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The Indians
The people of America are determined to
press the Indian problem to a speedy solution. Provision has
been made for giving lands in severalty, and the next great
movement should be to induce the Government to provide
secular education, and the churches to furnish religious
instruction to all the Indians. The American Missionary
Association, during the year, has responded to this new
impulse by enlarging its work—in the opening of new
stations, in the erection of new buildings, and in the
appointment of more missionaries and teachers.
At the Santee Agency, Nebraska, our oldest mission station
and school has had marked prosperity in its normal,
theological and industrial departments, and, better than
all, in a deep and wide-spread religious interest that has
pervaded the school and the church. The new building, named
Whitney Hall—from its giver—has been erected, affording
accommodations for twenty-two of the larger and more
advanced pupils, and furnishing rooms for the treasurer's
family. A liberal gift from Mrs. Henry Perkins, of Hartford,
Conn., provides, for the present at least, for the running
expenses of the Boys' Hall, and, in appreciation of the
gift, and of the interest in the school which the gift
implies, the building will hereafter be called Perkins Hall.
At Oahe, Dakota, on the beautiful Peoria Bottom, both the
school and church have prospered. The school is crowded to
its utmost capacity and a greater number of pupils has been
granted in the contract with the Government. A new building
is urgently called for. The closing exercises of the school
were attended by a picturesque group of three or four
hundred Indians, who were encamped around the station. Some
of these came a hundred and twenty-five miles to attend the
exercises.
One marked feature in the enlargement of the work has been
the opening of two more Central Stations: one at Rosebud
Agency, the other located at Fort Yates, near the junction
of the Grand River with the Missouri. The new mission house
has been built, and by the aid of special gifts from
benevolent friends at the East, a commodious building has
been erected for a hospital.
A peculiar and very interesting feature of our Indian work
is the out-stations, located remote from the Central
Stations. These stations, numbering twenty-one, have been
hindered and also enlarged during the past year. The
hindrance came from the interference of the Government. In
its well-intended zeal for the introduction of the English
language, it surpassed the limits which experience had
fixed, by requiring that the vernacular should not be
taught, nor even spoken, in any Indian schools on the
Reservation including these mission stations, which were
wholly sustained by benevolent funds. Under this ruling,
thirteen stations were closed from September to January. But
the remonstrances coming from almost every denomination of
Christians in the land induced the Government to modify its
orders, and the schools have all been re-opened.
Some new buildings have been erected on this part of the
field—a new house for dwelling and school on the Grand
River, and a cheap structure at the Cheyenne River Agency,
in which religious services are held at the times for the
disbursement of the rations, when large numbers of the
Indians assemble and remain for many days. A new impulse has
been given to this out-station work by contributions
received at one of the missionary meetings in Northfield,
Mass. Four new stations were provided for at that time by
the contribution of $400 for a building at each station, and
$300 for the support of the teacher. One was the gift of Mr.
Moody, another of Mr. Sankey, whose names these two stations
will bear.
Fort Berthold, in the northern part of Dakota, has
authorization from the Government for a larger number of
pupils under contract than last year. But our exigencies
require for this only a few and inexpensive repairs and
additions to be made on the buildings.
The Skokomish mission continues its stable progress. The
missionary, Rev. Myron Eells, has been tempted during the
past year by several calls to enter more lucrative fields of
service, but his attachment to the work, begun by his most
honored father, and continued by himself, is so great that
he prefers to remain with his people, and to aid them in
their progress in civil and Christian life.
The Indian school at Santa Fé, New Mexico, has had some
changes, but the arrangement between the Association and the
trustees is continued, and the school, under the charge of
Prof. Elmore Chase, maintains its useful service in the
training of the children of the Apaches, one of the most
hopeful and promising tribes of Indians on the continent.
Report On Indian
Work
It is not the intention of your committee to
spend more than a moment of the time
allotted to it in speaking of the details of
the work of this Association among the
Indian tribes.
It is a pleasure to note in the Executive
Committee's report that it is in the fullest
sympathy with the increased and increasing
interest in the solution of our Indian
problem. It has more scholars under its care
than ever before, and is steadily increasing
its buildings and its facilities for doing
its work. The four new stations provided for
at the Northfield gathering call especially
for our gratitude. But why enlarge upon
these particulars?
The work of this Association has been spread
before the Christian world in so many
reports that all know of its great success.
Its preachers and teachers, who have given
their lives to this work with such courage
and devotion, are also known, and it only
needs to be said in a word, that the year
that has closed and whose review is now
being taken, has been one of great blessing
and power. We approve of what it has done
and we commend it for the future without
reserve.
We would rather occupy our time, if we may,
in looking at this whole Indian question,
hoping that we may arouse a more universal
interest, and cause, thereby, to flow into
the treasury of this Society the funds which
shall enable it to enlarge and broaden its
work and hasten the complete Christianizing
of our Indian tribes.
For let it be said while I have your
freshest attention, that it is the religion
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not education
or civilization, that is to solve this
problem; and all I have to say is to lead up
to this thought. Wherever modern
civilization without religion has touched
the barbarian it has been to curse him.
The blood of every American ought to tingle
at the thought of the foul stain upon our
national honor because of the treatment the
Indian has received.
General Sherman has told us that we have
made more than one thousand treaties with
him, but the United States Government has
never kept one of these treaties, if there
was anything to be made by breaking it; and
the Indian has never broken one, unless he
has first had an excuse in some cruel wrong
from the white man. No wonder that the Sioux
have hesitated to sign their treaty. Do you
not blush at one of the reasons for this
hesitation? Because they doubt whether we
can be trusted. This boasted American
Republic is to them a nation of liars.
I am glad to speak for these men who have
been, so cruelly wronged. Here before we had
any rights, they have been steadily driven
back before our civilization as it has
advanced from the Atlantic and Pacific
shores. While our ears have ever been open
to the cry of distress the world over, the
silent Indian moan has passed, too often
unheeded. We have made him a prisoner upon
the reservation, and when we have wanted his
land we have taken it and put him on some we
did not want just then. His appeal, when in
suffering and distress, has been stifled by
those who can make the most money out of him
as he is; and if hungry and in desperation
he leaves his reservation, we shoot him. We
have put him in the control of an agent,
whose authority is as absolute as the
Czar's. We have kept from him the motive to
be different and he has been literally a man
without a country and without a hope.
Multitudes of people say, "Oh, yes, the
Indian has been wronged," but it makes very
little impression upon them. It is much the
same feeling that the worldly man has who
acknowledges, in a general way, that he is a
sinner, but it does not touch him
sufficiently to lead him to act. Will you
bear with me in giving some facts, with the
hope that all may feel that this is not a
merely sentimental, indefinite sort of a
subject for philanthropists and "cranks,"
and a few women, but one in which each of us
has some personal responsibility. He is your
brother and mine, in need, and we owe him a
duty. Some years ago Bishop Whipple went to
Washington pleading in vain for the Indians
in Minnesota. After some days' delay the
Secretary of War said to a friend, "What
does the Bishop want? If he comes to tell us
that our Indian system is a sink of
iniquity, tell him we all know it. Tell him
also--and this is why I recall this fact,
more true than when it was first
spoken--tell him also that the United States
never cures a wrong until the people demand
it; and when the hearts of the people are
reached the Indian will be saved." Then let
us try to arouse the people to demand it.
And I beg you to notice, that the wrongs are
not of the past, but of the present. Those
who say otherwise have either not examined
the facts or else they are deceived. While
there has been much progress made since
General Grant's administration, the
machinery of our Indian affairs in its last
analysis seems to be largely yet a scheme to
plunder the Indian at every point. Its
mechanism is so complicated that there are
comparatively few who understand the wrong,
and these seem almost powerless. While there
are many men in the Government employ of the
best intentions, there is always a "wicked
partner" who contrives, somehow, to rob the
Indian.
He is wronged:
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In his person. Let me
illustrate. Go with me to Nebraska. An
Indian, upon one of our reservations,
injured his knee slightly. There was a
physician who was paid a good salary by
the Government, but when asked to visit
this man he refused to go. The poor
sufferer grew worse and worse, till the
limb became rotten and decayed: his
cries could be heard far and near in the
still air, yet the physician heeded not.
A friend was asked to take a hatchet and
chop off the limb. In agony he died, the
physician never having once visited him.
That was a brother of yours in America.
A short time ago, in Southern
California, lived an Indian in comfort,
upon a lot of ten acres upon which he
had paid taxes for years. The land about
him was sold, but no mention was made of
his lot, as his lawyers told him it was
not necessary and the purchasers
promised he should never be disturbed.
Within a few months, however, a suit was
brought for his ejectment, and in the
midst of the rainy season, this old man
of 80, his wife and another woman of
nearly the same age, were put out of
their home. They were thrust with great
cruelty into a wagon, left by the
roadside without shelter and without any
food, except parched corn, for eight
days. The wife died of pneumonia, and
the old man is a homeless wanderer. Why
this cruelty? Because there was a spring
of water on his land which the white man
wanted. This was in America.
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In his property. Let me
illustrate again. In North Dakota one of
the tribes asked that they might have
some barns. The request was granted: the
lumber, valued at $3,000, was bought in
Minneapolis, and the freight charges,
which ought to be about $1,500, were
$23,000. A little clerk in Washington
that belongs to the "ring" "fixed it" in
this way.
In the Indian Territory an Indian worked hard all
summer, and in the fall carried his
grain to market, delivered it to an
elevator, and than the owner turned
around and refused to pay him, and the
poor man had to go home without one
cent. It was the worst kind of robbery.
If that man had been a German, or Swede,
or a howling Anarchist of any nation
under the heavens, we would have
protected him, but an Indian has no
rights in America.
A man who has been the private clerk of one of our
highest Government officials was
appointed an Indian Agent. The Indians
on that reservation were having their
lumber taken from them at a price much
less than its value, and notwithstanding
their protests, it went on, the Agent
refusing to listen. They complained then
at Washington, and the Government
appointed one of the most corrupt of men
as an inspector. When he visited the
reservation he asked for the witnesses
at once. They asked for a reasonable
time to get them together. This was
refused and they asked for two days, and
when this was denied they asked for one.
In their dilemma and haste they got one
Indian near-by to testify. The Agent
himself broke down this man's testimony,
because he had been at fault two or
three years before, in a way which did
not affect, in the slightest degree, his
statement now, and the inspector at once
returned to Washington and decided
against the Indians! It was a fraud and
a farce.
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3. In the helpless
condition in which we have left him, he
has a new wrong now, because when he
votes he is of political importance. If
you will read "Lend A Hand," you will
find an illustration where the Indians
in North Carolina had become citizens
and had votes, and because those votes
were cast against the powers that be,
they were willing to go all lengths,
even to closing the schools, in order to
accomplish their purposes.
And this is to be more and more a vital question, as
more and more they are becoming
citizens. We talk about "dirty
politics!" Is it not a proper name,
when, in order to get votes, schools are
to be closed and children left in
ignorance?
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4. There is no
earnestness of purpose in a majority of
the Government officials to protect him
from wrong. To show exactly what I mean;
recently, in Southern California a lot
of land grabbers took from the Indians
their land. When private individuals
ascertained the facts, complaint was
made and an order was issued for their
removal. The time fixed was March 1st.
On July 1st inquiry was made, and the
agent said the order had been carried
out. But individual examination showed
the settlers to be there still, and five
saloons open in defiance of law.
In a similar way recently,
the representative of one of our
philanthropic societies had arrested an
agent who had committed a crime. It was so
clear a case that he was found guilty at
once. Let us hear this travesty of justice.
The law required a fine and imprisonment
both. The fine was placed by the Judge at
twenty-five cents, which the Judge paid
himself. The term of the imprisonment he
made one day, and told the Sheriff to allow
the jail, in this case, to be the agent's
own comfortable home. Shall we be obliged to
constitute Law and Order Leagues to see that
the laws of the United States are executed?
This is the awful background as the starting
point for this discussion. Some people
question whether or not there is a personal
devil. If any man would study the Indian
question he would be convinced there was not
one only, but a whole legion of them.
But, friends, so long as these are facts,
there is an Indian question, and there is
going to be one until these things are
settled. There is nothing ever settled in
this world till it is settled right. In the
progress that has been made in opening up
the possibility to the Indian, of civil
rights, we may be inclined to relax our
efforts in his behalf. The passage of the
Dawes Land in Severalty Bill was, indeed, a
great day for the Indian. It opens the door
by which he can have a home on land of his
own and become a citizen, with all the
privileges thereof. Here, at last, is solid
ground upon which he can stand. But we must
not forget that that bill is but the
commencement of what is needed. He is but a
child with new rights truly, but in his
ignorance he does not know what they are. He
is surrounded by enemies as before. While he
has the law and the courts, the nearest
Judge may be one hundred to three hundred
miles away. He must be brought more under
the care of the judiciary.
The Indian Bureau, as at present
constituted, cannot do for him what he
needs. This is a part of the political
machine, and its appointees are selected
because they have done good service as ward
politicians. It has been well said that such
a Bureau is no more fitted to lead these
people aright than Pharaoh was to lead the
Israelites out of their house of bondage.
To show how even some good men fail to
comprehend the situation is evidenced by the
proposed "Morgan Bill," which in its
practical working would give the Indian
Agent--already a despot--even more power
than before. By that bill he is made chief
Judge, with two Indians as associate Judges;
and the agent is given power to select the
jurors when a jury is demanded. What a
travesty of justice, to make the present
agent a judge and give him power to select
the jury. With such a bill the friend of the
Indian may well say: Oh Lord, how long! We
must demand that all Indians, whether on the
reservations or not, shall be given full
protection of righteous laws, and that the
tyrannical methods of the past shall forever
cease.
But, with the solid ground of the Dawes bill
beneath, and the further protection of the
judiciary certain to be given at no distant
day, he needs, more than all else besides,
the Christian school and the Christian
church. He now has "Land." If we are earnest
and persistent he will soon have "Law." But,
most of all, does he need "Light," and that
light which is from above. All the laws we
may enact the next hundred years will not
change the character of a single Indian. To
a considerable extent he is a superstitious
pagan still. He needs Jesus Christ. He needs
to learn the Fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. As it is a part of the
Indian man's religious belief that his god
does not want him to work and he will be
punished if he does, it is especially
necessary to touch his religious nature
first. When he accepts the Christian's God,
then he will be ready to go to work for
himself. The taking up of the hoe and the
spade is his first confession of faith. What
has already been accomplished through the
new laws giving him his civil rights, puts
an added responsibility upon the church. It
is the Indian's last chance. Our further
neglect is his certain death. Shall we leave
him with his "Land and Law" without God? Do
we realize that we have lived with these
original owners of our soil for more than
two and one-half centuries, and yet, today,
there are sixty tribes who have no knowledge
of Jesus the Christ? Shall we allow longer
such a stain? I know well the pressure of
various claims in religious work at home and
abroad, but in the light of what has been
said, is not the duty of Christianizing the
Indians a debt of honor, a "preferred
claim," which should take precedence over
others? In this way only can we partially
atone for our "century of dishonor."
The history of the past few months, and the
famous order with regard to the use of the
vernacular, ought to arouse the church to
new efforts. The probable instigators of it
are known to friends of the Indian, and it
shows the necessity of increased activity on
our part. The order was despotism itself,
and would have done credit to a Russian
Czar. It was a blow aimed at the Indian's
highest religious interests, and the
President of the United States, instead of
explaining and translating it, should have
recalled it as an act unworthy of Christian
civilization in the nineteenth century.
Everything is still done to hamper the
Protestant missionary work. The A.M.A. has a
theological school, and the Government
allows (?) it to teach a theological class;
but, when the students are chosen and ready
to come, the Government agents prohibit
their coming. We have a young man who has
been waiting for a year for a permit from
Washington. The same obstructive policy
meets us when we try to get pupils under the
Government school contracts. And even after
we have obtained the order from the
Government to procure the pupils from a
given agency, the Government will, at the
same time, instruct the Agent to let no
pupils go till the Government schools are
full. In this way the Christian Indian
parent has taken from him the right to send
his child where he desires, for the
Government stops his rations and annuities
if he refuses to send to the Government
school. The vote recently passed at the
General Association of Congregational
Churches in South Dakota ought to be taken
up and echoed through the land, protesting
against the assumption, by the
Administration, of the right to control our
missionary operations, dictating what pupils
may attend our schools, or what language may
be used in them.
In conclusion, let us gird ourselves anew
for the struggle that is before us, to fight
the enemies of Protestant Christianity,
entrenched as they are in our Government,
the Indian ring, the cattle kings, the land
grabbers and the thousands whose selfish
interest it is to keep the Indian ignorant.
This is no holiday affair; it means earnest,
determined work. We must give the Indian the
Gospel of the Son of God as his only
safeguard for the life that now is as well
as that which is to come. Civilization,
education alone can never lift the Indian to
his true position. You may take a rough
block of marble and chisel it never so
skillfully into some matchless human form,
and it is marble still, cold and lifeless.
Take the rude Indian and educate him, and he
is still an Indian. He must be quickened by
the breath of the Almighty before he will
live. It is religion alone which can lead
him to the truest manhood, which will
quicken his slumbering intellectual
faculties and prevent him from being an easy
prey to the selfishness and sinfulness of
men. Let us support this society in its
grand work, by our money, our sympathy and
our prayers. Let us join in the fight, and
by-and-by we will share in the triumph. Dr.
Strieby, you can remember just before this
society was formed, that it was a disgrace
to be an abolitionist. It is a glory now.
The day is not far distant, yea, its light
is already breaking in the western sky, when
it will be considered equally glorious to
have helped save our Indian brother, by
leading him back again to God. And while we
are doing it, and as a means to this end, we
must try to get this Indian ring by the
throat and strangle its life. It has lived
long enough on the blood of the Indian; let
it die, and we will never say "the Lord have
mercy on its soul," for it has none. If you
have never been interested in the matter
before, begin to-day; if you have never
helped before, help now. Get in somewhere,
get in quick, get in all over; do not stand
around the edges looking on and criticizing
others; be sure you get your pocket book
open, and send the Treasurer of the
Association double what you did last year;
do something, do anything. We have been
playing at missions long enough. With our
great wealth it is a disgrace that this work
was not completed long ago. With an aroused
and awakened Church the whole problem will
be solved, for there will be no more
Indians, but only brothers and sisters in
Christ Jesus.
Let us fear nothing, God is with us and we
shall triumph. "Truth forever on the
scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet
that scaffold sways the future, and behind
the dim unknown Standeth God within the
shadow, keeping watch above his own."
The Hopefulness of Indian
Missions, As Seen in the Light of
History
The contemplation of the past sometimes
weakens the energies for action in the
present. But when the present is a
consequence of the past, we can scarcely do
our work rightly if we neglect the lessons
of experience.
The history of missions among our Indian
tribes has lessons in it which may be wisely
heeded.
When the first settlers of this country left
their ships, which had been freighted with
the destinies of a continent, and faced the
perils of a wilderness, they met at the
outset a strange people. No one knew who
they were, nor how many; they themselves did
not know. They had no history. They had
become vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart was darkened. Ignorant as to
the past, their theory of the future was
vague and shadowy. Their spirits would exist
after death. The heroic and brave and worthy
would go to the happy hunting-grounds, where
would be pleasant climate and fair weather,
and where abundance would be exhaustless and
satisfactions complete. The unworthy would
wander without in a state of misfortune and
restless discontent. For their religious
ceremonies, a priesthood existed, and those
who composed this were devoted to it from
their childhood. The howling dervishes of
Turkey and the pagan priests of the South
Sea Islands, may be compared with the
pow-wows of the North American Indians.
It is impossible to estimate the number of
this aboriginal population. Doubtless the
popular impression is an exaggerated one. It
would be safe to say that, all told, there
were never at any one period, more than half
a million of these people, occupying the
present territory of the United States from
ocean to ocean. They were widely scattered,
so that there were great stretches of forest
and prairie lying between the different
tribes.
There were many groups, distinct in their
languages, which yet bore a general
resemblance to each other in construction,
so that the several tribes could at least
easily learn to understand each other. I
think that the weight of authority is, that
they belong to one family of nations, and
are derived from one stock, while they
display considerable diversities in language
and customs.
The motive of the early settlers of New
England, which took precedence over all
others--as they declared--was "_a desire to
advance the gospel in these remote parts of
the world, even if they should be but
stepping-stones to those who were to follow
them_." Finding these barbarous tribes here,
the Pilgrim Fathers bartered with them for
peaceable possession, which they did not
always secure. As civilization encroached
upon barbarism, the colonists kept their
homes often only by the defenses of war. But
peace was in the hearts and purposes of the
early settlers.
As early as 1643, the Rev. John Eliot, who
had been educated at the University of
Cambridge, England, and who had come to
Boston, Massachusetts, in 1630, wrote that
he had "been through varieties of
intercourse with the Indians, and had many
solemn discourses with all sorts of nations
of them." It was his theory that they were
the descendants of the lost tribes of
Israel. He acquired their language. It was
an arduous undertaking, but he said "Prayer
and pains through faith in Christ Jesus will
do anything."
In 1660, he had visited all the Indians in
the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies, and
preached the gospel to them, and the first
Indian church was then formed.
In 1661, he had translated the New Testament
into the Indian tongue, and in 1663, the Old
Testament. This Indian Bible was published
at Cambridge, and was the only Bible printed
in America until a much later period.
Besides this, Eliot instituted schools, and
induced large numbers to give up their
savage customs and habits, and to form
themselves into civilized communities.
The zeal of Eliot quickened that of others,
and in 1674, there was a missionary circuit
of 14 villages and 1,100 praying Indians.
At this same date, through the sacrificial
labors of Mr. Thomas Mayhew and his son,
there were 1,500 praying Indians in the
Island of Martha's Vineyard and vicinity.
The next year came war--King Philip's War.
It meant extermination of the whites, or
conquest of the red men. Civilization was
too strong to be resisted by barbarism, and
then began the long catalogue of organized
Indian miseries. The General Court ordered
the removal of the conquered Indians, and
they were pushed away before the aggressive
steps of a stronger race. In 1743, the Rev.
David Brainerd was propagating missions
among the Indians with success in various
places. Idolatrous sacrifices were
altogether abolished; many heathen customs
lost their sanction, and sincere converts
were made whose pious lives and peaceful
deaths attested to the influence of the
spirit of God in their hearts.
At this period of history the Moravian
Church began missions in Pennsylvania among
the Delaware. Christian Rauch soon won the
confidence of the savages and excited their
astonishment. And observing him asleep in
his hut, an Indian said: "This man cannot be
a bad man, he fears no evil, he does not
fear us who are so fierce, but he sleeps in
peace and puts his life in our hands." There
was a remarkable acknowledgment of this
mission in converted souls. The Moravian
Missions in various sections of the country,
from the early date of 1740 until now, have
been characterized by courage, activity,
humility and devotion. In the midst of these
scenes of devastation and murder, the
Moravian missionaries have wandered in
deserts, in mountains, in dens and caves of
the earth, never relinquishing their
purposes, and they have obtained a good
report through faith.
The American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, which began its existence
in 1812, adopted measures in 1815 for
carrying the gospel to the Indians. One
hundred thousand of these people, as untamed
as when the Pilgrims met them at Plymouth,
as ignorant in most respects, and as truly
heathen as were their fathers centuries
before them, were then supposed to be living
east of the Mississippi River. The first
mission was among the Creeks and Cherokees.
Three missionaries and their wives began the
work. In character it was a compound of
mission boarding school and agricultural
college. In eighteen months, the Indian boys
could read the Bible, and nearly a score of
them could write; five converted heathen
were members of the church.
Next, in 1818, missions were begun among the
Chickasaws and the Choctaws. Here, also, the
first work was that of the school. So eager
were the Choctaws for instruction, that
eight children were brought 160 miles across
the country before the missionaries were
ready for them, and in one year from that
date the Choctaw Nation voted to devote to
the schools their entire annuity of six
thousand dollars, from the sale of their
lands to the United States.
The missionaries were subject to unceasing
hindrances from renegade whites, who are
always on the borders of civilization, and
have usually been the enemies of
missionaries.
But among the Cherokees no year passed
without conversions. Those who appeared to
the missionaries so wild and forbidding that
they were received with fear, came under the
gospel power and were clothed and in their
right mind. In six years the Church had
largely increased. Indians traveled a score
of miles to attend the services. As yet,
there was no Cherokee written language. This
mission was eight years old when the four
gospels were translated into the Cherokee
tongue, and in three or four years more,
one-half the nation could read. There were
now among the Cherokees and the Choctaws,
eighteen missionary stations.
In 1826, the Board began work among eight
other tribes in different parts of the
country.
It next took charge of the Stockbridge
tribe, whose ancestors had enjoyed the
ministry of the celebrated Dr. Jonathan
Edwards. They were originally in
Massachusetts. They were pushed back
hundreds of miles to Central New York, then
pushed further back hundreds of miles to
Indiana; then pushed still further back
hundreds of miles to Michigan, and finally
pushed back once more and allowed to rest in
the remote West--in Minnesota. During all
these cruel removals, they had themselves
kept alive a school, and had among them
exemplary Christians. Now, after one hundred
years of such history, the American Board
put a mission among them. The church
survived, and the whole settlement took in
the spirit of civilization and took on its
forms. A year later were added the missions
to the Chickasaws, and now, about the close
of the year 1830, it seemed as if the
fruitage of this Indian missionary
consecration were at hand. Half the
Cherokees in Georgia could read. Civilized
life had taken firm hold on them, and they
were governing themselves with Christian
laws. Eight churches were in life and power
among them. The Chickasaws had their church
in Arkansas, and the Cherokees there,
another. The churches of the Choctaws had
received to their communions that year two
hundred and fifty members who were hopefully
converted, and in all the Indian Missions of
the American Board there was a steady
increase of hopefulness, while the members
in tribes were also increasing.
"Everywhere the fruits of the missions among
the Indians were abundant. No more docile
pagans were ever approached with the gospel
than some of these peoples."
Nevertheless, from this period of time,
Indian missions cease to be successful for a
generation.
The mission to the Chickasaws was abandoned
in 1834; to the Osages in 1836; to the
Stockbridge tribe, in 1848; to the Choctaws,
in 1859; to the Tuscarora, in 1860; and to
the Cherokees, in 1860; until at last but a
single mission remained, that among the
great Sioux tribes or the Dakotas. Twelve
missions and forty-five churches, which
reached about one hundred thousand Indians
abandoned in twenty-six years!
The question now asks itself: "Why were not
these hopeful missionary efforts to these
pagan tribes more permanent? What turned the
tide of success and left the missions
stranded?" Here comes the story of dishonor.
The Indian was here when the white man came.
The Christian white men recognized the
Indian's right of occupancy as a right. They
did not hold that half a million
savages had a right to dispute the ultimate
sovereignty of civilization, but they agreed
that when civilization should move forward
and barbarism should retreat, the Indian
should have Christian justice and not
un-Christian wrong. He should not be
oppressed. He should be treated equitably.
His rights should be acknowledged, and if
the demands of the greater number and the
greater life asked for a surrender of his
rights as original occupant, then there
should be fair consideration, compensation
and honesty. It may be the providence of God
that barbarism shall be crowded out by
civilization, that the Indian's
hunting-ground shall yield to the railway
and the marts of commerce. It may not be
right that a continent of eight millions of
square miles, more than twice the size of
all Europe, fair and beautiful and rich in
resources, should be kept for game preserves
for half a million savages. It is right that
the forest should fall to make room for New
England villages, with their churches and
school-houses and industry. The rude stage
of existence must make way for a higher. But
the higher has no right to be wicked in its
onward movement. It has no right to rob or
cheat. It has no right to make compacts and
violate them. It has no right to break its
faith with the weak. It has no right to
outrage the principle of justice.
The history of Indian wrongs by the whites
in the inevitable advances of civilization,
need not be recited here. Unscrupulous greed
has hovered about the Indian reservations as
waiting buzzards hover near the wounded
creature upon whose flesh they would fatten.
Lands guaranteed to the Indians were
encroached upon by white people. These
encroachments resisted led to wars. Savage
nature, wrought up with a sense of injustice
and burning for revenge, swept down upon
guilty intruders and innocent settlers
alike, with indiscriminate massacre. Then
the Government called out its soldiery, and
Indian wars with less than half a million
savages have cost the United States
$500,000,000, enough to plant missions among
all the heathen tribes of the world.
Frontiersmen who have coveted the Indian
reservations, when they already had more
land than they could use, without the
possessions which they desired to secure,
have satisfied themselves that a degraded
race of savages had no rights which they
were bound to respect; and how could the
missionaries prosper, when the ignorant saw
such exhibitions of character and life on
the part of the people from whom the
missionaries came? These wars have led to
cancellation of treaties, because of inhuman
violence, and then, the reservation taken
up, the savage is removed still further
back. Thus the Indians have been planted and
uptorn, re-planted and uptorn, and
re-planted, until they are now removed, not
hundreds of miles from the grounds of their
fathers, but thousands of miles. A tree will
not grow if uprooted and transplanted every
few months, and this will in brief tell us
why the missions which began with the
Moravians and the American Board, and which
were so hopeful, were one after another
abandoned. These constant removals were as
disastrous to missions as they were unjust
to the Indians. It was remarkable that there
should be the degree of spiritual fruitage
through all this period of Indian removals
and Indian wrongs, which characterizes the
labors of those who often, at peril of life,
labored on for the red man's salvation.
The American Board began its work among the
Dakotas in 1835. It was one of the most
powerful tribes on the continent, numbering
over 40,000. Their hunting-grounds extended
from the 43 degrees to the 49 degrees of
latitude, and from the Mississippi River to
the Black Hills west of the Missouri. This
was a territory equal in extent to that of
Scotland. The name Dakota means the "allied
one," and indicates the bands that united to
form the tribe. The missionary work, which
was initiated under Rev. T.S. Williamson,
Rev. J.D. Stevens and Rev. S. Riggs, with
their wives, and lady teachers, began
prosperously, and in six years forty-nine
persons were formed into a church. For some
years the accessions were mostly women. The
acceptance of Christianity was more
difficult to the men. The change in the
manner of life involved in it was greater.
It meant entire reconstruction of their
ideas of life, and in the manner of it, the
abandonment of polygamy, the adoption of
civilized dress, the spirit of obedience and
industry. These were the contradictions to
centuries of tradition and custom, and meant
to an Indian brave the becoming like a
woman. At length, however, the gospel did
take hold of the warriors. The work and the
faith of the missionaries were thoroughly
tested by the opposition this aroused, but
the gospel won its way. At last, when the
rumors of the Civil War between the Northern
and the Southern States came to the Indians,
it set their hearts aflame for battle with
their white neighbors, whose encroachment
they resented.
Then broke out the dreadful Minnesota
massacre, when the missionaries were
compelled to flee for their lives, and the
missions were abandoned. Twelve hundred
United States troops at last scattered the
savages and took about five hundred
prisoners. They were incarcerated at the
Mankato prison in Minnesota, where
thirty-eight were hung in one day. The
remainder in prison were visited by the
missionaries, and the prison house became a
chapel. Soon it was a Bethel, a great
revival began, which lasted all winter, and
in the spring, two hundred Dakotas were
added to the church in one day, and when
they were transferred to the prison at
Davenport, they went out in chains, but
singing the 51st Psalm to the tune of Old
Hundred. They carried the fire from heaven
with them to the Davenport prison, and when,
in 1886, the prisoners were released, more
than four hundred were hopefully converted,
and when they joined their families in
Nebraska, these gathered together in one
communion, and called it the Pilgrim
Church--about two hundred years after John
Eliot, of the Pilgrims at Boston, gave his
life to the Indians of Massachusetts. A
people as remote from civilization as were
the Indians of 1640 founded their Pilgrim
Church.
Now at length the Dakota missionaries began
a new life among these tribes. By the
wonderful and strange providence of God,
there had been prepared in prison native
teachers and preachers, and the way was
opened for expansive work.
After a period of ten years of this work,
the American Board transferred its Indian
missions to the American Missionary
Association. This Association, thirty years
previous to this, had Indian missions in the
northwest, with twenty-one missionaries.
Various causes had led to their
abandonment, the chief one being the demands
of the newly-emancipated slaves after the
war.
Six years before the transfer of these
missions to this Association, it had an
interest in Indian missions in Washington
Territory and in Minnesota. The transfer on
the part of the American Board brought under
our care the mission at Santee, Nebraska,
with its large school and industrial
departments; the Fort Sully mission, those
on the Cheyenne River, and at Fort Berthold,
Dakota. These have since been developed,
until now, the facilities for missionary
work and the force of workers have been
greatly increased.
There are at the present time in the United
States, exclusive of Alaska, 247,761
Indians. Our missions are chiefly among
40,000 of the Sioux or Dakota tribe, in the
great Dakota reservation; among the Ponca in
Nebraska, and the Gros Ventre and Mandans on
the Northern Missouri.
At the Santee Normal School, we are teaching
about two hundred Indian youth of both
sexes. We are instructing them also in
agriculture and trades. There is a
department for theological study, where
missionaries are prepared from the Indians
for the Indians. Sixty-one missionaries and
teachers have caught the spirit of Eliot,
Edwards and Brainerd, and are earnestly
serving Christ among these tribes.
A Christian civilization is wedging its way
in until eighty thousand Indians are now
clothed in civilized dress. Forty thousand
have learned to read English, and nearly
thirty thousand are living in houses. There
are forty thousand Indian children of school
age, and about fourteen thousand enrolled as
pupils, leaving between twenty and thirty
thousand children for whom as yet there are
no schools provided. Sixty-eight tribes
remain without a church, a school or a
missionary, absolutely destitute of
Christian light.
It has been said that these heathen tribes
are a vanishing people, destined to decline
and finally to disappear. Certainly their
condition for two hundred years has tended
to decrease them, and yet, when Columbus
discovered America there were not double the
number that there are now. In happier
conditions than formerly, there is a decided
increase in the Indian population, as there
is betterment in their customs and modes of
life. Their missionary teachers find them
with the ancient characteristics
unchanged--rude in thought, though with a
marked intellectual power. The open book of
nature, the Indian knows well. He will tell
you the habits of bird and beast and tree
and plant. He will tell you the time of day
by looking at a leaf. But the life of
civilization comes hard to him. He does not
know the value of time, nor the value of
money. It is hard for him to measure his
days or to provide for the future, or to
care for to-morrow. He has not the heredity
of civilization and Christianity, hence
missionary work sometimes seems slow in
progress, but it is surely gaining upon this
almost dead past of half a century. Thirteen
Missionary Boards are now pressing forward
to teach them the way and the truth and the
life.
The doors are wide open as never before. The
hearts of the Indians are friendly as never
for two hundred years. If the majority of
them show as yet no deep desire for that
which Christianity brings, they are not, in
this, dissimilar from other heathen. But
this desire is growing. The Government at
last is seeking to redeem the past. It has
appropriated for the Indian tribes
reservations larger, in square miles, than
the whole German Empire. The Republic of
France must re-annex considerable of its
ancient possessions before it will own as
much land as is now the property of the
Indians in the United States. Under these
conditions, the hopefulness of the past
argues for a more hopeful future of
missionary work.
Our mission is to raise up teachers,
preachers, interpreters and a native agency
that shall work for the regeneration of
their own people. It is a mission that is
hopeful.
It means a good deal to teach those who come
to us in moccasins and blankets, arithmetic,
algebra, the elements of geometry, physical
geography, natural philosophy and mental
science. It means much to give them an
industrial training that shall show them how
to live rightly, and enable them to do it.
But above all, in all and through all, is
the gospel of Christ, which is the power of
God to their salvation. Perhaps no missions
to the heathen have been more blessed than
many of these to the wild, painted savages.
Thousands who were barbarian in heart and in
deed are now true disciples of Christ. Where
heathenism held its revels, now the
church-bell calls the red man to prayer, and
the war-whoop is being exchanged for songs
of Christian praise. Wigwams are being
transformed into houses, and coarse and
cruel people are illustrating home piety and
virtues. The prayers of God's people have
been well directed, and there is every
reason why they should be increased, the
wilderness and the solitary place being made
glad for them. The missionaries among them
behold the time when God will make for them
a way, even a highway, that shall be the way
of holiness, in which the redeemed shall
walk and the ransomed of the Lord shall come
to Zion with joy and gladness.
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American Missionary Association, 1888-1895
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