Guide to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Dakota Mission Collection

Presbyterian mission work to Indigenous peoples of the northern Great Plains (chiefly the Dakota and Lakota peoples; historically called “Sioux” by settler colonists) began in 1835 under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), an inter-denominational missionary society, and its Dakota (also spelled as Dakotah and Dacotah) Mission. The Dakota Mission covered a wide geographical area, chiefly present-day Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Mission work to the Great Plains peoples included organizing Indigenous congregations and presbyteries and establishing American Indian/Native American boarding schools and vocational training institutes. New School Presbyterians and Congregationalists assisted with staffing and funding as the ABCFM pursued this mission work. The ABCFM gradually reduced its domestic mission work during the period from 1837 to 1869 and transferred a portion of its mission work with the Great Plains peoples to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) around 1870. The ABCFM sought to focus its resources on foreign mission work instead, but the reunion of Old and New School Presbyterians in 1870 also played a role in the transfer. In 1893, responsibility for the Dakota Mission portion was transferred from the BFM to the Board of Home Missions (BHM; called the Board of National Missions (BNM) after 1923). The remaining resources of the ABCFM's work among the Great Plains peoples were transferred to the American Missionary Association in 1883. Towards the latter half of the nineteenth century especially, American Indian/Indigenous peoples of the northern Great Plains faced and navigated Christian denominations and the United States government’s intensifying efforts to enforce cultural assimilation and conversion.

Early missionaries associated with the Dakota Mission were Reverend Thomas S. (Smith) Williamson, his wife Margaret Poage Williamson, her sister Sarah Poage, Jane Williamson, and Reverend Alexander G. Huggins, who all arrived at Fort Snelling (at that time part of the Territory of Michigan) in 1835. Other early missionaries included Reverend J. D. (Jedediah Dwight) Stevens, his wife Julia Sarah Stevens, Reverend Gideon H. Pond, Reverend Samuel W. Pond, Reverend Stephen R. Riggs, and his wife Mary Riggs. The Church at St. Peters was established as a white congregation on June 11, 1835 at Fort Snelling. The Pond brothers had established a mission station at Lake Calhoun (now named Bde Maka Ska in present-day Minnesota) around 1834, while J. D. Stevens established a mission station at Lake Harriet. Thomas S. Williamson established a mission station at Lac qui Parle in 1835 and the first Presbyterian Indigenous church at Lac qui Parle in 1836. The Riggses joined the Lac qui Parle mission in 1837. The Lac qui Parle mission was organized in the area of the Wahpeton band of the Dakota tribe and included a school.¹ Stephen R. Riggs established a mission station at Traverse des Sioux in 1843. Missionaries did not see much progress, in terms of numbers of converts, in their early attempts to convert and culturally assimilate Indigenous peoples of the region.²

When the Treaty of 1837 ceded land from the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples in northern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota, white immigration into tribal areas commenced, and more churches were organized to support the influx of settler colonists. By the end of 1853, the following Presbyterian churches were reported from the roll of the Presbytery of Minnesota (New School): Saint Paul, Stillwater, La Crosse, Oak Grove, Kaposia, and Minneapolis.^{3 4}

Thomas S. Williamson was stationed among the Sisseton and Wahpeton at the Pajutazee Mission near the Yellow Medicine Agency (Office of Indian Affairs) at the start of the United States-Dakota War of 1862. U.S. federal forces defeated the Dakota on September 23, 1862.⁵ Hostilities involved only a portion of the Dakota Santee people–mostly the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute. Nevertheless, white settler colonists demanded vengeance against all the Dakota peoples. Those who did not escape to the northeastern plains were imprisoned in Mankato, Minnesota and later transferred by steamboat to Camp McClellan (renamed Camp Kearney in 1863).⁶ Three hundred and three Dakota men were sentenced to death by hanging for their participation in the war, although that number was reduced to thirty-nine by President Abraham Lincoln. Families of prisoners—mainly women, children, and the elderly—were also confined under guard in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. In 1863, Dakota families held at Fort Snelling were forcibly relocated to Crow Creek Reservation in Dakota Territory (present-day South Dakota).

Thomas S. Williamson and Stephen R. Riggs fled their mission stations to escape the U.S./Dakota War and later reorganized their missionary activity (along with Gideon Pond) to convert Dakota prisoners and their families at Mankato, Fort Snelling, and Camp McClellan to Christianity. Williamson and Riggs transcribed Dakota oral language into written form and produced translations of the Bible and other religious literature in the Dakota language.⁷

During the mid-nineteenth century, Presbyterian governing bodies organized in the northern Great Plains region. In 1844 the Presbytery of Dakota was organized as an independent ecclesiastical body not connected to any other Presbyterian organization.⁸ In 1868, a portion of the Presbytery split off to become the Presbytery of Mankato, and the remainder was transferred to the PCUSA (Old School). The Old School and New School synods merged into one at the time of the union of 1870. At this time the Presbytery of Dakota reported seven churches with 628 members. In the 1880s, the presbytery reorganized as an Indigenous presbytery, independent of geographic boundaries. In 1885, John Poage Williamson, son of Thomas S. Williamson, reported to the Home Board that the Indian Presbytery of Dakota had eleven churches and 700 members, and that nine out of twelve ministers were Indigenous.

Following the ABCFM’s transfer of part of its Dakota Mission work to the PCUSA BFM in 1870, Thomas S. Williamson and John Poage Williamson opened two new churches, one at Flandreau, South Dakota and one at Greenwood, South Dakota. Williamson Owancamaza Rogers, a Dakota man, was pastor of the Greenwood Church. Rogers was previously imprisoned during the U.S./Dakota War of 1862 and converted during imprisonment. The Flandreau congregation was made up of Santee tribe members who had moved from the Nebraska Territory. John Eastman, a Santee man, was installed as pastor at Flandreau in 1877.

The Good Will (Goodwill) Mission was established by Reverend Stephen R. Riggs in 1870 under the auspices of the Dry Wood Church in South Dakota (within the Sisseton Agency). The mission expanded to include the Good Will Training School, an industrial and training school for Dakota boys and girls in 1882. A theological department was organized at the school in 1904 to train Indigenous students as missionaries. Good Will Press, a printing department, opened in 1905. The press published the student newspaper “The Good Will Tidings” in both English and Dakota languages.

The Santee Normal Training School (Santee Sioux Reservation, Nebraska) was founded in 1870 by Reverend Alfred Longley Riggs, son of missionaries Reverend Stephen R. Riggs and Mary Riggs. The school was established to train Indigenous teachers and was notable for educating students in their native Dakota language before introducing reading and writing in English. Although a majority of enrolled students were local to the area, some also traveled from other Sioux communities in Flandreau, the Cheyenne River Agency, and the Yankton Agency. In 1893, the school’s government contract was terminated, and the American Missionary Association (General Council of the Congregational and Christian Churches of the United States) operated the school until its closure in 1937. The use of the Dakota language in education was a factor in the federal government withdrawing financial support.

In 1871, the monthly newspaper “Iapi Oaye,” or “The Word Carrier,” was issued by the Dakota Mission in cooperation with the ABCFM and PCUSA BFM. The newspaper was published almost exclusively in the Santee dialect of Dakota, with some English language content added for white settler colonists living near the Dakota Mission. After 1877, the publication was edited by Alfred L. Riggs and printed on the Santee Normal Training School printing press in Santee, Nebraska. In 1884, the paper split into Dakota language and English language editions, and “The Word Carrier” shifted its focus to the Santee Normal Training School, and other “schools and missions among the Indians.” In 1903, the publication was renamed “The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School.” It ceased publication sometime in the 1930s, while the “Iapi Oaye” ceased in 1939.

Presbyterian mission work also extended to Montana. Jennie B. Dickson and Charlotte C. McCreight opened a school at Poplar Creek, Montana, in 1880, and in 1886 they moved on to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to start another one. A further mission station opened at Wolf Point, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, in 1885. Reverend Richard King and his wife, Cynthia D. King, began work on the mission in 1893, after it was transferred to the PCUSA BHM. In 1895, the Wolf Point Indian Training School was formed and enrolled Indigenous students from the Yankton and Assiniboine tribes.

Bibliography/Works Cited

1. Uchida, Ayako. "The Protestant Mission and Native American Response: The Case of the Dakota Mission, 1835-1862." "The Japanese Journal of American Studies." No. 10. Page 156. 1999.

2. Graber, Jennifer. "Mighty Upheaval on the Minnesota Frontier: Violence, War, and Death in Dakota and Missionary Christianity." "Church History." Vol. 80, No. 1. Page 85. 2011.

3. Edwards, Maurice Dwight. "History of the Synod of Minnesota, Presbyterian Church U.S.A." (Place of publication not identified : Synod of Minnesota, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., 1927). Pages 11 and 31. Call number: BX 8957 .M6 E3 1927. Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS).

4. "Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New School)." (New York : Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, 1853). Page 441. Call number: BX 8951.A3 N.S. 1852-1856. PHS.

5. Murphy, Justin D., editor. "American Indian Wars: The Essential Reference Guide." (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2022).

6. Canku, Clifford and Simon, Michael. "The Dakota Prisoner of War Letters = Dakota Kaŝkapi Okicize Wowapi." (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2013). Call number: FOLIO E 83.86 .C36 2013. PHS.

7. Clemmons, Linda M. “‘We Are Writing This Letter Seeking Your Help’: Dakotas, ABCFM Missionaries, and Their Uses of Literacy, 1863–1866.” "Western Historical Quarterly." Vol. 47, No. 2. Pages 183-209. 2016.

8. "The First 50 Years: Dakota Presbytery to 1890. With, Dakota Mission Past and Present, A.D. 1886." (Freeman, South Dakota: Pine Hill Press, [1984?]). Call number: BX 8958 .D13 F57 1984. PHS.