I just did a quick Google search on my ancestors, and here is one entry
Missionaries began their work among the Santee living in Minnesota in the 1820's and 1830's. Joseph Renville, of French and Indian descent, established a trading post at Lac que Parle on the Minnesota River in 1826. As was happening throughout the frontier, the traders were soon followed by the missionaries. In 1834, Samuel Pond and his brother Gideon left their Connecticut village to settle among the Sioux for the purpose of converting them to Christianity, even though they did not have the support of any church group. The brothers encountered the Sioux living at Prairie de Chien in what was then Minnesota Territory. Later they moved to Lake Calhoun. They began their work quite simply by asking the Indians as well as army officers in the area, Dakota words for objects and places. They composed a number of word lists in this fashion.
In 1836, Gideon Pond went to Renville's post at Lac que Parle where he met Dr. Thomas Williamson, a physician serving at the Episcopal Missionary. A year later Rev. Stephen Return Riggs joined the "Dakota Mission.' The Pond brothers assisted both Williamson and Riggs in learning Dakota. They began by translating hymns and simple Bible stories. Their most ambitious project was translating both the New Testament and the Old Testament into Dakota.
Ella Deloria gives this description, in her book Speaking of Indians (1944) , of how the work proceeded:
"It is a log house, ample and many roomed, for it is the home of the French and Dakota trader, Renville, a man of keen intellect, though without any schooling to speak of and without any fluency in English. In a bare room with flickering candlelight he sits hour on hour of an evening after a hard day of manual work. Dr. Riggs and his helpers are across the table from him. They are working on the translation. It is a blessing incalcuable for all Dakota missions that Dr. Williamson and Riggs are scholars. One of them reads a verse in Hebrew, if it is from the Old Testament; or in Greek, if from the new. He ponders its essence, stripped of idiom, and then he gives it in French. Renville, receiving it thus in his father's civilized language, now thinks it through very carefully and at length turns it out again, this time in his mother's tongue. Slowly and patiently he repeats it as often as needed while Dr. Riggs and the others write it down in the Dakota phonetics already devised by the Pond brothers."
Riggs and Williamson worked together for five years (1835 - 1840) and their "Dakota Grammar and Dictionary" was printed in 1852. Although the title page noted that the material was "collected by the members of the Dakota Mission" and only edited by Riggs, the Pond brothers felt they had not been given adequate credit for their part in the contribution.
The dictionary was expanded and republished by the Bureau of North American Ethnology in 1890. Dakota Grammar Texts and Ethnography was published by the U.S. Geographical Survey in 1893. Listed as story tellers were three Dakota speakers: Michael Renville, the son of Joseph Renville; David Grey Cloud, a Presbytery preacher; and James Garvie, a teacher at the Nebraska Indian School established by Rev. Alfred Riggs, the son of Stephen Return Riggs. The inclusion of these stories was significant because it marked the first printing of native speakers telling their own stories in their own language rather than Dakota translations of biblical stories.
John Williamson, the son of Dr. Thomas Williamson, accompanied the Santee, who were forced out of Minnesota following the uprising of 1862, to their reservation at Crow Creek. He stayed at Crow Creek for seven years, giving them instructions in religion and writing their language. His dictionary was printed in 1868, 1886, and 1902.
John Williamson was my grandmother's father. She was born on the reservation. We are also related to the Ponds because the two families intermarried. The ponds and the Williamsons were highly committed and influential abolitionists prior to this time.
That discovery was like hitting the jackpot for me.
