Hemans, Daniel Wright, fl. 1872-1881 Letters with wife Nancy, to Rev. & Mrs Shiras [decimalized]

Letters by missionaries from north of the Missouri River, 38 miles north of Santee Mission in South Dakota, describing teaching English, arithmetic, and bible to Yankton Sioux Indians. The collection was written to Rev. and Mrs. Alexander Shiras of the Bureau of Education in Washington, D.C., mostly by either Daniel Hemans or his wife, Nancy Hemans, with the greatest concentration of letters in the early 1870s and early 1880s. Both Nancy and Daniel were Santee Sioux Indians. Daniel joined the mission to the Yankton Sioux as an interpreter and a teacher, and eventually became a preacher. The collection provides a remarkably detailed first person account of the lives of these two Christian Indians, their work, their family, and their faith. Letters include references to supply problems, the Sioux-Dakota language, teaching and preaching efforts, the Santee Agency. There is also a description of a wedding with Indian and white guests, as well as references to farming, deprivations, child-rearing, illness, and death on the reservation. The final two letters are by two of Daniel and Nancy's full grown children. Includes two hand-drawn maps of the Dakota mission area and a four-page history of the Yankton-Sioux Indian Church by Joseph Cook. Also includes 14 envelopes, many with clipped stamps. Many letters docketed by recipient.