Last
week I talked about a few of the pioneer women I’ve “met” who encourage me when
I feel discouraged. This week I thought
I’d share a little more about one of those women and how her story ended up in
one of my stories. Her name was Mary Longley Riggs. I “met” her one day when I
was browsing biographies at the library. An old book drew my attention, “oldstufflover”
that I am. The title gave me goosebumps. I’d been researching the Dakota War of
1862, but I’d finished for the day, browsing and creating an ever more
impossible “I want to read this someday” list. (Do you have one of those? I bet
we all do.)

What
made me admire Mrs. Riggs more than anything was the fact that she willingly
stepped WAY out of her personal “comfort zone” to answer God’s call on her
life. She’d attended schools in Massachusetts and begun to teach when only
sixteen years old. Eventually, though, she was teaching “in the west” when “the
west” meant Ohio. In Ohio she met Stephen Riggs. The couple eventually journeyed
into “the far west” and begin housekeeping in a 10 x 18 foot room on the upper
level of a log dwelling at Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota. Mary wrote, “We fixed it
up with loose boards overhead, and quilts nailed up to the rafters, and
improvised a bedstead … that room we made our home for five winters … there our
first three children were born … and there, with what help I could obtain, I
prepared for the printer the greater part of the New Testament in the language
of the Dakotas.”

Mary
Riggs had a difficult time learning another language. She was made fun of more
than once for it. That had to have been hard for a young woman who had once
taught school in Ohio. Her first home in Minnesota burned to the ground, but
Native women came to help, sharing what they had with the young mother from a
different world. Mary Riggs raised several children, most of whom also became
missionaries—a daughter to China and others among Native Americans in the West.
A
few years ago, I received a call from a member of the Gideon Pond Society,
asking me to come to Minnesota and speak on my research (Agnes and Gideon Pond
were early missionaries in the area as well). It’s a great memory, and I’m
thrilled that my three novels, which have been out of print for a long time,
will soon be back IN print and available as ebooks. (Valley of the Shadow, Edge of the Wilderness, and Heart of the Sandhills all feature Genevieve LaCroix, a half-French, half-Dakota student at the Dakota Missions and her true love, Daniel Two Stars.)
Here’s Kitty parked in
front of the Gideon Pond House in Minneapolis. What would Mrs. Riggs and Mrs.
Pond have thought of that!
Hope your Father's Day weekend is going well and that our Heavenly Father blesses your day.
--Stephanie