The Power of Faith
Pluma’s Religious Teaching
Edna Fern wrote, “I will never forget the school days when we rode into our yard after five miles on a horse and we could smell fresh buns and beans baking. We knew we were in for a superb supper, and what a feeling of comfort that was. But it was not just by providing what we needed for our bodies that Mother gave us that comfort. She had a wonderful way of making us feel protected by God, our Creator. We never doubted His care.
“Mother read the Bible to us, and at night we would kneel by our beds and pray, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ We already knew that we could be taken because we had been told about Mother losing her mother and baby Berdella, and we knew that our Papa had been taken. We believed that they were all in God’s good care.
“Because of our mother’s teaching, we children grew up with a strong faith in the omnipresence and love of God. I never in my entire life feared God, as He was revealed to me as a loving Father who cared about what happened to us and felt with us in all life’s experiences. I took Nature—crystals of frost on windowpanes, golden sunrises, delicious vegetables from our garden, our refreshing spring water—as a personal gift from a loving God who accepted me as part of His plan. God has been with me always, and I know for a fact that the sense of His presence has not only kept me from being afraid and lonely but has also kept me from doing harmful things to others.
“My only conflict with loving God was in accepting the idea that I should love Him more than my mother; I found this hard to do. Finally, it came to me that God had made all things good, including my mother, and I was so grateful to Him for matching us up that my heart went out to Him in overflowing affection. I’m sure Mother is responsible for the whole feeling of God’s nearness and His caring for us in all ways, being concerned for our welfare in both deprivation and joy.”
“Mother read the Bible to us, and at night we would kneel by our beds and pray, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ We already knew that we could be taken because we had been told about Mother losing her mother and baby Berdella, and we knew that our Papa had been taken. We believed that they were all in God’s good care.
“Because of our mother’s teaching, we children grew up with a strong faith in the omnipresence and love of God. I never in my entire life feared God, as He was revealed to me as a loving Father who cared about what happened to us and felt with us in all life’s experiences. I took Nature—crystals of frost on windowpanes, golden sunrises, delicious vegetables from our garden, our refreshing spring water—as a personal gift from a loving God who accepted me as part of His plan. God has been with me always, and I know for a fact that the sense of His presence has not only kept me from being afraid and lonely but has also kept me from doing harmful things to others.
“My only conflict with loving God was in accepting the idea that I should love Him more than my mother; I found this hard to do. Finally, it came to me that God had made all things good, including my mother, and I was so grateful to Him for matching us up that my heart went out to Him in overflowing affection. I’m sure Mother is responsible for the whole feeling of God’s nearness and His caring for us in all ways, being concerned for our welfare in both deprivation and joy.”
This well thumbed bible belonged to Pluma for the last 30 years of her life. She received it as a gift from her daughter Edna Fern in 1933.
Congregation for an outdoor service at the Olsons’ place near Wood Mountain, circa 1937.
Itinerant Preachers and Missionaries
There was no regular church service in the Sister Butte-Macworth district, but once a year there would be a big community picnic at the Olsons’ place, where those gathered there would sing hymns, hear a good sermon, and have fellowship together. Also, during the summer months student ministers would hold services in the Sister Butte schoolhouse. Edna Fern wrote that Mrs. Fagan usually played the piano or the pump organ and everyone would heartily sing such songs as “Bringing in the Sheaves”:
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve,
Waiting for the harvest and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Community hymn singing was the main musical experience of the time, other than listening to staticky radio programs from south of the border in the evenings and going to a schoolhouse dance where fiddlers and banjo and guitar strummers played waltzes, polkas, and the two-step from time to time.
Student ministers were sent out from a university, often in Ontario, to practice their sermons on folks in isolated communities to see if they were suited for the ministry. Edna Fern wrote, “They tried their very best, putting their whole selves into their work; the sermons these young men gave reached my heart. When the service was over, the young student minister would get back on a horse with lunch in one side of his saddlebag and his Bible in the other, hurrying to the next service. That was real dedication as many of them had never been in ranch country, and some of the local ranchers did not make it any easier, giving them ornery horses to ride.
“One summer, a couple who had been missionaries in China came to talk to us about their experiences, and they inspired me to want to go to China to share God’s love. If I hadn’t thought I would be expected to forego future dances and other pleasures, I would have yielded my will immediately and dedicated myself to a missionary life. God had other plans for me, however. Ernest Anderson would later follow the trails of these ‘saddlebag preachers,’ and I wanted to stay close to the trails he was traveling. When Ernest took on the summer relief, it was nothing for him to ride several miles from one service to the next; he’d been on a horse since he was a toddler, and the ranchers liked having one of their own on the ministry circuit.”
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve,
Waiting for the harvest and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Community hymn singing was the main musical experience of the time, other than listening to staticky radio programs from south of the border in the evenings and going to a schoolhouse dance where fiddlers and banjo and guitar strummers played waltzes, polkas, and the two-step from time to time.
Student ministers were sent out from a university, often in Ontario, to practice their sermons on folks in isolated communities to see if they were suited for the ministry. Edna Fern wrote, “They tried their very best, putting their whole selves into their work; the sermons these young men gave reached my heart. When the service was over, the young student minister would get back on a horse with lunch in one side of his saddlebag and his Bible in the other, hurrying to the next service. That was real dedication as many of them had never been in ranch country, and some of the local ranchers did not make it any easier, giving them ornery horses to ride.
“One summer, a couple who had been missionaries in China came to talk to us about their experiences, and they inspired me to want to go to China to share God’s love. If I hadn’t thought I would be expected to forego future dances and other pleasures, I would have yielded my will immediately and dedicated myself to a missionary life. God had other plans for me, however. Ernest Anderson would later follow the trails of these ‘saddlebag preachers,’ and I wanted to stay close to the trails he was traveling. When Ernest took on the summer relief, it was nothing for him to ride several miles from one service to the next; he’d been on a horse since he was a toddler, and the ranchers liked having one of their own on the ministry circuit.”
The recently ordained Reverend Laurence Ernest Anderson, preaching to the congregation shown above.
Appreciating Differences
Edna Fern always valued her early church experiences because everyone worshipped together, no matter what their original faith had been, and she felt equally at home in churches of different denominations. Pluma’s children grew up being taught that there is one God and He has many children whom He loves the same, whatever their appearance or life situation.
Edna Fern told of how her mother taught them about accepting differences among people: “We had only one Black man living in our community, and some of the people from the Wood Mountain area still visited him in Arizona when he was an elderly man. Mother talked about the difference in his appearance by having us look at nature. She would say, ‘Look at the flowers and you will see many colors—red, yellow, and purple. Crocuses and roses are both beautiful though not shaped or colored alike.’”
Growing up close to the Wood Mountain Reserve, many Natives worked on ranches and participated in the annual Wood Mountain rodeo. Edna Fern wrote, “One of our main interests was watching the dancers from the reserve perform their traditional dances, and we admired the beadwork of the women.” When Edna Fern passed away in 1999, she still had necklaces made by Lizzie Ogle, a Sioux woman from the Wood Mountain reserve who married Jimmy Ogle, a non-Native rancher. Lizzie Ogle was a good friend to Aquina Anderson throughout their lifetimes in the Wood Mountains.
Pluma taught her children to be accepting of others, but unlike her brother Roy she never speculated about having Native heritage herself. Edna Fern remembered, “Dad would not talk about Lura and Emerson Lyman, and he couldn’t consider that Pluma might have Native ancestry.” And yet in their adult lives both Edna Fern and Lyman Arthur believed Roy’s story that their Uncle Emerson had told him he had Native ancestry.
Both Edna Fern and Lyman felt a kinship with Native peoples, and many of Pluma’s grandchildren also share this feeling. Bob’s daughter Kathleen worked for many years as a health educator on an Idaho reservation, and Edna Fern’s daughters Karlene, Cheryl, and Starla have worked as teachers with Native peoples in Canada. Starla did her doctoral research with Native youth who had dropped out of secondary school in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Edna Fern told of how her mother taught them about accepting differences among people: “We had only one Black man living in our community, and some of the people from the Wood Mountain area still visited him in Arizona when he was an elderly man. Mother talked about the difference in his appearance by having us look at nature. She would say, ‘Look at the flowers and you will see many colors—red, yellow, and purple. Crocuses and roses are both beautiful though not shaped or colored alike.’”
Growing up close to the Wood Mountain Reserve, many Natives worked on ranches and participated in the annual Wood Mountain rodeo. Edna Fern wrote, “One of our main interests was watching the dancers from the reserve perform their traditional dances, and we admired the beadwork of the women.” When Edna Fern passed away in 1999, she still had necklaces made by Lizzie Ogle, a Sioux woman from the Wood Mountain reserve who married Jimmy Ogle, a non-Native rancher. Lizzie Ogle was a good friend to Aquina Anderson throughout their lifetimes in the Wood Mountains.
Pluma taught her children to be accepting of others, but unlike her brother Roy she never speculated about having Native heritage herself. Edna Fern remembered, “Dad would not talk about Lura and Emerson Lyman, and he couldn’t consider that Pluma might have Native ancestry.” And yet in their adult lives both Edna Fern and Lyman Arthur believed Roy’s story that their Uncle Emerson had told him he had Native ancestry.
Both Edna Fern and Lyman felt a kinship with Native peoples, and many of Pluma’s grandchildren also share this feeling. Bob’s daughter Kathleen worked for many years as a health educator on an Idaho reservation, and Edna Fern’s daughters Karlene, Cheryl, and Starla have worked as teachers with Native peoples in Canada. Starla did her doctoral research with Native youth who had dropped out of secondary school in Vancouver, British Columbia.