Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:1 (Winter 2011).
Abstract
Marie Gerber Petter was skeptical. Born in the Swiss Jura Mountains, she knew that one does not find water in high places. It was 1893 when Marie and her husband, Rodolphe Petter, came to North America for the express purpose of bringing Christianity to Native Americans. After studying English and visiting Mennonite churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas to garner monetary support for their work among the Southern Cheyenne, they made the forty-mile journey from Darlington, Oklahoma Territory, to an area near present-day Hammon by covered wagon. She was in need of water. When she asked, the local Cheyenne chief, Red Moon, pointed to the top of a nearby hill. To Marie's great surprise an abundant spring gushed forth. Chief Red Moon's men brought deer to the camp, fresh venison for the evening meal. The women gathered wood for Marie's fire. Firewood and water were scarce on the territory's semiarid plains.1 These were acts of Cheyenne hospitality from a group that was said to be particularly hostile to whites. So it was that Swiss emigres and Mennonite missionaries Marie and Rodolphe Petter were welcomed into Chief Red Moon's band on the far edges of their allotment land.2 Away from the interference of other whites, they decided to live like their new neighbors and pitched a tipi before building a more substantial structure. There they continued their studies of the Cheyenne language and became familiar with the ways of the Cheyenne.3
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.