H a
is ry
to M
ric y
al ric
So k
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et m
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La
Preparations for their arrival had been under way for some time. Before the
prisoners had arrived...a large hotel had been requisitioned at the Niobrara
town site and two small buildings had been purchased for storehouses.
When the first Indians arrived, they were set to work planting corn and
potatoes on some land already broken by one of the white settlers in the
vicinity. The first site of the agency was at the town site, about a mile east of
the present town of Niobrara. There the Indians lived in tents...Very few
improvements were made here, and those of a temporary nature. Because of
lack of wood and also because of complaints from settlers that the Indians
were committing minor depredations, they were removed that fall to winter
quarters near the mouth of Bazille Creek, three or four miles down the
Missouri from the town site. The agency was re-established there.18
ry
Some time passed before the exact land that was to make up the reservation was fully
decided upon, and Meyer states that "under the impression that lands had already been
withdrawn [from claims by settlers], Hinman had begun building a mission when he was
interrupted by a pair of meddlesome squatters."19 Your father did complete this chapel at
Bazille Creek, Mary, and it was used for the next two years -- then it was flooded out in the
spring of 1868 and all the records were destroyed.20 Do you know anything about the
situation at Bazille Creek -- was that area subject to flooding?
lh
is
to
LaCroix: Well, I know in later years as I was growing up it seemed like there were always
floods at Bazille Creek, and also at what they call Howe Creek. Those creeks are located
south of Santee, back in the hills.
O
ra
Derrick: Mary, do you have any idea what it was like for your grandmother and mother
when they arrived at Niobrara after that long walk from Crow Creek?
LaCroix: Of course my mother was still a young child and she didn't remember much about
it, but my grandmother said they had to live in those teepees until they could get log houses
built for them to move into. In the wintertime my great-grandmother would go down by the
18
Meyer, p. 158.
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, That They May Have Life (New York, 1977), p. 20.
20
Ibid.
24
19
riverbank -- you see they were camped along the river bottom when they first got there. She
would go down by the riverbank where this tall slough-grass grew, and she would cut that
off and put it into bundles and carry it on her back up to the teepee. Then she'd tie this
slough-grass together in bunches and stand it around the outside of the teepee to keep the
wind out in the wintertime so as to make it warm inside the teepee. That was sort of an
insulation.
ro
ix
Derrick: And they lived that way at Niobrara at least the one winter?
La
C
LaCroix: Yes, at least that winter they lived there and I don't know just how long they had
to live in those teepees. It must have taken quite a while to get enough buildings set up for
all of them.
in
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so it
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Derrick: We do know that your father immediately started to build a church and school
when they first got there.
O
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to
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LaCroix: Yes. Well that must have been the procedure. Come to think of it, they must have
lived in those teepees for a number of years, because my mother remembered living in
them. Of course, the churches and schools would be their first concern, and no doubt they
didn't have the money right at that time to build housing for all those people. So for a
number of years they had to live in their teepees, but they saw to it that they got food and
rations of materials so they could make their clothing.
25
Chapter 8
Grandmother's Deep Sense of Religion
Derrick: Mary, you mentioned last evening that your great-grandmother had deep religious
feelings. Could you tell me about that?
ro
ix
LaCroix: My mother told me that my great-grandmother was very religious and saw to it
that the children (later on you know, my mother had three or four sisters and brothers, and
Great-Grandmother always lived with them) would say their prayers. She'd tell them "say
your prayers and you'll live a long life."
in
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Derrick: I've just finished reading Sneve's book relating to the establishment of the
Episcopal Church in South Dakota; in it she says at the time the missionaries came religion
permeated every aspect of the Dakotas' life:
It was impossible to differentiate between the social, economic, and
religious phases of the Dakota culture. Religion was inextricably interwoven
with every pattern of individual behavior. Thus, the Dakota held a special
reverence and respect for all religions. The early missionaries were
welcomed and their message reverently heard. It was only later when the
Indians saw that no all white men followed the doctrines of Christianity, that
the motives of the missionaries were questioned.
Can you tell me what you know about the early religious beliefs of the Dakota -- for
example, at the time that the Rev. Hinman arrived at the Lower Sioux Agency in 1860?
LaCroix: I don't know too much, only what my mother told me about her grandmother's
belief in prayer. I think the Indians were always religious minded because they worshipped
the Great Spirit.
Derrick: Do you know of any contradictions in beliefs that they held and what Christianity
brought to them?
is
to
ry
LaCroix: I really don't know. But my grandmother, too, was a religious woman as far as
she understood religion. During the time we lived with her, when she set the table for a
meal, she'd turn to plates bottom-side-up, and those plates weren't turned over until we had
said grace or asked a blessing.
O
ra
lh
Derrick: Mary, I was just going to go on to talk about the churches and schools that your
father built while at the Santee Reservation, and you remembered something else your
mother had told you about that time. Of course, your mother was only about three years old
when they moved to Santee.
LaCroix: Yes, but this was some years later. She grew up there, you know. This was when
she was old enough to remember -- of course by that time she had other sisters and brothers,
and my father used to make his rounds visiting the different families in their teepees. And
she said the minute he came to the teepee door, no matter how rowdy or noisy they had
been, they'd all quiet down and sit with their hands folded and never utter a sound all the
time he was there.
26
Derrick: Ah, yes! The minister came to visit! Did he think they were real good kids?
LaCroix: Well, he probably heard them before he got to the door.
Derrick: But he did have regular contact with the Indian families?
LaCroix: Yes, he would always go around to the teepees and visit with the people to see
how they were getting along.
ro
ix
Derrick: Earlier you mentioned that the government provided rations of material so that
Indians could make their clothing. Could you tell me about that?
in
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LaCroix: Yes, my mother told me about that. They were issued unbleached muslin to make
their underclothes and they made their underskirts from it, too. They made their outer
clothes from materials that were issued by the bolt, and they got blankets, too. My mother
told how she and her sisters made their underskirts out of the muslin, and one sister made
herself a skirt and was so proud of what she made that she hung it up in the teepee and told
everybody that came in that she had made herself an underskirt.
Derrick: What did your mother think of that?
LaCroix: I suppose she made one, too. This was a younger sister, so she thought she had
quite an accomplishment. Of course everything had to be sewed by hand.
Derrick: What kind of needles did they use?
LaCroix: I suppose they had regular sewing needles.
Derrick: I imagine you learned to sew very young?
O
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lh
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to
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LaCroix: Oh, my mother always sewed and made quilts, and I can remember as a
youngster sitting by her and trying to do the same thing. I still have two or three blocks that I
made when I first learned to sew.
27
Chapter 9
Hinman's Missionary Work at Niobrara
ro
ix
Derrick: Mary, when your father left Minnesota with the Santee Sioux, he left the
jurisdiction of Bishop Whipple and the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. The Dakota
Territory was at that time served by the Diocese of Nebraska under Bishop Robert Clarkson.
But that was a huge diocese, and your father was almost completely on his own at the
Santee Reservation, with only minimal supervision by Bishop Clarkson.21 Evidently after
leaving Minnesota, Hinman received no regular aid from the Episcopal Church itself. Sneve
says:
in
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So k
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Hinman lived among the Indians at Bazille Creek without any financial aid
from the Church Mission Board, and had to rely solely on voluntary gifts
from white persons in the East who felt kindly towards the Indians....About
1868 Hinman took a small group of Santee Indians East and persuaded a
group of white people in Philadelphia to form an association for the Santees’
relief. The association was made up of a large number of people from the
Society of Friends [Quakers].22
Sneve goes on to say that after the flood, a generous gift from a woman in New Bedford,
Massachusetts made possible the building of the Chapel of Our Most Merciful Savior in
1868. The new chapel was considered to be one of the most beautiful small church
buildings in the West.23
In an article on your father's ministry in the Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, the author writes:
lh
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Hinman's ministry began at a time when the Episcopal Church had no clearcut policy as to how to minister to the Indians. There had been isolated
instances of a successful ministry to the Indians, but where this was true, it
was largely due to the fact that the clergy had lived in the Indian culture
rather than apart from it. They identified with the Indian, learned the same
language that the Indian used, taught the people in their native tongue and
conducted worship in a language understood by the people. An outstanding
fact about Hinman's ministry was that he stayed with the Indians and did not
try to escape after a relatively short period of time.24
O
ra
And, Mary, your father really did stay with them, didn't he, from 1860 until his death in
1890. Although he was in various places, it was always working with the Sioux Indians.
LaCroix: Yes, it was.
Derrick: The article goes on to say:
21
Sneve, p. 20.
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
Wm. J. Barnds, “The Ministry of Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, Among the Sioux,”
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 38, pp. 394-395.
28
22
A number of leaders in Church and government appeared to have been
genuinely concerned about the welfare of the Indians, but they were puzzled
and did not know precisely what steps to take in an effort to better the
physical and spiritual conditions of the Indians. Under such conditions, and
in that rather ambiguous situation, Hinman, his wife and his co-workers
endeavored to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Sioux Indian.
La
C
ro
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Instead of discussing the Indian problem and doing nothing about it, Hinman
tried to do something pastorally for the Indian and left the theorizing to
others. Hinman was determined to live with the Sioux and become a part of
their way of life and the community rather than to render only a temporary
ministry to them. This was the key to his success.25
in
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Mary, we've just reviewed some historical comments about your father's ministry to the
Santee Sioux, but perhaps his own letters describe it best. The following letter to Bishop
Whipple, dated January 12, 1868, was written from the Santee Agency; he is speaking about
his Christmas services:
...our early morning service was attended by over 200 Indians and our
noonday service for holy communion was crowded to overflowing. I think a
hundred must have gone away, unable to get standing room. I had my choir
boys in surplices for the first time, and they did splendidly.
When we went into church in the morning singing Adeste Fideles, nearly the
whole congregation burst into tears. These poor people have never
conceived of such holy beauty.
to
ry
Our work is more interesting than ever. Congregations always large, and two
of three baptisms every Sunday. But, oh, are we solitary. We cannot bear this
work alone. The poor Indians come to us for everything. I do wish you
would write to the Domestic Board and urge them to adopt this work. I have
no influence and no time to beg. I cannot do it. I can work quietly and
happily. It is too much to ask the man to make the brick and also provide the
straw.26
lh
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Then we have another letter of February 29, 1868, and this again is to Bishop Whipple:
O
ra
The box of seeds you spoke of came last week and this week we are notified
of a box of clothing from some friends in Geneseo, New York. Our money
receipts this winter have amounted to nothing for our support. I appealed to
the Domestic Board. They are frightened and decline, or so Bishop Clarkson
writes. At last I have appealed over my own name because we must have
help. I do not like asking, but I find that nowadays a man must find his own
work and magnify it, otherwise it will fail.
25
26
Ibid.
Whipple Collection, Box 5, letter of February 29, 1868, to Whipple from Hinman.
29
You speak of my being watched with jealous eyes. God knows, no one has
cause to be jealous of me. My work or my position. It's all uphill and I am
almost lonesome this winter. Yet, I have no place to look to.
ro
ix
We begin to feel that we have our life work here and our brethren ought to
recognize the fact. First, that the work is not of our choosing, and second,
that we cannot leave it without a large congregation to go back into
heathenism.27
in
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Mary, your Dad talks about being lonesome in this letter. As I recall, during the time he was
at Crow Creek, his wife and children were back in Faribault. Then he moved them along
with Emily West to Sioux City, Iowa -- so at least they were closer. But according to the
biography that your brother Harry Hinman compiled, it wasn't until 1868 that he had
anything built so they could be moved to Santee.
We haven't talked about Emily West, Mary. Who was she?
LaCroix: Well, she was a missionary -- no relative of the family, but she had devoted her
life to missionary work and so was sent out to Minnesota. And she went to Santee with my
father's family and was a teacher.
Derrick: I think she had been a missionary with Breck up with the Chippewa Indians, and
then went with Breck down to Faribault. I believe at the time your father first went out to
Birch Coulee in 1860, that she went with him and was there at the time of the Uprising.28
LaCroix: I don't think she went with them when they made the first trip to Birch Coulee,
but she came out a little later after they were settled.
Derrick: She became pretty much a part of the Hinman family, didn't she?
LaCroix: Oh yes, she was very close to the family and everybody called her Auntie West.
O
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Derrick: Mary, it seems that a major key to your father's missionary success was his
establishing very early a Native Indian Ministry. This was probably his chief triumph in that
almost immediately he started to build an indigenous Dakota speaking clergy. Such a clergy
could perpetuate itself, maintain its own linguistic and cultural traditions, and this has
remained the strength of the Church in South Dakota through the present day.29 Barnds
writes that in 1869 the first Indian not speaking the English language to be ordained in the
ministry of the Episcopal Church was Hinman's protege, Paul Mazakute. Christian Taopi
and Philip Johnson were also ordained on that date, but they both spoke English.30
Thus Hinman had the assistance of three native clergy in the ministry to the 1500 Indians
27
Whipple Collection, Box 5, letter of January 12, 1868, to Whipple from Hinman.
Sheppard.
29
Rev. G. C. Tanner, History of the Diocese of Minnesota, 1857-1907 (St. Paul, 1909), p.
387.
30
Barnds, p. 397.
30
28
connected with his mission.31 The following letter written by your father in 1868 speaks
about the necessity for native clergy:
I never enjoy worship elsewhere as I do here at home. We have a choir of
twelve boys who chant very sweetly and the chapel rings. We are almost
surrounded by other tribes and all, with one exception, speak the Sioux in
some of its dialects. These are now asking for missionaries and teachers.
in
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C
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I have tried faithfully, but in vain, to get white fellow-laborers to go among
them, and now, at last, I am going back to the primitive, and I believe better
way of sending out native deacons and catechists. I have three of these
young men now. One I trust will be ordained this summer, and two others
are at the Missionary House at West Philadelphia.32
When Bishop Clarkson visited Santee in June, 1868, this is what he had to say about the
Mission:
I really think there is nothing in our day on this continent more interesting to
visit than this Santee Indian Mission. It is impossible for a Christian man to
spend a single day among the monuments and the results of this heroic
Christian effort without the profoundest emotions of gratitude and the
deepest feeling of wonder and of awe. Nearly all the oldest members of Mr.
Hinman's congregation have been confirmed and are communicants. Over
250 of a population of 1,000 souls. Mr. Hinman, with one Indian deacon and
two or three candidates for the ministry now at his side, can very readily
extend his operations almost indefinitely.33
Mary, in order for your father to single-handedly have done all the things he did, he must
have been able to speak the Dakota language fluently. We know that he had learned the
language while he was studying at Faribault, and when he went to Birch Coulee he
immediately started translating the Book of Common Prayer.34 What other things did he
translate?
O
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LaCroix: He translated the catechism and the Dakota Hymnal -- that is, he translated the
English hymns into the Dakota language for the hymnal. But he wasn't alone with this -- he
had several other people that worked with him, I think my father translated about 27 hymns
in the book.
Derrick: And that hymnal is still being used in South Dakota today...
LaCroix: Yes, they still use it wherever they have Dakota services. I understand that the
Episcopal Church just down the street from where I live uses it in their evening services.
31
Barnds, p. 395.
Whipple Collection, letter of 1868 [no month] to G. W. DuBois, Faribault, Minnesota,
from Hinman.
33
Barnds, p. 396.
34
Whipple Collection, Box 3, letter of October 31, 1861, to Whipple from Hinman.
31
32
Derrick: What else did your father translate?
LaCroix: The catechism, the Prayer Book, and as far as I know, I think he had something to
do with the translating of the Bible, too.
Derrick: You had an opportunity to see one of the original catechisms that your Dad
translated when you visited the Historical Society Library in St. Paul last fall.
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C
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LaCroix: Yea, I had a chance to examine this little catechism. It wasn't very large, but it
was pretty well worn -- the outside pages were even pasted together, so that shows how
much wear it had gotten through the years. And in the dedication, my father said, "This
translation is affectionately dedicated to my faithful catechists, Paul, David, Maggie, and
Madeline." I think Paul was Paul Mazakute; and Maggie, I think was Maggie Brass; and I
think Madeline was Madeline Campbell. David, I don't know who that could be.
Derrick: And what date was it written?
LaCroix: Faribault, Minnesota, 1864 was written on the book, and it said, "Translated for
the Mission of St. John."
Derrick: Of course you know, Mary, that the Mission of St. John the Evangelist was what
your father called the first Mission at Birch Coulee. And of course it was his and Bishop
Whipple's dream that the mission that had been destroyed in the Uprising would some day
live again. And, indeed, it did.
You found the translation of the Lord's Prayer in the Dakota catechism, too.
LaCroix: Yes, I copied it down while I was there.
Derrick: Would you read it for us, please.
[Tape three, side one: Mary LaCroix reads the Lord's Prayer in the Santee dialect of the
Dakota language].
is
to
ry
Thank you very much, Mary. Now I'm going to turn to a few pages of your father's journal
which was kept for the month of January, 1869. This journal was sent to the East and
published. It was then used to help in fund-raising for the Santee Mission. The whole month
is beautifully described, but I'll just read a few days:35
O
ra
lh
January 9, 1869. A chief called just at dusk to tell about the firewater that is
being brought in now that the river is frozen. The other day an Indian was
made drunk against his will and then his head was split open by the same
parties that furnished the whiskey. This traffic is carried on very slyly by
renegade whites and part Indians, and the end is always outrage and
suffering. We have comparatively little trouble here as yet, but the Indians
wonder if we have no laws against such inequity.
January 18, 1869. At work all day constructing chimney and fireplace in the
35
S. D. Hinman, Dakota Indians, to the friends of the Santee Indian Mission,
Philadelphia, The Indian’s Hope, 1869.
32
schoolroom. I find our Indians always ready and willing to work but they are
so unskilled and ignorant of proper ways and shapes that they need constant
supervision and help...[This was also quoted in Barnds's article. He added
that Hinman believed the Indians had the ability to become civilized if they
were properly motivated; he was not in accord with the government's
paternalistic philosophy.36]
ro
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Then on January 15, 1869, your father describes a grave being honored, and this is the way
it reads:
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The grave is honored by the Indians. It is an old Indian custom and we have
not forbidden it, for all nations are tenacious for their piety for the dead. It is
their custom to set aside at every meal a plate of food for the missing one.
This is placed in the center of the lodge or carried to the grave as the portion
of the first poor person coming by. It is a beautiful custom because it unites
tender memory of the dead, compassion and piety for the living.
I mention this now because I was much touched today by finding many little
graves strewn with cedar and the sugar plums and bonbons that the children
prized so much at our late festival [the Christmas festival] they had quietly
placed there as child's memories of little brothers and sisters no longer here
to share their joy. Harry said, "They love their little brother, that is the reason
they put them there, ain't it, Papa? And God loves them, too, don't he Papa?"
Evening prayer, chapel crowded, delightful service, Paul preached. I was
more struck than ever by the power of his preaching and appeal to his own
brethren after the flesh. It shows that a wonderful advantage the native has
over any foreign minister. We must have a native ministry. For a native
ministry sincere and earnest will give native strength.
Mary, this Indian custom that your father speaks about of setting aside a plate of food for
the missing one after someone has died -- were you familiar with that custom?
O
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LaCroix: Yes, as a child I can remember my grandmother doing these things, too. By
putting food on the graves, generally at Easter time they would go out to the cemetery and
hold services and then put food or whatever they happened to have -- fruit, just so it was
something edible -- they would put on the graves of their loved ones. And then people, of
course not members of the family, but from other families, could come and take this food
and take it home and eat it, or else they could have sort of a picnic there in the cemetery,
and they would all have prayers and eat the food in memory of the departed loved ones.
Derrick: Do you know of any similar ceremony that is still carried on today?
LaCroix: I really don't know because I've lived off the reservation for so many years that I
really don't know what goes on back there. But, I've been back there to visit my mother's
grave -- and my brothers are buried there, and of course my grandmother and great36
Barnds, p. 397.
33
grandmother's graves are there, too. I've been there two or three different times of the year
and we can always find remnants of homemade flowers that they have placed on the grave.
Derrick: Have you ever seen any remnants of food having been left there?
LaCroix: No. I imagine there was food there, but they would never leave it to go to waste.
Somebody would take it and eat it; but the flowers they leave on the grave until they just
blow away, or whatever happens to them.
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Derrick: Thank you for sharing that with us, Mary. Now let's talk more about the mission
churches and schools that your father started. We've already mentioned that the first church
that was built at Bazille Creek was flooded out. Then in 1867 a substantial church was built
with a gift from some person in the East. Also in 1868, a school was built at the cost of
$9,000, with an addition to be used as a hospital.37 Your brother Harry refers to the number
of churches and schools that your father built in the biography that he compiled. Can you
read that for us, Mary?
LaCroix: Yes, "In 1870-1872, Hinman established churches and schools at the different
Agencies, i.e., Santee, Yankton, Choteau Creek, White Swan, Botins, Lower Brule,
Cheyenne, Flandreau, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, etc."
Derrick: That was quite a goodly number and that was still during the years that he was not
getting help from the Episcopal Church Missionary Board. Do you know where the funding
came from?
LaCroix: I think the funding came from the government at this time, because these were all
built at Indian Agencies.
Derrick: Yes, and that was during Grant's administration when they were doing those
things.
ry
It seems that when things were going well for your father, then, boom, something else
happened. Can you read from your brother's biography about the tornado in 1870 that
destroyed the buildings?
lh
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LaCroix: "In 1869 and 1870, a second catastrophe overtook him. A cyclone destroying all
the new mission buildings...killing one mechanic and injuring several others including Mrs.
Hinman and baby Robert."
O
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Derrick: When Harry referred to "the cyclone having destroyed all the buildings, that was
the new schoolhouse, the hospital, and parsonage that had been rebuilt in 1867-1868, and of
course all records were destroyed again at that time.
By the time of the cyclone, Rev. Hinman and his wife, Mary Bury Hinman, had quite a
family, didn't they. Can you review for me, again, the number of children they had?
LaCroix: The first child was Mary Jewitt, born in 1861; then Henry Whipple, 1863;
Samuel Dutton Jr., 1865; Robert Hebert Clarkson, 1868; William Welsh, 1870; Thomas
37
Sneve, p. 20.
34
Bury, 1872; and Joseph Carrington, 1875.
Derrick: When his wife and son were injured in the tornado, that wasn't the end of your
father's problems, was it?
LaCroix: No, it wasn't.
Derrick: After that came the smallpox epidemic of 1873.
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LaCroix: Yes, my mother remembered that. She said that they moved out of the agency,
clear out in the country to get by themselves so they wouldn't catch it. A cousin of my
grandmother's was sort of a medicine man, and they all moved out there. The cousin built
what they call nowadays something similar to a steam bath. It was made out of bent sticks,
or trees, that he would bend together and then cover it over with blankets or something.
Then he would heat rocks and put them inside this little teepee affair and then pour water on
them to make steam. Mother said the children would all go inside the teepee and sit around
in a circle. This cousin would pour water on the rocks to form steam and they would all take
sweat baths. She said none of them ever caught the smallpox. They moved back to the
agency again after the epidemic had been controlled.
Derrick: I know your father was very much involved in the smallpox outbreak -- but we
will talk about that in just a few minutes. I want to get to this other subject first. What was
the next tragedy that befell your father? Would you read again from Harry's biography?
LaCroix: Yes, Father's first wife passed away. "On March 1, 1876, the most terrible blow
that cam come to a father and small children occurred in the death of his beloved wife at the
early age of 34 years, after a long illness occasioned by the shock and injuries received at
the time of the cyclone. She was laid to rest in the plot near the mission in which she had
labored so faithfully. A marble marker with the inscription testifying to the loving esteem in
which she was held placed there by the Indian women whom she had served for 16 years."
Derrick: Do you know anything about Mary Bury Hinman's illness? Did your mother tell
you anything about that?
is
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LaCroix: Yes, my mother told me that she had cancer of the throat and form some time
before she passed away she could hardly speak or even swallow food.
O
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Derrick: Your mother had been born in 1862, and the first Mrs. Hinman died in 1876. Your
mother would have been 14 years old at that time, so she certainly would have remembered
what was going on at the agency. How many years later was it that your father married your
mother?
LaCroix: Eight years later. He married my mother in 1884.
Derrick: All of these things were happening in the early part of the 1870s. We had talked
about how your father's ministry had flowered after he moved to Santee, but there were
many, many undercurrents at that very same time. Here's a little overview of what was
happening that's taken from Sneve's book:
In 1868, Grant placed the superintendency of Nebraska, Kansas and the
35
Indian territory of Oklahoma under the care of the Society of friends. He
appointed Jacob Cox, an Episcopalian as Secretary of the Interior. Up until
Cox's time, the Indian Bureau had been a nest of corruption.
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Congress established a Board of Indian Commissioners composed of
religious leaders and philanthropists. This Board of Indian Commissioners
appointed William Welsh of Philadelphia, businessman, philanthropist and
Episcopalian as its head. He was the only member of the nine-man board
who had experience with the Indians...
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William Welsh visited various reservations and was instrumental in having
the Episcopal Church establish the Indian Commission of the Domestic
Commission of the Board of Missions.38
Up until that time, as we talked earlier, there was no official channel for funds to come to
your father's Episcopal Missions -- so all of this work had been done by either his own
efforts or that of friends and private individuals. Is that your understanding, too, Mary?
LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: After the Episcopal Church became officially involved through its Indian
Commission of the Board of Missions in 1870, Sneve goes on to say that in 1873 the
jurisdiction of Niobrara was established by the church, and William Hobard Hare was
named its bishop. Up until that time what little supervision was given in this area was done
by Bishop Clarkson out of Nebraska. The area Hare was to oversee was bounded on the east
by the Missouri River; on the south by the state of Nebraska; on the west by the 104th
Meridian, the Territory of Wyoming, and Nebraska; on the north by the 46th degree of north
latitude; including also the several Indian reservations on the left bank of the Missouri,
north and east of said river. In addition, Hare had transferred to him the care of the Oneida
in Wisconsin, and the Santee in Nebraska.39
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Now, when the Missionary District of Niobrara was established, Mary, and Hare came out
as its first Bishop, he was a very, very different type of person than your father. Number
one, he was very much a low churchman. Your father, as we have mentioned before, was a
high churchman. It seemed from writings that Hare disapproved of a lot of ceremony. Sneve
says, "as far as vestments were concerned with his clergy in the area, black with the white
was all that was able to be worn, rather than the Episcopalian High Church vestments that
were various colors...."40
Hare's attitude toward what he wanted to accomplish with the Indians seemed to be very
different, too. In M. A. DeWolfe Howe's biography of William Hobart, Hare is quoted as
saying soon after his arrival:
I soon came to look upon everything as provisional which, if permanently
38
Sneve, pp. 4-6.
Sneve, pp. 6-7.
40
Sneve, p. 13.
39
36
maintained would tend to make Indian life something separate from the
common life of our country. A solid foreign mass, indigestible by our
common civilization. Ordinary laws must have their way...
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Our work is not that of building up a National Indian Church with a national
liturgy in the Indian tongue. It is rather that of resolving the Indian structure
and preparing its parts for being taken up into the great whole of church and
state."41
C
This, of course, was quite foreign to what your father had been trying to do with his native
ministry, Dakota language translations, etc.
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Mary, your father's life seems to have been a singularly important one; not only for his work
as minister to the Santee Sioux, but because he was at the forefront of so many historical
happenings. For example, as far as firsts for the Minnesota Episcopal Diocese are
concerned, he not only was the first Episcopal Missionary to the Sioux, but he and Rev.
George C. Tanner were the first candidates for holy orders in the Seabury Divinity School
which Dr. Breck had established at Faribault. Then in 1860, the two of them were Bishop
Whipple's first ordinands.42 Of course, we've already talked about his translation of the
Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and the catechism into the Dakota language, and the
work he did on translating the hymnal.
He established a strong native Indian ministry among the Sioux Indians. His ministry today
is still carried on among the 7500 Sioux Indians in the Dakotas and Minnesota who claim
membership in the Episcopal Church. This is by far the largest membership of any
Protestant Church among these Indians.43
Besides what he did as a clergyman, he did much for the United States government as
regards Indian affairs. In 1865 he journeyed to Washington and was instrumental in having
10,000 acres of land set apart in Minnesota for the friendly Sioux.44 Unfortunately, this
Congressional Act was not implemented until 1886 when he finally came back to Birch
Coulee at the beginning of the reconstruction there.45
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Your brother Harry's unpublished biography of your father lists the following activities: He
was appointed special Sioux Interpreter by the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1868. In
1873 he furnished Indian scouts to General Custer. Also in 1873 he was appointed member
of the commission in conjunction with Rev. John P. Williamson, and Dr. J. W. Daniels to
treat with the Indians regarding building of the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Valley
of the Yellowstone. In 1876 he was a confidential agent of the Commission of Indian
41
M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Life and Labors of Bishop Hare (New York, 1911), pp. 54-55.
Tanner, p. 42.
43
Sheppard.
44
Whipple Collection, Letterbox 4, letter of March 23, to Whipple in London from
Hinman.
45
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter of 1886 (no month or day) to Whipple from
Hinman.
37
42
Affairs, investigating disturbances among the wild tribes in faraway places all over the
Northwest. In 1880 he was appointed census enumerator for all the Sioux tribes. In 1885 he
was named interpreter for another Sioux Indian Commission. In 1882-85 he was engaged in
work for the Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of Ethnology dealing with Indian traditions,
folklore, and so forth.
C
LaCroix: It was from a blind Indian by the name of Samuel Hoffman.
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When we talk about dealing with Indian folklore, you showed me a manuscript the other
evening of your father's original work in translating Sioux fables for the Smithsonian
Institute. Do you know who told him these fables, Mary?
La
Derrick: Do you know how many stories there are in the manuscript?
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LaCroix: I really don't know, I haven't counted them. They are all handwritten in native
Sioux.
Derrick: It looked to be about fifty pages of handwriting.
In a tribute to your father after his death in 1890, Bishop Whipple writes: "Mr. Hinman was
strangely connected with all my trials of the early days of the Indian missions."46 Then he
goes on to talk about meeting Hinman after the Uprising when he [Whipple] was "sad and
weary at the destruction of this first Indian mission, and I asked, `what is to be done?' and
Hinman replied, `I shall go with my Indians even if I have to go to the Rocky Mountains."
And Whipple adds, "What could I say, but `go, and may God go with you'". Whipple goes
on to write:
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His life was singularly eventful. He escaped unscathed from the horrors of
the Lower Sioux uprising after tarrying almost too long on the scene to do
heroic duties to his neighbors. Delivered almost by a miracle when at Santee
Agency, Nebraska in a cyclone his church, parsonage, schoolhouse and
hospital were literally torn to pieces. Protected by an unseen hand when for
weeks he spent days and nights going to Indian houses and teepees to
minister to the sufferers with the smallpox, [This is why I didn't talk about
your father at the time we mentioned the smallpox epidemic, I preferred to
wait for this tribute.] and with his own hands, preparing the dead for burial
and laying them in the grave.
O
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...Good Thunder, the Christian chief who was the noblest of heroes, as the
world measures heroes, who had with others rescued captive whites and
been General Sibley's chief of scouts, had come back to his old home and
bought 80 acres of land. He came to see me, he said, `I am an old man and
cannot live without Teepee Wakon (church). I will give you my farm if you
will build me a church.' Of course I refused. Again and again he urged it and
46
“Bishop Whipple on the Death of Rev. Samuel D. Hinman, from the Minnesota
Missionary and Church Record of March, 1890.” Unpublished manuscript, copy in
possession of Mary Hinman LaCroix, Rapid City, South Dakota.
38
asked me to send his old pastor, Mr. Hinman, back to gather the scattered
Sioux Indians in Minnesota into a Christian congregation and settlement at
Birch Coulee.
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Their old pastor did come back, and there has been gathered at Birch Coulee
many of the Christian Indians. Last year Mr. Hinman brought the stone in
the church which he was building at the time of the outbreak from the old
site nearby and began a new one. Last week I spent a week at the mission
with Mrs. Whipple, and it was one of the pleasantest visits of our lives.
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The loving loyalty of the people to their pastor, the cheerful hopefulness and
faithfulness of the pastor, although very poor. Mr. Hinman lived to see a
neat parsonage built, a schoolhouse commenced, the church nearly
completed, and the Indians with title to their lands.
...[The tribute goes on a bit from that, and is signed, H. B. Whipple, Bishop of Minnesota.
Then a postscript has been added:]
Since I last wrote the above deserved tribute to the dear brother I loved so
well, I received this letter written only three days ago. Receiving it after his
death. It is so characteristic of the courageous and unselfish brother, I send
it.
[The letter from Hinman to Whipple is dated March 22, 1890:]
"My dear Bishop: I was taken with a severe attack of pneumonia night
before last. I am getting quite weak, but everything seems to be going well.
Will telegraph you if I get worse. I am so thankful for the good news from
Mrs. Whipple. The Indians have been here every day to ask after her since
you left. Mary joins me in my love."
[Whipple’s postscript continues:]
to
ry
Then the day before our dear brother died, he dictated the following letter
and signed it with his own hand.
is
[Hinman’s last letter to Whipple, dated March 23, 1890:]
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"My dear Bishop: The peace of God be with you and all your household. As
I have hitherto informed you, Mary and I were taken with a severe attack of
grip in the winter and the dear little baby was also taken sick which, of
course, made a great deal of extra care for all of us. Many of the Indians
have also been sick. Four or five a day came here to eat. This, too, made
more work.
"We have, however, been very careful of ourselves, scarcely going out at all.
Since Lent began, I have relaxed my carefulness somewhat, holding evening
services at the Indian houses. I suppose this may have made me thoughtless
and careless. Anyway, on Thursday evening, last, I stepped out of doors for
an armful of wood -- in my haste, I went without my rubbers. When I
39
returned, I was seized with a violent chill and very soon after with a high
fever. The chills making my bones like ice, and the fever making my flesh
like coals of fire.
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"Sometime in the night the cold went to my lungs. Then the doctor was
called Friday afternoon. He pronounced it a serious case of pneumonia,
stating that the left lung was already solidified. He refuses to give any
opinion of the case until the crisis is reached. He considers the chances of
life and death about equal with my age against me. We can only hope and
pray for the best and say, They will be done.
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"You will find my church papers all written out and vouchers for every
expenditure, however, small. Any matter that I think you may not understand
I will have William make notes of to be given you when you come home.
You have been more than a father to me and mine, and Mrs. Whipple more
than a mother. We can only thank you for it. With love to Mrs. Whipple and
Fanny, I am, Affectionate yours, S. D. Hinman."
[Whipple’s postscript ends:]
I did so dearly love him, but he is now at rest where no more troubles will
come.47
Mary, that is a beautiful tribute, and in the last sentence when Bishop Whipple says, "...he's
at rest where no more troubles can come", your father really did have troubles, didn't he?
LaCroix: Yes, according to some history -- this all happened before I was born, so I don't
know too much about it, but I've heard about it.
Derrick: All right, Mary, I'll tell you what I've been able to learn about it, but first let me
ask this question, has your father been given credit for all his work in the present day history
books?
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LaCroix: Well, it doesn't hardly seem so.
47
Ibid.
40
Chapter 10
The Clouds Gather, Bishop Hare's Arrival, Accusations & Trial.
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Derrick: Mary, this is the question that came into my mind when I started my class,
"Historian as Investigator" last spring. I knew I wanted to do some research on the Bishop
Whipple Mission -- I didn't know what; I had another idea when I started going through
Bishop Whipple's papers, and then I came onto letters from your father and I was fascinated
by them because they were so expressive. As I researched further, and from the information
that Rev. Sheppard, the present vicar at the Mission, had told me about Hinman's work, I
wondered, "Why isn't there more documented information about him?" The only reference
that is given at the Minnesota Historical Society, Archives and Manuscript Division, is the
one to the Bishop Whipple papers. There is one other reference to a sermon by one of the
Williamsons.
When I asked the librarians, they said, "Have your checked at the main library of the
Historical Society?" There were a number of references there giving names of publications
he had translated, but the only thing that I could find written about him was a reference to
his work at Birch Coulee in Tanner's History of the Episcopal Diocese covering the first
fifty years, and the Barnds' article of approximately 14 pages in the Historical Magazine of
the Protestant Episcopal Church. And then there was a reference of Hinman v. Hare, Trial
Transcript. It is a bound volume of 676 pages of a case on appeal to the New York Supreme
Court. The case was commenced on February 14, 1880, and the trial testimony was
concluded and the Judge's decree was dated April 14, 1882. This transcript really set me
looking -- I've been able to piece together an outline of what happened, but it's far from
being filled in. I hope to do further research. Certainly in talking with you these past few
days, I have ideas of where I could look for more data.
Now I'll read from the introduction of the paper on the life Rev. S. D. Hinman that I did for
my class in the spring of 1979. It is titled, "An Introduction to a Superb Ministry."
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The stained glass windows above the altar of the 88 year old Episcopal
Mission Church at the Lower Sioux Community at Birch Coulee, Minnesota
are inscribed: In Memory of Rev. S. D. Hinman. A small grave marker
bearing his name and the notation "Born Jan. 17, 1839, Died March 24,
1890" lies nearby. With the exception of a few cursory notations in history
books pertaining to the 1862 Sioux Indian Uprising, the stained glass
windows and grave are the only public reminders that Fr. Hinman lived...
The undercurrents of religious, economic and political turmoil which
surfaced during the last half of the 19th Century caught Hinman in the
undertow and thus far, these undercurrents of turmoil have succeeded in
keeping him from the historian's view.
For Hinman, this turmoil culminated in 1878 when his bishop, William H.
Hare of the Niobrara Missionary District of South Dakota and adjacent
Nebraska, refused to reappoint him as a presbyter to the Santee Sioux at
Niobrara, the ministry that Hinman had started 18 years earlier, and
41
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published scandalous accusations against him. These accusations asserted
that Hinman was a man of abandoned character.... Hinman attempted to
clear his name by suing the bishop for libel. The case was eventually brought
before the New York Supreme Court, where Hare was found guilty of
malice in causing these libelous accusations to be published. He was ordered
to pay Hinman $10,000 in damages plus court costs. However, the
viciousness of the charges, even though not a single accusation was ever
proved, plus the fact that they were brought by a bishop of the church seems
to have been enough to have robbed Hinman of his rightful place in
missionary history.
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And, Mary, when I wrote that last spring, I thought that was the end of the trial -- after all,
Hare had been found guilty of malice and ordered to pay $10,000 plus court costs. At that
point I didn't have time for further research. This was also the time, when by a happy
coincidence, I was put in touch with Marlan Gooderum, Morton and Minneapolis, who had
discovered books in his attic belonging to your father -- he then located you here in Rapid
City. How long ago was that?
LaCroix: I think it was five or six years ago.
Derrick: Gooderum shared the information with me and we corresponded, and he was
instrumental in having you come to the Bishop Whipple Mission early last October. From
there, you came into Minneapolis and St. Paul to visit friends.
LaCroix: Yes.
Derrick: That's when we visited the Historical Society and had the pleasure of meeting the
director, Russell Fridley. After that I applied for a grant to enable me to do more research
and do these oral history tapes with you. So, here we are in Rapid City. Since that time,
Mary, in preparing for this trip, I did go through the rest of Bishop Whipple's manuscripts
up to 1892, and I did discover more things.
O
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It was interesting to note that when these accusations were made against your father about
1877 and 1878, suddenly there were no more letters from him in the Whipple collection.
they started again in late 1885 and early 1886 when Bishop Whipple asked your father to
come back to the Lower Sioux Community. From the tone of the letters, it would seem that
they must have been in touch with each other through the previous eight years. Then as I got
further on, I found documentation that, indeed, Bishop Whipple had taken a very active part
in helping your father resolve his difficulties.
I found, also, that the litigation between your father and Bishop Hare had not been resolved
in 1882, but had gone on until the fall of 1887 -- a total of nine years from the time the
accusations were made. Bishop Hare had continued to refuse to write a letter dimissory that
would enable your father to transfer to another diocese and continue to function as a
minister. Hinman was kept on Hare's clergy list, in an inactive status, even though Hare had
forced him off the reservation. Thus your father was in limbo -- and it must have been
during those years that he worked for the government and the Smithsonian Institute.
42
LaCroix: Yes, he had to do something for a living.
We, whose names are herein under written, Chiefs, Counsellors and
Members of the Santee Tribe of Dakotas, respectfully represent:
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Derrick: Through this long period of time, the majority of the Santee Sioux Indians
staunchly supported your father. Following is an impassioned appeal by the Indian Chiefs to
the Board of Managers of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, that was incorporated into the Trial Testimony:48
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1. That at a council of the Mdewakantonwan and Wahpekute tribes (now
Santees), held at Lower Sioux Agency, Minnesota, in June 1860, at which
were present the Honorable Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the
Northern Superintendency, the United States agent and Bishop Whipple,
representing the Americans, the Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman was appointed
the missionary and teacher for our people.
2. And since that time, but especially during the years 1862-63 (the year of
the Minnesota outbreak), when no one befriended us; and afterward at Crow
Creek, Dakota Territory, when we were starving and no one helped us; and
in 1873, during the visitation of the small-pox, when all other white men
locked their houses and fled, this man, the Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, did
not desert us, but was truly and devotedly out friend. And he has never
counted his life or his substance dear if by any means he could accomplish
his wish to save us.
And if any one who saw us at Redwood, in Minnesota, in 1860, could again
visit us now, they would see what a salvation he has enabled us to
accomplish. And although the success of his work for souls is known
certainly to God alone, yet among ourselves, in the lives of Paul Mazakute,
Philip Johnson, Christian Taopi, Daniel Hemans, and of others till living, we
seem to see with our own eyes his good work.
O
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to
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3. He has also been of great service to the President of the United States, and
to the Honorable Commissioner of Indian Affairs among the Western tribes
of Dakotas. And at the time of the purchase of the Black Hills, when a long
and terrible war seemed inevitable, we think the preservation of peace
chiefly due to this man.
4. Although this man has been spoken against, we know of no evil deeds of
his, nor do we believe the reports; but his good and brave deeds of mercy
and love among the poor and sick, to widows and orphans, among the sinful
and miserable, these his numberless good works we do know and remember.
5. This man, our friend, was secretly and without a hearing, in March, 1878,
48
S. D. Hinman v. W. H. Hare (Trial transcript of Supreme Court, City and County of
New York (New York, 1883), pp. 69-71.
43
removed by the Bishop of Niobrara; and he told us he acted by the direction
of certain Bishops of the Board of Managers and of the Honorable
Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
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6. We have waited a long time for this matter to be investigated, and we
wish you to accord the Rev. S. D. Hinman a hearing, and for these reasons:
because we consider ourselves to be men, we desire thus publicly to declare
that we are greatly displeased at the treatment our minister last spring
received. And we ask you to replace him in his own home. After that, if any
one still desires to censure him, let him do it publicly in the presence of our
people. This man has a great and good name; he has also children; therefore,
it was not lawful to put him away secretly and without a hearing, but the
matter should be openly and justly settled.
7. We desire this letter to be sent to the Honorable Commission of Indian
Affairs at Washington and to their Secretary for the Board of Managers.
SANTEE AGENCY, Neb., Feb. 28th, 1879.
(signed)
Napoleon Wabashaw, Chief and Counsellor.
Wakule Redwing, Chief.
Waspuja Duta, Chief.
Hushasha, Chief.
Heliaka Maza, Chief.
Alf Good Thunder, Counsellor.
Philip Webster, Counsellor.
Marksza Washeun, Counsellor.
And 40 others in council assembled (publicly called).
ry
(Original MSS. sent to Washington)
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Derrick: I have pieced together the following information regarding the aftermath of the
New York trial in 1882. Bishop Hare's attorneys immediately appealed the judge's
decision.49 When that appeal was denied, they evidently went over the trial transcript with a
"fine-tooth comb" and were able to find four mechanical errors that had taken place during
the six-week jury trial, and a mistrial was declared on that basis.50 [More research is needed
at this point.] In 1886 and 1887 there is considerable correspondence in the Whipple
collection pertaining to the case. This letter of February 21, 1887 from Haley Fiske, of the
Arnoux, Ritch and Woodford Law Firm, New York, to Bishop Whipple, indicates the
seriousness of the situation:51
49
Ibid., pp. 674-675.
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter of January 28, 1887, to Whipple from Wm. H.
Arnoux, New York, New York.
51
Whipple Collection, Box 19, letter of February 21, 1887, to Whipple from Haley Fiske,
44
50
Rt. Rev. and Dear Sir:
I have to thank you for your letter of the 14th, received on Saturday, and for
the information contained in it. This will be very useful to me. I think Mr.
Hinman should ask for a transfer at once, if that is necessary. But in any
event, that the certificate sent you by Bishop Hare should be accepted if
nothing better could be had.
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The change of status from a priest under indefinite but practical suspension
to one in regular standing is so great and so important to Mr. Hinman that I
should not stickle for exactness in form. The church at large will sustain him
and you in accepting what has been sent. I am in the midst of negotiations
with Mr. Nash [Bishop Hare's attorney] and am very hopeful for a speedy
settlement.
I do not, of course, share your views concerning Bishop Hare's honesty of
purpose. Six years study of his conduct and character has led me to a
different conclusion. But Bishop Hare and his counsel both see that we are
pretty certain to succeed in the second trial and that the Court of Appeals has
disturbed neither the facts nor the law of the case. Besides which, I think Mr.
Nash honestly desires to avoid further scandal to the church.
So I say I am hopeful of a settlement by which the bishop will accept the
verdict of the jury on the first trial as a finding of Mr. Hinman's innocence
and will consent to abide by it, whether he agrees with it or not. I shall make
an honest effort to settle the controversy. We all feel confident of a large
verdict on a second trial, but I feel it would be better for Mr. Hinman to get
rid of controversy and back into church work at once if he can get a
substantial vindication by settlement. We shall know very soon whether we
can settle or must go on; and meanwhile, I know I may ask you to keep the
whole affair confidential. Very respectfully and truly, Haley Fiske.
O
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Mary, the question that comes to my mind about the period from 1878 when your father
was forced to leave the Santee Reservation, until he returned to Minnesota in 1886 is,
"Where were your brothers living?" Of the five of them that were still with the family,
Harry, the oldest, would have been about 15; tom, the youngest, would have been six. Do
you know anything abut their whereabouts during that time?
LaCroix: I really don't know. My mother was only 14 years old at the time my father's first
wife died, and she never mentioned what happened to the Hinman family.
Derrick: From reading through the trial testimony, it would seem that harry was probably
away at school. I believe the rest of them were living at the Mission at Santee, along with
Auntie West,52 until the time that your father was expelled from the area.53 Would that have
New York, New York.
52
Hinman v. Hare, p. 88.
45
been the time Auntie West moved to her homestead?
LaCroix: It could have been. My mother talked about them having been at the homestead
of Auntie West the first year after she and my father were married, and the boys were there,
too.
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Derrick: From the trial transcript it would indicate that Auntie West was still very much a
part of your father's household at the time the trouble erupted with Bishop Hare.54 Auntie
West would have been approximately sixty-nine years old at that time -- she was quite an
elderly lady to be starting a homestead, wasn't she?
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LaCroix: Yes, I guess she was.
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Derrick: You really don't know much about those years, do you, Mary?
LaCroix: No, I don't.
Derrick: During later years, did your brothers ever mention anything to you about that
period of time -- where they lived, etc.?
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LaCroix: Not too much that I recall.
53
54
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid., p. 593.
46
Chapter 11
Reconstruction at Birch Coulee (Redwood County, MN)
Derrick: Mary, let's go on to happier times. When your father's letters appeared again in
Bishop Whipple's manuscripts, the first one was dated December 8, 1885, and had been
referred to the Office of Indian Affairs, date-marked 1886:55
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My dear Bishop: You will recall that in the winter of '63/'64 I think, one of
the Indian bills, or bill, concerning the removal of the Sioux and
Winnebagos from Minnesota provided that certain Sioux Indians who
remained friendly to and assisted the whites during the outbreak of the War
of '62/'63 should be entitled to locate and have title to the land on the late
Mdewakantonwan and Wahpekute reserve in Minnesota, not to exceed 80
acres for each family.
The Secretary of the Interior, at our request, withdrew from sale by
Executive Order, 10,000 acres for this purpose and located it at and near the
old Lower Sioux Agency. General Pope refused to let these Indians locate
there, but General Grant over-ruled Pope and ordered Sibley to allow the
settlement to be made as we had attempted.
This was, however, prevented by the feeling at New Ulm and on the border
generally, consequent upon a recent cold-blooded murder by the renegade
Indians near Mankato. This 10,000 acres was held withdrawn for some
years, but finally restored for sale. Now it is to replace this land and provide
homes for these Indians which they lost formerly, through no fault of their
own, that this money is now appropriated, and it ought not to be otherwise
expended. No doubt Major Larrabee can help you in this matter, if he will,
by writing to the Acting Commissioner or Chief Clerk of Indian Affairs at
Washington.
O
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It seems important that I should be at Redwood now while the Indians are
discussing this land questions and making their desired location; not only to
advise them where they need advice, but also to see where, in reference to
their location, the mission had best be placed, how much land we need, and
how it can be had. In fact, to advise you who cannot be there, on all these
matters.
It is a crisis for all the Minnesota Sioux, and unless wisely directed, will end
unfortunately for them. If I worry you about all this business in addition to
what you already bear, it is only because I am so vitally interested that I
cannot endure the idea of failure after the unusual generosity of Congress.
With love ever aft, S. D. Hinman.
There is no mailing notation as to place on that letter, Mary, so we still don't know where
your father was living at that time. And the next letter from him was dated October 15,
55
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Whipple from Hinman, December 8, 1885.
47
1886. However, there is a letter in the Whipple Manuscripts dated December 8, 1885 that is
addressed to Whipple, from a firm of land attorneys at Redwood Falls which advises
Whipple, in response to his request, that:
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...there are 16 tipis and 54 Indians at the Lower Sioux. Services are held at
GoodThunder's and Sam Johnson's tipis. The Indians are alright and are all
trapping when weather permits, but the price of rats [muskrats] is very
low.56
So some of the Santee Indians had returned to the Lower Sioux area by that time.
La
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Your father's letter of October 15, 1886 is written from Birch Coulee. In it he states:
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Your last received, thanks. We are already at work, everything reasonable.
Carpenters, $1.50 per day and board.57
Then on October 21, 1886 there is this copy of a letter from Bishop Whipple, to Bishop
Hare:58
Dear Brother:
I have in my Diocese a large number of Sioux who are in great need of a
teacher. I can give Mr. Hinman work with them unless there are reasons,
you, as his diocesan, should object.
As he stands on your clergy list as one in regular standing, and as you cannot
employ him, it may be a relief to you and the church for me to employ him
as a teacher. He is out of employment and in great need.
Assuring you, my dear brother, of my love and that I can do nothing without
your consent, I am, your friend and brother, (signed) H. B. Whipple.
Evidently, Mary, Bishop Hare could not object to your father's being employed at Birch
Coulee as a teacher, for the following undated letter is in the same box in the Whipple
Collection. Again, it's from your father to Bishop Whipple:59
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My dear Bishop: Yours of the 25th with draft for $100 received. Thanks.
...The days spent here, have been so far, among the happiest of my life. It is
pleasant to be once more among friends whose love and respect is shown in
every possible way....Ever aft, S. D. Hinman (signed)
56
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Whipple from George C. Westman, Dunnington
and Warner Land Attorneys, Redwood Falls, Minnesota, December 8, 1885.
57
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Whipple from Hinman, Birch Coulee, Minnesota,
October 15, 1886.
58
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Hare from Whipple (marked copy), October 21,
1886.
59
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Whipple from Hinman (undated).
48
Again on December 13, 1886, your father wrote Bishop Whipple:60
...I find it impossible to express myself in words when I think and realize
your great kindness to me. It is like the love of God. I only hope and pray
that I may be found worthy of such love.
C
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The Indians are more than kind in every way and gave me $25 in money
besides new comforts, and quilts and feather pillows and a bed towards
furnishing the house. I bought a second-hand cookstove for $14, and Mr.
Weatherston has loaned us a large box stove for the large room. We only
need one more.
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I bought four kitchen chairs and a table here, and in St. Paul some dishes.
My Myrick has promised to furnish mary's room, and if he does not fail me,
we shall be very comfortable, except for bedding and a few odds and ends.
Although your father was happily employed in rebuilding a mission house at Birch Coulee,
and helping the Indians in what ever way possible, the litigation with Bishop Hare still went
on. I know this is a painful subject for you so I will not go into detail regarding the
correspondence throughout the following year. Finally, on November 18, 1887, The St. Paul
Pioneer Press ran the following article:61
[NOTE: The events leading up to and including this article were not included on the tapes
out of deference to Mary LaCroix's sensitivity to the subject. The article is added here for
clarification.]
to
ry
The old suit of Rev. S. D. Hinman against Bishop Hare of Dakota has been
discontinued by consent of all parties....A settlement was brought about by
other bishops as the friends of both parties, and a sum of money was raised
by them to defray in part Mr. Hinman's legal expenses. In the statements
which were presented to the courts, Bishop Hare says that while the acts
imputed to Hinman were not established at the first trial, he fully believed
them at the time. He regrets now that he made the statements, and in proof
of it has written the following letter to the Bishop of Minnesota:
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"I hereby certify that the Rev. Samuel D. Hinman who has certified to me
his desire to be transferred to the ecclesiastical authority of Minnesota, is a
presbyter of Southern Dakota in good standing...."
At last, Mary, after nine years, your father was able to again function in his capacity as a
priest of the Episcopal Church in his work with the Lower Sioux Indians.
Mary, let's go back to your father's letter of December 13, 1886. In it he says, "Mr. Myrick
has promised to furnish Mary's room, and if he does not fail me, we shall be very
comfortable...." I don't believe we mentioned earlier that you told me your grandfather,
Andrew Myrick, had at least one brother, or more, at the trading post at the Lower Sioux
60
61
Whipple Collection, Box 18, letter to Whipple from Hinman, December 13, 1886.
“It is Discontinued,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, November 18, 1887, p. 4.
49
Agency.
LaCroix: He had one brother that I know of that my mother mentioned. Nathan Myrick.
Derrick: And where was he at the time of the Uprising?
LaCroix: He was in St. Paul.
Derrick: Do you suppose this reference was to Nathan, or perhaps his son?
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LaCroix: Nathan Myrick? Yes, he was my mother's uncle, you see. I'm sure it was him.
C
Derrick: Did you ever visit him as a child?
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LaCroix: Yes, when I was in St. Paul with my Aunt Sarah that time. My mother came after
me and on the way home we stopped there and visited with him. I can just barely remember
being in the house. Those Myricks had two daughters, too, that I can recall.
50
Chapter 12
The Bishop Whipple Mission after 1890.
Derrick: These next articles that I'd like to mention are things that have been written about
the Bishop Whipple Mission. In the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Sunday, June 24, 1981, there
was an article entitled, "Last of the Tribe -- Minnesota Sioux on the Reservation at Birch
Coulee," which reads:62
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There are 24 families on the Reservation and the whole number of persons is
61 in this Christian community. A neat stone church was completed about
four years since and cost complete over $3,000. Mr. GoodThunder donated
the site of the church and the cemetery -- a plot of about four acres in extent.
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The church building is neatly furnished and has an organ, chairs for the
congregation, memorial windows, etc....The school house on the reservation
was built by the government under the superintendence of Major Henton in
1890. Its cost, furnished, was less than $2,000....
I'm sure that your father had much to do with building of the schoolhouse, because there are
documents in his handwriting, and sales slips showing the cost of lumber, etc., which are
signed by him in the Whipple Collection.63 The same article goes on to say:
...there are more than 20 scholars on Mr. Hinman's roll [This refers to your
brother, Rob, who was the teacher at the time the article was written], but
since the lace school started, nearly all the girls have been withdrawn. One
of the boys put the situation in this light: "Used to be a lot of scholars, but
them lace ladies came and mighty nigh busted up the school -- nothin' but
boys come now, and 'tain't much good when the girls don't come."
Mary, do you know anything about the lace school that was started at Birch Coulee? I found
an undated article referring to it in the Whipple Collection. I believe it was written about
1910.64 Do you remember anything about that school?
ry
LaCroix: Well,, when I was there it was 1903 or '04. They were making the lace then,
because I used to watch the Indian women making this lace.
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Derrick: Can you describe how that was done?
O
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LaCroix: Well, they had a square pillow -- most of the lace at that time as I can remember
was made in squares. They had a pillow to which they pinned their stamped pattern. They
used bobbins to weave back and forth to follow the pattern -- that's what they call bobbin
lace.
Derrick: The article is called "The Birch Coulee Indian Mission and Queen Alexandra's
Lace."
62
Whipple Collection, Box 35, “Last of the Tribe,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 24, 1981.
Whipple Collection, Boxes 18 and 19.
64
Whipple Collection, Box 1-F2, “The Birch Coulee Indian Mission and Queen
Alexandra’s Lace.”
51
63
...my recent visit was particularly interesting for I was just in time to see the
beautiful piece of lace which has been made for Queen Alexandra of
England....The figures of canoes, tipis, birds, and squaws with papooses on
their back are interwoven in the scroll pattern and were designed by the
skillful wife of the Rev. Henry St. Claire, Indian priest in charge of the pretty
stone church. Mrs. St. Claire is Miss Salisbury's interpreter and assistant.
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...Some of the first lace which was made, Bishop Whipple presented to
Queen Victoria when on a visit to Windsor castle....
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Miss Salisbury, Bishop Whipple's niece, who has charge of the mission
firmly believes in that virtue which is next to Godliness, and not only the
lace room, but the mission house from cellar to the attic is kept as fresh as a
May morning. The effect of this is contagious as I discovered on my round
of visits to the Indian houses....
The second day a feast was given under the trees back of the church and the
long tables were filled and refilled by the men and women while the children
sat on the grass and patiently awaited their turn. It was a picturesque scene.
The Rev. Henry St. Claire sat at the opposite end of the main table; at my
right was seated Mrs. GoodThunder, the aged widow of the fine old
Christian hero, Andrew GoodThunder, warden of the church who died
several years ago. It was this woman who, at the time of the Indian outbreak
in 1862 seized the bible from the church and buried it, sending word to
Bishop Whipple that she had saved the "Great Spirit's book," she thought it
was the only one in existence. Then she said that she would return it to him
as soon as it was safe to do so....
At my left sat Timaza, whose presence is always a benediction for her life
has been true and faithful. Timaza is the mother of the Rev. George Whipple
St. Claire....
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Mary, Rev. George Whipple St. Claire, the father of Rev. Henry St. Claire, first ordained
Indian priest at the Bishop Whipple Mission, was a deacon. I'm trying to get a time frame
here, and it would seem that George St. Claire probably would have been tutored by your
father when he returned to Birch Coulee. Can you tell me anything about your own
remembrances of visiting the Bishop Whipple Mission?
LaCroix: Well, that's where I was born in 1889, and of course at that time the church was
being built and the services had to be held at the house where my parents lived. My mother
told me that Bishop Whipple baptized me when I was two weeks old. Then later on when I
went back to visit with my brother, Rob, when I was 13, I was confirmed in the church. Of
course, in the meantime the church had been finished.
Derrick: Did Bishop Whipple confirm you?
LaCroix: No, Bishop Whipple was dead by then.
52
Derrick: Was it Bishop Edsell, do you know?
LaCroix: I just don't recall the name, but whomever was bishop at the time. I was
confirmed at that church.
Derrick: Are there any other names of people that you remember? Did you know any of the
St. Claires or GoodThunders? Andrew GoodThunder, of course, was the man that donated
the land to the church.
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LaCroix: I met his wife, Mrs. GoodThunder when I was visiting my brother Rob. I used to
see her in church. She was quite old, and I can remember her. While Mr. St. Claire was
preaching his sermon -- I can't recall the exact words she'd say, but anything that came too
her mind during the sermon, she'd say it right out loud. Just some little remark, you know.
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Derrick: There are GoodThunders still living at the Lower Sioux Community today.
LaCroix: Yes, and I have met the present Mrs. GoodThunder, Mrs. Charles GoodThunder.
She is the daughter of George St. Claire, son of the Rev. Henry St. Claire. She works at the
Lower Sioux Interpretative Center.
Derrick: So, members of the family of the man that came to Bishop Whipple in 1860 and
asked for a missionary, and again came back to the locality in the early 1880s and were
instrumental in having the church built by providing the land, are still very much a part of
the community today.
Do you have anything else that you can add to our interviews, Mary?
LaCroix: Not right now, but maybe after we're through, I'll think of a lot of things I should
have said.
is
to
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Derrick: I'm sure you will, and I'm looking at the clock, too, as I've got a cab ordered to
take me to the airport for my flight back to St. Paul. I know you have said that you'd like to
have copies of all the information that I brought with me, and I told you, "No, you wouldn't
want it in the condition it's in right now." But, some day when it's sorted out, we'll go
through it and I'll be happy to give you copies of anything you'd like. Mary, I want to thank
you for all that you have shown me here. It's been a very pleasant visit. You're a delightful
person.
O
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LaCroix: Well, it's been most interesting to me, too, because it concerns my father [at this
point Mary's voice broke and she was almost in tears].
Derrick: When we were talking about the lace school, I couldn't help but think that the
designs that your daughter, Margaret Hoggatt, has drawn in her sketchbook, Paint Yourself
a Rainbow, are quite similar to ones that we were talking about being used at the lace
school. Margaret is an artist and has just finished designing something to be used in your
son Art's house, is that right?
LaCroix: Yes, Art's house has such large windows that when they built it, he made his own
shutters for the windows -- they are wooden shutters - and he's planning on carving some
design on them. He has already made shutters for his den on which he has done carvings.
53
Derrick: He’s quite a carver, isn't he?
LaCroix: Oh yes, he's been mentioned in the National Geographic Magazine.
Derrick: You certainly have some talented children. I think that cab is about due. Thank
you so much, Mary, the interviews have been a real pleasure.
LaCroix: Well, you're welcome to what little information I've been able to give you.
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Derrick: You've given me an awfully lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again.
54
Bibliography
The following alphabetical listing is of references researched. Where publishing
information was not available, I have listed the catalog numbers at the Minnesota Historical
Society Library, St. Paul, Minnesota.
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Barnds., Wm. J., "The Ministry of the Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, Among the Sioux,"
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 38, No. 4.
Blegen, Theodore C., Building Minnesota, Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1938.
La
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Bryant, Charles S., 1808-1885, History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians in
Minnesota, *E83.86, .B91, 1864b
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Carley, Kenneth, The Sioux Uprising of 1862, 2nd Ed., St. Paul: MN Historical Society,
1976.
Heard, Isaac V. D., History of the Sioux War & Massacre *E83.86, .H43, 1864
Hinman, S. D. vs. Hare, W. H., (Trial transcript of Supreme Court, City and County of New
York). Mn. State Historical Society, Library Reference, Call No: 5995 .H27H6.
Hinman, S. D. Protestant Episcopal Book of Common Prayer in Santee Dialect, Tr. 1865,
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