Flandreau Christian Indian Community

Flandreau Christian Indian Community. . , For a quarter of a century before 1862 and its War of the Indian Outbreak in Minnesota, Santee Sioux had been accepting Christianity. With the killing of over 500 whites by a truculent minority. The government hung 38, imprisoned over 300 at Davenport and the remaining 1,300 old men, women and children were transported by steamboat to the bleak and drought stricken Crow Creek Agency, May 1863 at Ft. Thompson. Longfellow’s Evangeline is a parallel to this saga of separation, heartbreak and tragedy. Despite relief expeditions from Minnesota over 300 Santees died of malnutrition and exposure at Ft. Thompson that winter of 1863-64 and over 100 died at Davenport., The next two years were ones of continued tragedy. In 1866, the Ft. Thompson and Davenport groups were re-united at Santee Agency at the mouth of the Niobrara. The one third Christians had constant difficulty with the backward non-Christian brethren and in 1869 twenty-five families gave up tribal rights, annuities, everything to become citizens, and acquire homesteads along the Sioux at Flandreau., They soon built their little Presbyterian Church in what was to become Flandreau and that fall were joined by 15 additional families. Among those making the break with tradition were Old Flute, All Over Red, Iron Dog, Big Eagle signers of the 1868 Treaty and Iron Old Man their acting pastor, who perished in a blizzard enroute from Santee to Flandreau. John P. Williamson of that missionary family of teachers and preachers was their early guide, counsellor and protector at Ft. Thompson and Flandreau., This church, built in 1873, is one of the oldest continuously used Churches in South Dakota. The graveyard memorializes man of those early Christian names who shared in this hegira from Mankaton, Ft. Snelling, Ft. Thompson, Santee Agency terminating here.