At Lac qui Parle, missionaries introduced cultural innovations including deep-furrow agriculture, cloth manufacture, and literacy, but they had no power to compel adoption, and the federal government had not yet begun the coercive cultural change later imposed on reservations. Wahpeton people remained in control of their lives, choosing aspects of western culture that suited them as Dakota people adapted resourcefully, counseled together, and made decisions for the survival and well-being of their kin. Missionaries were disappointed that Dakota people adopted elements of western culture more readily than Christianity, and change came slowly, but over two decades, as the natural environment changed and outsider settlement in Minnesota increased, some Dakota people altered parts of their traditional lifeways. Simon Anawangmani, a warrior, took up farming in 1840 to supplement his family's hunting and gathering and often had more to share with relatives in hard times. On August 26, 1854, Stephen Riggs reported to Gov. Willis Gorman that several mostly young men with small families, some advancing in civilization and education and some wearing white men's clothes, were arranging separate farms at Hazlewood and had themselves called for a new mission station there. These families from Lac qui Parle were recognized in 1856 as the Hazlewood Republic, an autonomous band of Christian farmers, and in 1862 they formed the nucleus of the Peace Party, opposing the Dakota War and helping settlers.