Samuel Dutton Hinman

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Fort Ridgely 1862
A picture from the execution of the 38th Dakota

Samuel Dutton Hinman (born January 17, 1839 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † March 24, 1890 in the Santee Sioux Reservation , Nebraska ) was an American pastor and missionary of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America . Hinman was an orphan early on. He attended the Cheshire Academy in Connecticut and from 1858 he studied at the newly established Seabury Divinity School in Faribault , Minnesota . He completed his studies in 1860. He was ordained a deacon on September 20, 1860 and a priest on March 8, 1863. Hinman married Mary Ellen Berry and was appointed a Sioux Indian missionary .

Hinman began his missionary work in Redwood County , Minnesota. He founded a mission for the Dakota Sioux at the Lower Sioux Agency in Minnesota in 1860 . There he began to learn the Dakota language. He didn't want to depend on translators for his sermons. He lived with the Indians and went hunting with them. In 1864 he translated most of the Book of Common Prayer into the Dakota language. The translation was published in book form in 1865. In January 1861 he wrote to his bishop that 150 Indians had attended his Christmas mass. Several of the Indians converted to Christianity. In the summer of 1862 he began building a stone church. The church was never ended by the outbreak of the Sioux uprising . Warned by converted Indians, Hinman and his missionaries managed to escape to Fort Ridgely . The uprising was put down by the United States. About 1200 Indians surrendered and released their prisoners. Six weeks after the uprising ended, 392 Dakota were tried in military tribunals. In trials, some of which lasted only five minutes, 303 of them were sentenced to death for rape and murder. Against this, however, there were protests, including from Hitman's Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Minnesota, Henry Whipple . Whipple even went to Washington to plead for mercy from President Abraham Lincoln . On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota were publicly hanged in the largest mass execution in American history in Mankato . Hinman did not abandon his converts. He accompanied her during the trials and internment at Fort Snelling , near St. Paul , the capital of Minnesota. In March 1863 his congregation had 300 internees. In May 1863, 1,318 survivors of the internment camp were transferred to the Indian reservation on Crow Creek by two steamships, see Crow Creek Reservation . Hinman and missionary John Williamson accompanied the Indians who had survived a harsh winter in the camp. His wife, Mary Ellen Berry, did not go with him.

Conditions were dire in the new reservation on Crow Creek. The land could not be cultivated without irrigation, the American government's food supplies were inadequate, the Indians weak and sick. In the first year 300 people died, mostly children. Himan denounced the conditions in the reservation with his bishop Henry Whipple. "If I were an Indian, I would never stop fighting the whites," he wrote to his bishop. Hinman tried tirelessly to improve the situation on the reservation. He started fundraising campaigns and tried to convince the government that Crow Creek was unsuitable as a reservation. With success: On June 11, 1866, the residents of Crow Creek were relocated to the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska . Under the supervision of William Hobart Hare, he began building a mission station. In 1867 he built the first church on the reservation, where the Most Merciful Savior Church is today. The building also served as an Indian school. By 1870 he built other buildings such as his own school and hospital.

On March 25, 1878, Hinman was relieved of the leadership of the mission station. William Hobart Hare accused him of embezzling church funds and dealing with Indian prostitutes. He was forbidden to serve as a priest or missionary. But Hinman resisted his bishop. In July 1878 there was a trial and Hinman lost the case. He now worked as an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs . In 1887 the ban on working as priests and missionaries was lifted again. At the age of 51, he died of pneumonia in the Santee Sioux Reservation. He was buried in an anonymous grave next to the church.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He enrolled in 1858 as one of the first students at Seabury Theological School In Farrlbold, Minnesota
  2. ↑ Benjamin Capps (ed.): The Indians. Time-Life, Amsterdam 1994, p. 176.
personal data
SURNAME Hinman, Samuel Dutton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pastor and missionary of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1890
Place of death Santee Sioux Reservation , Nebraska