Abstract In the spring of 1834 Samuel W. Pond and his brother Gideon built a cabin near Cloud Man's village of the Dakotaa Indians on the shore of Lake Calhoun -- now part of Minneapolis, Minnesota -- intending to preach Christianity to the Indians. The brothers were to spend nearly 20 years learning the Dakota language and observing how the Indians lived. In the 1860s and 1870s, after the Dakota had fought a disastrous war with the whites who had taken their land, Samuel Pond recorded his...