Chapter I: The call: New horizons -- The summoned -- Investigation of potential fields -- The Pond brothers -- Final preparations -- Chapter II: Unconscious infidels: The Dakota -- Santee society -- Dakota religion -- Dakota virtues -- The feast-famine cycle -- Some aspects of roving life -- The physical appearance of the Santee -- Chapter III: Noses against the window pane: The mission party -- A false start -- Relations with the board -- Establishment policies -- Indian trails -- Lac qui Parle -- Joseph Renville -- A new start -- The initiation -- An explorer's impressions -- Chapter IV: Years of growth: Early struggles -- Reinforcements -- Uncertainty at Lake Harriet -- Chapter V: Building the church at Lac qui Parle: Renewed efforts to learn the language -- Improved translation -- Building church policies and functions -- Polity -- The Siamese twins -- Finance -- Public relations -- Relations with Joseph Renville -- Early opposition -- A new church building -- Chapter VI: Domestic life at Lac qui Parle: Supplies -- Agriculture -- Trials of working on the frontier -- Mission children -- New names -- Contacts with the world -- Chapter VII: Schools: Crude beginnings -- The rigors of teaching -- Inducements -- Extension courses -- Federal aid -- Progress at school -- Chapter VIII: Years of trial: 1842-1846: The subversives -- The crop failure of 1842 -- The Traverse des Sioux station -- Missionaries under fire -- 1846: year of change -- Chapter IX: Hope that faded: 1847-1854: A changed situation at Lac qui Parle -- Expansion and demise -- Moses Adams at Lac qui Parle -- The treaty of Traverse des Sioux -- The Dakota dictionary -- The boarding school that nearly was -- Slavery -- The heretic -- The unburied carcass -- The boy and his candle -- The loss -- Aid -- Rebuild? -- Chapter X: Epilogue: Hazelwood-Yellow Medicine and the Sioux Uprising -- Later work -- Later missionary work at Lac qui Parle -- Conclusions -- Chapter XI: Restoration: The site -- The hearthstone -- The boll -- Restoration -- The annual pilgrimmage -- Appendix A: Table of contents of Donald Parker's Lac qui Parle: its missionaries, traders and Indians -- Appendix B: Old trails near Lac qui Parle -- Appendix C: Account of the journey of Samuel Pond to Lac qui Parle, 1835 -- Appendix D: Dakota bibliography through 1869 from Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, III: 37-42 -- Appendix E: Chronology -- Bibliography -- Index.