author
R. J. (Robert J.) Creswell
1844–1906
A Presbyterian minister and missionary writer, he spent decades in religious and educational work and later turned that experience into a compact, vivid account of mission life on the northern plains. His best-known book, Among the Sioux (1906), draws on personal knowledge of the people and stories it records.
1 Audiobook
Among the Sioux: A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas
by R. J. (Robert J.) Creswell
About the author
Born in 1844 and dying in 1906, R. J. Creswell is remembered as a Presbyterian minister whose life was closely tied to missionary work. In Among the Sioux, published in Minneapolis in 1906, he identifies himself as "The Rev. R. J. Creswell" and dedicates the book to his wife Nellie, saying she had shared with him forty years of missionary service among freedmen in the Old Southwest and pioneers in the New Northwest.
That background helps explain the tone of his writing: practical, earnest, and shaped by long firsthand involvement. An introduction to Among the Sioux says he had broad personal acquaintance with many of the figures in the book, had studied missionary work among the Sioux for years, and had written about the subject for periodicals before gathering some of that material into this volume.
Creswell is also linked to education work after the Civil War. Knoxville College's history traces its roots to a mission school established in Knoxville in 1864 by R. J. Creswell of the United Presbyterian Church for free Black and formerly enslaved people. No clearly verified portrait was available from the sources I found, so none is included here.