ere the Pembina
river cuts the international boundary line in its course to the
southeast to join the Red River of the North in its course to Hudson's
bay.

Sixty years ago, in this place, encircled by the wood-crowned mountain
and the forest-lined river and prairies, rich as the gardens of the
gods, there stood a village and trading post of considerable
importance, named after the patron saint of the Roman Catholic church,
in its midst--St. Joseph--commonly called St. Joe. It was a busy,
bustling town, with a mixed population of 1,500. Most of these dwelt in
tents of skin. There were, also, two or three large trading posts and
thirty houses, built of large, hewn timbers mudded smoothly within and
without and roofed with shingles. Some of these were neat and pretty;
one had window-shutters. It was the center of an extensive fur trade
with the Indian tribes of the Missouri river. Many thousands of buffalo
and other skins were shipped annually to St. Paul in carts. Sometimes a
train of four hundred of these wooden carts started together for St.
Paul, a distance of four hundred miles.

But old things have passed away. The village of old St. Joe is now
marked only by some cellar excavations. It possesses, however, a sad
interest as the scene of the martyrdom of Protestant missionaries on
this once wild frontier, then so far removed from the abodes of
civilization.

James Tanner was a converted half-breed, who with his wife labored, in
1849, as a missionary at Lake Winnibogosh, Minnesota. His father had
been stolen, when a lad, from his Kentucky home, by the Indians. Near
the close of 1849 he visited a brother in the Pembina region. He became
so deeply interested in the ignorant condition of the people there,
that he made a tour of the East in their behalf. He visited New York,
Washington and other cities, and awakened considerable interest in
behalf of the natives of this region. While east he became a member of
the Baptist Church. He returned to St. Joe, in 1852, accompanied by a
young man named Benjamin Terry, of St. Paul, to open a mission among
the Pembina Chippewas and half breeds under the auspices of the Baptist
Missionary Society. Terry was very slight and youthful in appearance,
quiet and retiring in disposition and was long spoken of, by the
half-breeds, as "Tanner's Boy." They visited the Red River (Selkirk)
settlement (now Winnipeg). While there, Terry wooed and won one of the
daughters of the Selkirk settle