opened to him in the pursuit of his hereditary foes, the
Chippewas. He danced the scalp-dance on the present site of
Minneapolis, when it was only a wind-swept prairie.

While in his youth, his tribe ceded their ancestral lands along the
Mississippi and removed to the Sioux Reservation on the Minnesota
River. But not for long, for the terrible outbreak of 1862, scattered
everything and landed all the leading men of that tribe in prison.
Artemas was one of them. He was convicted, condemned to death, and
pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. While in the prison-pen at Mankato, he
came into a new life "that thinketh no evil of his neighbor." The words
of the faithful missionaries, Pond and Williamson and Riggs, sank deep
into his heart. His whole nature underwent a change. Artemas once
explained his conversion thus:

"We had planned that uprising wisely and secretly. We had able leaders.
We were well organized and thoroughly armed. The whites were weakened
by the Southern war. Everything was in our favor. We had prayed to our
gods. But when the conflict came, we were beaten so rapidly and
completely, I felt that the white man's God must be greater than all
the Indians' gods; and I determined to look Him up, and I found Him,
All-Powerful and precious to my soul."

Faithfully he studied his letters and learned his Dakota Bible, which
became more precious to him than any record of traditions and shadows
handed down from mouth to mouth by his people. He soon became possessed
of a great longing to let his tribe know his great secret of the God
above. So when the prisoners were restored to their families in the
Missouri Vally in Nebraska, Artemas was soon chosen one of the
preachers of the reorganized tribe. His first pastorate was that of the
Pilgrim Congregational Church at Santee, Nebraska, in 1867. It was also
his last, for he was ever so beloved and honored by his people, that
they would not consider any proposal for separation.

No such proposition ever met with favor in the Pilgrim Church for
Artemas firmly held first place in the affections of the people among
whom he labored so earnestly. He served this church for thirty-two
years and passed on to take his place among the Shining Ones, on the
eve of Easter Sabbath, 1902.

Artemas seldom took a vacation. In fact there is only one on record. In
1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian
nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wil