Native Dakota Hymn Tunes

Among American hymnals published in the nineteenth century and still in use is the remarkable Dakota-language hymnal, Dakota Odowand Although an earlier edition included music, the inclusion of three tunes designated as Dakota native airs made the 1879 edition very special.2 Fifteen years later quite a different hymnal was published, containing a fourth tune of native origin.3 This article explores the historical and musical distinctiveness of those four hymn tunes, named Lacquiparle, La Framboise, Renville, and Dowanna, along with two others, Zion and Water. The first three have already been introduced in The Hymn; the present article is a continuation of the earlier article.4In 1835, Joseph Renville welcomed missionaries to his settlement at Lac qui Parle (lake that speaks) in Minnesota territory.5 account, based on memories of two of the missionaries, begins thus:The mission station at Lac Qui Parle was fortunate in the enjoyment of the aid, protection, and patronage of Joseph Renville, the most influential man, by far, in all that region. He was . . . somewhat past his prime, though still a man of great energy, and still exercising marvelous authority of the Indians of the upper Minnesota. His mother was a Dakota and his father [a French-Canadian]. In the years Mr. Renville had spent in the trade at Lac Qui Parle, he had accumulated quite an amount of property and a large retinue of followers, so that in some respects he lived like a baron. . . . Mr. Renville was somewhat narrow in his views and dictatorial in his manners, but on the whole rendered good service to the mission.6Born in 1779 near the present location of St. Paul, Minnesota, Renville had moved before 1830 to Lac qui Parle. There,Renville built a unique, bicultural community, one that attracted a substantial body of Indians and several French-Indian voyageurs and their families. In outward form, Renville's community remained European both in profit-orientation and in its well-built living quarters, storage buildings, and shops. But in social organization and ethos, especially regarding cooperation, reciprocal sharing, and prescribed etiquette, the community was traditional Dakota.7Circumstances in the early 1830s had led Renville to reevaluate his role both at Lac qui Parle and as a fur trader. Along with developments in the fur industry that not in Renville's favor, his sons, Joseph (1805-1856) and Antoine (1810-1884), had their own families, and his other six children were growing up in a community their father had created, but it did not offer the minimal educational advantages he had received as a child.8 Such concerns among the reasons Joseph Renville welcomed Protestant missionaries.9The MissionariesThe first two missionaries to arrive Dr. Thomas S. Williamson and Alexander G. Huggins, soon to be followed by Samuel W. Pond, Gideon H. Pond, and Stephen Return Riggs. One of the most significant contributions of the missionaries was the reduction of the Dakota language to writing and the publication of books in that tongue.10 The Dakota alphabet, in particular, was devised largely by the Pond brothers during 1834-1836.11Working with Renville, who spoke both Dakota and French, the missionaries translated portions of Renville's French Bible into Dakota. Hymn singing was very important from the beginning, and a number of hymn texts based on scripture written by the missionaries and also by Renville and his sons.12 In 1842, Dakota dowanpi kin (Hymns in the Dakota or Sioux Language), composed by J. Renville and sons, and the missionaries of the A.B.C.F.M (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) was published in Boston. This text-only collection of hymns was the first Dakota hymnal. It would be augmented several times before reaching a final form in 1879.As a result of the Dakota Conflict of 1862, many Dakota Indians, especially the Santees, forced to leave Minnesota, and, by 1869, they had been relocated at Santee, Nebraska. …

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