COLLINS, MARY CLEMENTINE
(18 April 1846, Alton, IL-25 May 1920, Alton) Education: Local schools in Alton, IL. Career: Missionary among the Sioux, 1875-1910.
Mary Collins was one of those remarkable women who went into missionary work in the years when women were unacceptable as ministers in "civilized" society. In remote places like China, India, and the American West, Congregational women, who would have been restricted to domestic life at home, could develop as religious leaders and human beings.
Collins's work began in 1875. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent her to minister among the Sioux, where she was to serve as assistant to Congregational missionary Thomas Riggs. She and a fellow helper, Elizabeth Whipple, traveled by wagon with Riggs and his family into the Indian country. "Several days out on our journey," she recalled, "we camped near a telegraph line. I slyly went off by myself to be near the pole, and I could have hugged it as to me it seemed like a hand reaching back home." She had begun to realize "the isolation and the loneliness which it was possible for the years to bring."
Collins moved to her new home, the Oahe Mission, on the eve of the Custer massacre at Little Big Horn. Although worried about their own fate, she and her fellow missionaries were not bothered by the natives. During the next few years Collins learned the Indian tongue so well that the Indians imagined she must be half Sioux. In 1884 she met Sitting Bull. Released from government captivity, he lived "in a log cabin with a dirt roof and pine floor." His "Royal bed" was "a dirty tick filled with prairie grass." He asked who had sent her, and she replied simply "that I represented the Congregational church and that God sent me."
Mary Collins was then invited to live deep inside the Indian country and minister to the Indians. She was an adept physician as well as a missionary, winning many friends for her work. In various ways she helped the Indians accommodate themselves to their new world. In 1890, for example, she persuaded many Sioux of the futility of the Ghost Dance religion, which promised to release them from white domination. She dissuaded one Indian leader by showing "him a map of the American railway system-how could the Indians resist so powerful an opponent?
But Collins was not simply an agent of white conquest. Living close to the Indians, she grew to admire them and to oppose harmful policies of the government Because Americans were fascinated by Sitting Bull and Collins came to know him well, she was invited East to share her observations on the lecture circuit. She came into contact with other reform-minded individuals, and around 1900 became an outspoken critic of Indian mistreatment. She attacked the policy of putting Indian children in boarding schools from age five to eighteen: "It is the home after all that educates the best American citizen." She accused the government of allowing railway companies and cattlemen to disregard Indian treaties. And she noted that a shameful number of Indian children were dying of tuberculosis. Famed for her crusading spirit, she was a frequent participant in the Lake Mohonk conferences, a national gathering of persons interested in Indian reform.
Collins was finally ordained in 1899. In 1901 she presided over a staff of eight assistants, who maintained two chapels, four churches, and three log meeting houses. Poor health forced her to retire in 1910, but she continued to participate in Indian reform activities, and she composed a fine memoir of her days among the Sioux. She once wrote, "I believed in people, and nothing ... makes me so uncomfortable as to hear one speak only of the worst, even in white people as in red. I know that few are wholly unredeemable." In her activities among the Sioux, Mary Collins reminds one of the settlement house workers of the same era-fellow practitioners of the Social Gospel.
Bibliography
A: How I Became a Missionary (New York, n.d.); Winona: The Autobiography of Rev. Mary C. Collins (New York, n.d.).
B: Louise P. Olson, "Mary Clementine Collins, Decotah Missionary," North Dakota History, 19 (1952), 59-81; Richmond L. Crow, "Autobiography of Mary. C. Collins, Missionary to the Western Sioux," South Dakota Historical Collections, 41 (1982), 1-66 [article on Collins followed by the autobiography].
Mary Collins was one of those remarkable women who went into missionary work in the years when women were unacceptable as ministers in "civilized" society. In remote places like China, India, and the American West, Congregational women, who would have been restricted to domestic life at home, could develop as religious leaders and human beings.
Collins's work began in 1875. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent her to minister among the Sioux, where she was to serve as assistant to Congregational missionary Thomas Riggs. She and a fellow helper, Elizabeth Whipple, traveled by wagon with Riggs and his family into the Indian country. "Several days out on our journey," she recalled, "we camped near a telegraph line. I slyly went off by myself to be near the pole, and I could have hugged it as to me it seemed like a hand reaching back home." She had begun to realize "the isolation and the loneliness which it was possible for the years to bring."
Collins moved to her new home, the Oahe Mission, on the eve of the Custer massacre at Little Big Horn. Although worried about their own fate, she and her fellow missionaries were not bothered by the natives. During the next few years Collins learned the Indian tongue so well that the Indians imagined she must be half Sioux. In 1884 she met Sitting Bull. Released from government captivity, he lived "in a log cabin with a dirt roof and pine floor." His "Royal bed" was "a dirty tick filled with prairie grass." He asked who had sent her, and she replied simply "that I represented the Congregational church and that God sent me."
Mary Collins was then invited to live deep inside the Indian country and minister to the Indians. She was an adept physician as well as a missionary, winning many friends for her work. In various ways she helped the Indians accommodate themselves to their new world. In 1890, for example, she persuaded many Sioux of the futility of the Ghost Dance religion, which promised to release them from white domination. She dissuaded one Indian leader by showing "him a map of the American railway system-how could the Indians resist so powerful an opponent?
But Collins was not simply an agent of white conquest. Living close to the Indians, she grew to admire them and to oppose harmful policies of the government Because Americans were fascinated by Sitting Bull and Collins came to know him well, she was invited East to share her observations on the lecture circuit. She came into contact with other reform-minded individuals, and around 1900 became an outspoken critic of Indian mistreatment. She attacked the policy of putting Indian children in boarding schools from age five to eighteen: "It is the home after all that educates the best American citizen." She accused the government of allowing railway companies and cattlemen to disregard Indian treaties. And she noted that a shameful number of Indian children were dying of tuberculosis. Famed for her crusading spirit, she was a frequent participant in the Lake Mohonk conferences, a national gathering of persons interested in Indian reform.
Collins was finally ordained in 1899. In 1901 she presided over a staff of eight assistants, who maintained two chapels, four churches, and three log meeting houses. Poor health forced her to retire in 1910, but she continued to participate in Indian reform activities, and she composed a fine memoir of her days among the Sioux. She once wrote, "I believed in people, and nothing ... makes me so uncomfortable as to hear one speak only of the worst, even in white people as in red. I know that few are wholly unredeemable." In her activities among the Sioux, Mary Collins reminds one of the settlement house workers of the same era-fellow practitioners of the Social Gospel.
Bibliography
A: How I Became a Missionary (New York, n.d.); Winona: The Autobiography of Rev. Mary C. Collins (New York, n.d.).
B: Louise P. Olson, "Mary Clementine Collins, Decotah Missionary," North Dakota History, 19 (1952), 59-81; Richmond L. Crow, "Autobiography of Mary. C. Collins, Missionary to the Western Sioux," South Dakota Historical Collections, 41 (1982), 1-66 [article on Collins followed by the autobiography].
