Findley's Winnebago notebook
Among William Lipkind's papers in the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives there's a large ledger containing a Winnebago vocabulary. The old-fashioned ledger differs from Lipkind's common spiral notebooks, consistently used in his fieldwork in the US and Brazil.
The penmanship doesn't match Lipkind's either.
Written sideways in one of the pages is the name "Wᵐ T. Findley/Winnebago Nebraska," a likely reference to the Presbyterian minister William D. Townsend Findley (24 August 1857–3 December 1903), who proselytized among the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) during the latter part of the 19th century.
According to FamilySearch, Rev. William D. Townsend Findley was born on 24 August 1857, in Dayton, Armstrong, Pennsylvania, and died on 3 December 1903, in Winnebago, Thurston, Nebraska.
In his testimony "From Wigwam to Pulpit: A Red Man's Own Story of His Progress from Darkness to Light," published in Missionary Review of the World (1915), Henry Roe Cloud (1884-1950), a renowned Winnebago intellectual, mentions Rev. William T. Findley as the minister who told him, "for the first time, about Jesus Christ":
"One dark night, when I was about thirteen years old, I was awakened long after midnight, by an officer of the school, who told me to go downstairs, for a man wanted to see me. When I went down I found the Rev. William T. Findley, a Presbyterian minister, the same man who conducted the meetings at the white house [the mission's church], and who used to come sometimes to our log cabin and wigwam village in the woods near the river. On the previous "Cross Day" the lesson at the Sunday-school had been on "Christ Before Pilate," when Pilate had been asked the difficult question as to what he would do with Jesus. My teacher, Mrs. Findley, asked each of us Indian boys to write on a piece of paper what we would do with Jesus. My answer was that I would like to be His friend, and this led Mr. Findley to call upon me that memorable night.
We sat down upon the grass, and Mr. Findley told me, for the first time, about Jesus Christ, as one who had a real claim upon my friendship. I felt a strange constraint to accept this new spirit-friend."
Since, according to his own estimates, Henry Roe Cloud was born "some time in the winter of 1884," the meeting must have taken place place around 1897, when Roe was 13 years old.
Findley's experience among the Winnebago makes it quite likely that he was the author of the vocabulary in the ledger that bears his name. He apparently would go on to spend the rest of his life in the region as, according to FamilySearch, "[H]e died on 3 December 1903, in Winnebago, Thurston, Nebraska, United States, at the age of 46, and was buried in Winnebago Cemetery, Winnebago, Thurston, Nebraska, United States."
