Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Samuel Pond and his brother, Gideon, arrived in 1834 in the area later called Minnesota. Samuel was a missionary, language translator, agricultural instructor, carpenter, farmer, and ongoing advocate for fair treatment of American Indians.

As Samuel got off the steamboat, he asked someone how to say, “What is this?” in Dakota. As he wrote this down, he walked over to a Dakota and said, “Ka taku he,” pointing to a horse that was near the steamboat landing. (This would sound like “gay-dah-koo-hey.”)

“Hé šúŋkawakȟaŋ héčha,” the man responded.

And Samuel quickly wrote down the word for horse, šúŋkawakȟaŋ. Samuel continued doing this for years, eventually creating the Pond-Dakota alphabet, which is still used today.

Shortly after, Samuel and his brother began teaching Euro-American farming to Dakota people near Bde Maka Ska in present-day Minneapolis. And the brothers continued to work on the Dakota dictionary. Samuel noted, “The language was a game I went to hunt, and I was as eager in the pursuit of that as the Indians were in pursuit of the deer.” The alphabet was used for the publication of hymnals, many books of the Bible, and the first dictionary of the Dakota to which later missionaries also contributed.

In 1847, Samuel and family accepted an invitation from Ṡakpe II to locate in Tínṫa Otuŋwe, which Samuel W. Pond called Prairieville. Samuel W. Pond, Cordelia Eggleston Pond, and their three children moved into their new home, along with Jane Lamont Titus. Samuel was called Ceta Wambli, meaning Red Eagle, by the Dakota. Jennette was five years old, Rebecca was three, and baby Elnathan was scarcely a month old when they moved in. (Samuel, Jr. was born a few years later.)

Elnathan remembered in 1925, “There were no white children excepting my brother, my two sisters, and myself … I recall that white men were a rare sight, and our childish eyes grew round with wonder when we saw one!”

The mission house was built in the middle of Ṡakpe II’s village of Tínṫa Otuŋwe, where approximately 600 Dakota lived in tipi tanka (bark lodges). It was a busy place, and Pond decided to surround the Mission House and front garden with a fence of tall stakes to prevent the Dakota from claiming a portion of the crops that Pond’s family planted.

Samuel W. Pond described the site: “The mission house at Shakopee was pleasantly located on gently rising ground, about half a mile south of the Minnesota River. At a distance of twenty rods or so to the West was the house of Oliver Faribault. Between these two dwellings was a ravine through which ran a never failing spring of clear cold water…” The mission house was “…sufficiently commodious, carefully and comfortably built, although inexpensive in all its appointments. The walls were carefully filled with moistened clay, making them probably bullet-proof and rendering the house very warm.”

According to Samuel, “…the young mother (Cordelia), never very strong, gradually failed in health from that time.”

In the fall of 1851, Samuel Pond obtained from the Board a year’s leave of absence and prepared to visit New England. The journey was a fatiguing one, as much of it was by stage. Samuel knew that Cordelia was failing.

The dying mother, Cordelia, expressed a desire to see all her children once more, knowing that it would be the last time in this world. “To the older ones she gave words of counsel which were carefully heeded and diligently followed. Jennette Clarissa never forgot her mother’s parting words. Mr. Edward Pond went over the icy hill and brought Elnathan to receive his mother’s last kiss and listen to her dying words. She told him to be a good boy and love God. To Judson from his aunt Jennette’s, to the youngest, she said, ‘Poor boy! He will not remember his mother!’ and kissed him farewell.”

Cordelia Eggleston Pond passed away at the age of 36 years, fourteen of them spent in continuous service of the Dakotas.

Samuel, widowed at age 43, was left with four young children.

He remarried an old school friend, Rebecca Susan Smith, about two months after Cordelia’s death. Samuel and Susan did not have any children. They returned to the mission at Shakopee.