To-tee-doo’-ta-win is the Dakota name meaning, Her Scarlet House woman. She was of full blooded Dakota decent, and lived among the Dakota people in southern Minnesota near the Mission site of Lacquiparle (pronounced Luck-Key-Paul). She was one of the very first converts of the Mission. When she was converted she changed her name to Catharine. Mr. Stephen Riggs, Missionary to the Dakota of Minnesota for over forty years, says the following about her in his book Tah-Koo Wah-Kan, or the Gospel Among the Dakota.
She had been a member of the Order of the Sacred Dance*; but on professing faith in Christ, she renounced that, and threw away her “medicine sack”, which was regarded, by the medicine men, as a high crime. This subjected her to divers sorts of persecutions, which she bore patiently. There were times when all were forbidden to attend public worship at the mission. Then Catherine took joyfully the spoiling of her goods – the cutting up of her blanket.
She received the sabbath as a day of rest; and she more than once remained behind her company, when they travelled thereon.
In the first years of the mission at Lacquiparle, an effort was made to introduce spinning and weaving among the Dakotas. In these new branches of industry Catharine was a willing scholar. She spun and knit and wove garments for herself and household.
She was already a matronly woman, but learned to read among the first Dakota women, and entered heartily into all plans for her own and her people’s elevation. Her children were coming upon manhood. She desired that they should be Christians. When an offer was made to have some young men or boys visit Ohio for the purpose of learning the American customs and language, she brought her oldest son, and wished he might be taken. Now [in 1867] she is an old woman, feeble and childish in many things; but she holds fast to her faith in Jesus Christ.
*The Order of the Sacred Dance was in a way the established pagan church of the Dakota. It was a secret society who where supposed to have visions and communion with the god of the waters. In essence, the Dakota religion was demon-worship.
