A complete year of issues of the Dakota language newspaper Iapi Oaye and its English counterpart The Word Carrier. The latter is a companion paper rather than direct translation of the former, and the content is in some cases quite different. Whilst the 12 numbers of Iapi Oaye run sequentially through the months of January to December, there was no issue of The Word Carrier published in October of 1888, rather the following month’s issue is for October-November. July-August is a combined issue for both titles.
First published in 1871 under the editorship of American missionary to the Dakota Nation John P. Williamson, the paper continued until 1939 and as such was the longest running Indigenous language newspaper is United States history (Vigil). Williams was initially assisted by Stephen Riggs, and in January of 1877 his son Alfred L. Riggs (1837-1916) took over the editorship of both Dakota and English language titles, and moved the printing to Greenwood, Nebraska.
Alfred Riggs founded the Santee Normal Training School in Nebraska in 1870, and served as principal until his own son Frederick Riggs took over upon his death. This missionary family’s relationship with Dakota print history therefore spanned three generations: “[Stephen] Riggs was an especially active advocate of Indian-language text publications in Indian Country, bringing into print works like The Dakota First Reading Book (1839), Dakota wowapi wakan kin: The New Testament (1865), and Psalm wowapi: The Book of Psalms in the Dakota Language (1869). […] By 1871, in Greenwood, South Dakota, Congregationalist and Presbyterian missionaries began printing another bilingual illustrated weekly, Iapi Oaye, the Word Carrier. […] Anthropologist Ray DeMallie has remarked on the historical importance of the Word Carrier: ‘This widely circulated monthly paper-which developed into separate native language and English editions, whose contents, in most cases were entirely different-published materials written by individuals from all of the widely scattered Sioux communities. Editorials and letters were printed in the dialect in which they were written, making Iape Oaye a historical archive representing the diversity of spoken Sioux dialects.’” [Emphasis added] (Round, 94).
In the wake of the Allotment Act of 1887 the present run of Iapi Oaye and The Word Carrier holds traces of the cultural tensions facing Indigenous Americans in this period. The English language paper was as much aimed at white settlers living near or moving into Indian Territory as at those Dakota students of the Industrial Schools who were being educated away from their indigenous dialects. Indeed, the motto of The Word Carrier encapsulates this attitude of representation, but in exchange for assimilation: “Our platform. For Indians we want American Education! We want American Homes! The result of which is American Citizenship!”
Round, Phillip H. Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880. Chapel Hill, UNC Press, 2010; Vigil, Kiara. “Iapi Oaye: Unlocking a Hidden History of Dakota Language and Culture within The Word Carrier.” (Accessed 3 Sept 2024)
