Vanished Worlds, Enduring People

Alfred Longley Riggs. Wicoie Wowapi: Wowapi Pehanpi Kin/ The Word Book Wall Roll. New York: Published for the Dakota Mission by the American Tract Society, [n.d.]. [view first image] | [view second image]

Alfred Riggs (1837-1916) was a member of a well-known family of missionaries to the Dakota Indians. He developed this Wall Roll to teach Santee Dakota children to read. This classroom aid taught Indian students Dakota vocabulary words with illustrations drawn directly from Euro-American life. This dichotomy continued into the latter part of the twentieth century, as many Indian children looked in vain for visual representations of their own lives in their reading materials.