author
Gideon H. (Gideon Hollister) Pond
1810–1878
A pioneer missionary in early Minnesota, he spent decades living and working among Dakota communities and helped create some of the first written materials in the Dakota language. His life also crossed into public service, from preaching and teaching to serving in Minnesota’s territorial legislature.
1 Audiobook
Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society for the Year 1867
by Charles Edwin Mayo, Henry M. (Henry Mower) Rice, A. J. (Alfred James) Hill, Gideon H. (Gideon Hollister) Pond
About the author
Born in Connecticut in 1810, he traveled west with his brother Samuel in 1834 to the area around Fort Snelling, years before Minnesota Territory was formally created. He became a Presbyterian missionary and clergyman, and his long career in the region made him one of the early non-Native settlers closely tied to Dakota communities.
He is especially remembered for his work with the Dakota language. With his brother, he helped prepare early written and educational materials in Dakota, and his name is linked to missionary, linguistic, and historical writing from nineteenth-century Minnesota. Later in life, he also served in the territorial legislature.
He died in 1878 near Bloomington, Minnesota. Today he is remembered as part of the complicated early history of Minnesota, where missionary work, language study, settlement, and relations with Dakota people were deeply intertwined.