each, attached to the wood trellis of the tent, hung fur pouches of
various shapes and sizes, ornamented with beads and containing the
"medicine," which was some trifling article--a bit of bone, stone,
seed, or whatever, through some special circumstance, had come to be
accepted by them as their charm, or "medicine," to ward off sickness
and evil--to bring them the good offices and protection of the good
spirits.
The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented,
apron-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few
moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The
medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the
dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience,
from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned
or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and
forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those
being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were
expected not to give up, if possible, until the end.
The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost
incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some
members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the
dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress.
Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand
generations of savagery back of them?
Let another picture answer.
* * * * *
Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground,
stands a little Christian church--plain but beautiful. From it seem
to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined
to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great
All-father.
It is prayer-meeting night. The bell is rung and the audience begins
to gather. A number of alert, intelligent-looking, English-speaking
young men come in together.
One of these, an earnest Christian, will interpret, sentence by
sentence, the Scripture reading and the message of the speaker.
Some older men and women come next, heavy of feature and step. One
is blind and feels his way to his accustomed seat.
Old women come wrapped in blankets, their faces seamed with toil
and showing the hardness of heathen customs, when sickness and death,
unrelieved by faith, wear the heart and waste the body.
Mothers come with bright-eyed babies tucked in their blankets, or
leading children of various sizes--also some young women, beautiful
and intelligent--and a few white employees from the Agency--and the
workers from the Mission--until the room is nearly filled.
The meeting is opened with prayer, and a quiet fills the room as
all are brought into the very presence of the loving Father.
And then follows the singing, "My faith looks up to Thee,"
"Lovingly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me."
Did ever the words seem so fraught with meaning, so filled with
the yearning love of the Master?
The message that follows is one of passionate earnestness, as the
missionary seeks to make clear to them the meaning of purity of
life--of faith in God, of His saving, keeping power.
At its close an Indian elder, using his own soft, Indian language,
pleads in prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead his
people.
Another rises and says through the interpreter: "When I was away at
school I learned about Christianity, but when I came back to the
reservation and the old Indian life called me, there was none to
help, and I went back. I did not work; I gambled, I drank; liquor,
I went to the medicine dance--I was very bad. Then came the Mission
and it got hold of me. The missionary brought me to Christ. Now I cut
off those bad ways. I am happy. I have a Christian home with my wife
and my child."
This testimony was true. All there knew him to be an industrious,
upright, manly Indian, one of the two hundred members of this church,
all of whom had, in a few years, been led from the old life of
degradation to the pleasant, wholesome peace of the Jesus Road.
* * * * *
"Missionary work begins with evangelism. It does not end there.
The people must hear the good news of salvation. So we have spent
much time 'to make the message plain.' It has taken years of labor
to put the gist of the Gospel into several Indian languages having
no literature, that the people might get the word of God. One had
to work to get a clue to a word through a crude interpreter; or by
making signs or motions where, as often, no interpreter was at hand,
and then guessing between several possible meanings. In this way one
would in time get a knowledge of the commonplace things in a language.
Then there must follow the task of finding equivalents for Christian
terms in the speech of a people without Christian ideas.
"Difficult as all this work was, it is only a beginning, only
elementary. The message must be applied to all phases of life. A
constant educational process must be kept up to incorporate Christian
ideals into the daily thinking of the people. This is to be done by the
reiterated daily teachings of the schools, and the living example of
the missionary, and of those he can educate to lead the people. A bare
message unrelated to life is like seed scattered on the road or on a
rock. After sowing one must harrow and cultivate and fight insect pests
all the season to get a crop. So a constant process of education, moral,
industrial, hygienic, must go on, or there will be no regenerated,
fruitful characters.
"The old Indian linked his hunting and corn planting and simple
arts to religion. He lived by the help of his gods. We are trying
not to destroy this faith, but to transfer it to the living God,
and to make it 'work by love,' instead of by selfishness. Our
little girls in the Home are learning to keep house and sew and
cook, because it is the work of a child of God to do these things
well. We are trying to teach our neighbors by word and example to
farm and build and make homes in a way that will be becoming to a
redeemed man. They must understand that the Gospel means diligence
in business, honesty, carefulness, co-operation, skill, cleanness
of heart and body, health and prosperity, and any other virtue
that makes life worth living now and always. We think our example
in raising seventy bushels of oats or two hundred bushels of
potatoes to the acre, garden vegetables, improved cattle and hogs,
well-kept horses, small fruits and sheltering trees and pretty
shrubs, in what is classed as a semi-arid land, is a part of the
Gospel of Christ, who came to make all 'deserts blossom as the
rose.'
"When our former Mission school boys are found taking hold of
agricultural work according to present-day methods and earning a
support for their growing families, building their meeting-place,
and making some contributions to the church work abroad, we feel
that the foundation of a Christian community is being laid.
"The clouds return sometimes. There comes a recrudescence of
heathenism. Yet faith sees still the leaven at work. An old man's
daughter went away to our Santee School and returned a believer in
the Christian way. She taught her father what she had learned, and
prayed for him. He yielded to her faith and threw away his fetishes
after a hard struggle with all the past and present environment that
bound him. Then at once his instinct was to make a better home for
his family. He must get away from the heathen village, with its
squalor, and impurity, and idolatry. It is true that environment
does not regenerate the soul, but the renewed soul transforms the
environment. Better conditions are evidence of the new life. On the
contrary, when some fall back to heathenism, they fall into slovenly
attire, ill-kept homes, and neglected fields." [Footnote: Rev. C. L.
Hall, D.D., American Missionary Association.]
Alaska is a post which beyond any other in the American church
demands courage and endurance, both physical and moral.
"The natives of Anvik invited the missionary to visit their
village, 450 miles by water from St. Michael.
"These natives were Ingiliks, partly Indian and partly Eskimo. They
lived in underground houses and were superstitious, dirty, ignorant,
and degraded. Rude buildings were erected for a mission house and the
schoolhouse. In 1894 the first church was erected, the money for it
being a part of the first United Offering of the Women's Auxiliary.
Little by little the people came out of their holes in the earth and
built themselves houses. The community has been physically and morally
transformed. A saw-mill, the gift of a generous Eastern layman, has
been a most practical means of evangelising, not only furnishing
lumber for houses, but healthful occupations for the men. This
transformation has been wrought, not by legislation or civilization
as such, but by the consistent teaching and example of a devoted
Christian man and his splendid helpers. 'Through these long years,
in the loneliness of this far-away station, the missionary has
remained the kind, wise, spiritual shepherd of these native souls
in the wilderness. The mission has pursued high ideals, and has
ministered spiritually and helpfully to a vast region.'
"A gold strike was made at Nome, and with the first rush of eager
prospectors went in a missionary, who aided with his own hands in
the building of the church. Though the saloon men were bidding for
the only available lumber, the bishop got it first to build a
clubhouse for the men, the only competitor of fourteen saloons.
"So he goes back and forth across his great district, up and down
its rivers in the short summer time--formerly by boat or canoe,
but now in a launch, the 'Pelican.' In the winter he is away
across the trackless wilderness, a thousand miles or more, behind
his dogs, cheerily facing hardships and making light of dangers,
carrying his life in his hand as he goes about his daily work.
"Particularly is he interested in the preservation and betterment
of the native races, the Eskimos and the Indians, endangered by
their contact with the white man and their own lack of knowledge.
Everywhere his hand is raised and his voice is heard in their
behalf.
"Alaska is the land of one great river, without which it could
scarcely have been explored--much less occupied and inhabited. The
Yukon is the great highway. Over its waters in the brief summer,
and upon its frozen surface in the winter, go travelers by boat
and sled, and among them the representatives of the church.
Familiar to the dwellers along its banks is the little 'Pelican'
bearing the missionaries, with a half-breed engineer and the
faithful dogs. Everywhere along the river in the summer time may
be found the temporary camps of the Indians, to whom the short
fishing season means food through the long winter for themselves
and their dogs. Here a stop is made at a native camp to baptize a
baby--there a marriage ceremony is performed; a communion service
is held or a call made at a fishing camp to pick up some boys and
take them to a far-away boarding school. The work is as varied as
it is far-reaching. Not a mission point along the river is
neglected, and places which formerly could never be visited by the
hand-paddled canoe now look forward once a year to the coming of
the 'Pelican,' and wait to hear the familiar throbbing of her
motor, as does the New Yorker for his morning mail, or the farmer
for the postman's whistle.
"Fairbanks, the metropolis of central Alaska, was a new mining
camp when the missionary Bishop secured an early entrance for the
church. The log building which was a chapel on Sunday became a
reading-room on week-days for the rough-clad miners. A hospital
was built and it ministered to the sick through the range of a
wide territory. Missions both to white men and to Indians have
spread along the valley of the river on either hand, and now
Fairbanks is the center of what is known as the Tanana Valley
Mission, with half a score of workers, schools and missions,
hospitals and reading rooms, distributing tons of literature in
lonely mining camps, and carrying everywhere the message of the
Master.
"Over on the coast, at Cordova, may be found the unique settlement
work called 'The Red Dragon,' a clubhouse for men which on Sundays
is converted into a place of worship. Missions in Alaska minister
to human need as a preliminary to and accompaniment of an
effective preaching of the Gospel." [Footnote: Board of Missions
of the Protestant Episcopal Church.]
These pictures of the power of Home Missions to restore--to give
capacity--are merely typical, and stand for the thousands of others
unrecorded except as the lives of the reclaimed individuals and
communities make their indelible imprint upon our national life.
Surely through the demonstration of such reclaiming power the
consciousness must grow that ignorance, degradation, vice, crime,
and bitter poverty need not be the inevitable accompaniment of a
great civilization, but that these diseased spots in the social
fabric are abnormal and curable, if to their removing is directed
first the power of Christ in the inner life, and for the outer a
social regeneration which will substitute physical conditions that
do not menace, but make for righteousness.
"In haunts of wretchedness and need
On shadowed thresholds dark with fears,
From paths where hide the lures of greed
We catch the vision of Christ's tears.
"The cup of water given for Thee
Still holds the freshness of Thy grace;
Yet long these multitudes to see
The sweet compassion of Thy face."
III
AN EDUCATIVE FORCE
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
"After all, it is the children who are the important factors of
our nation, and every one of them neglected is a reproach to every
Christian, man or woman, in the churches who has a dollar or a voice.
When the Spartans were demanded to give fifty children as hostages,
they wisely replied, 'We would rather give one hundred of our most
distinguished men.'
"It is an irrefutable fact that the work with the children pays
the best dividends to the state and nation. There is a Doric oracle
which says, 'If the Athenians want good citizens let them put whatever
is beautiful into the ears of their sons.' If we Americanize this
oracle it would read, 'If the Americans want good citizens let them
put whatever is beautiful and useful into the ears of their sons and
daughters.'"
* * * * *
It is instructive to note the inter-relation and interaction of
forces and influences that have been powerful factors in national
development, and to consider their sources.
The American passion for education had its roots far back in
Holland, in the period when that country was the world's great
intellectual center, as well as the world's leader in commerce and
manufacturing. The most powerful single factor in shaping Colonial
thought and character was the Bible. It was from Holland that
England received its first Bible printed in the English tongue.
It is said that under the persecution of Phillip II and the Duke
of Alva, fully one hundred thousand Hollanders crossed the channel
to find homes in England.
Industrious, self-supporting, self-respecting men, and women they
were, refugees for freedom and for conscience' sake--among them
were scholars, bankers, merchants, and intelligent, plain people.
They came from a land of free schools and universities.
The counties in England in which the Hollanders settled sent the
Pilgrims and the Puritans to America. These counties also gave
birth to the University of Cambridge; the Puritan movement in England
was largely under the leadership of men who had studied in Cambridge,
and it was that educational center of broad culture, thought, and
inspiring ideals which furnished America the first scholars and
leaders of New England.
The first free school of America was opened by the Hollanders in
Manhattan in 1633. It was known as the Collegiate School, and
though it has changed somewhat in character, it is still one of
the leading preparatory schools of New York City.
Regard for education thus came to this country with the colonists,
though not all the colonies attached the same importance to it.
In the Home countries of the colonists, the schools had been
an adjunct to the churches. It was natural, therefore, that the
impetus for the establishment of schools in this country should
come from the church.
"One of the first provisions made by the Virginia company in their
settlement of Jamestown was to set aside land for the use of a college
to 'teach Indian children the rudiments of religion and the Latin
language,' and money was collected in England to establish a school
which should prepare children for this college. The failure of the
company a few years later defeated these plans."
"Twenty years after the landing at Plymouth, the Massachusetts
Colony ordained by law that every child should be taught to read
and write and understand the principles of religion and the capital
laws of the country. A little later in the same section, every township,
when it numbered fifty householders, was required to support a teacher,
and towns numbering a hundred householders, to establish a school to
teach Latin. These were rude pioneer experiments, for the conditions
which surrounded them were rude; their importance lay in the fact that
they gave education a first place in public interest and accustomed
people to think of education as a function of the community." [Footnote:
American Ideals, Character and Life--Hamilton Wright Mabie.]
From these feeble beginnings has come that greatest bulwark of the
Republic--the free school.
It lies at the very foundation of our national life. It makes
possible our democracy. A helpful government by the people is not
possible if the people are ignorant and superstitious.
It is the greatest institution for citizenship. "Through it come
knowledge of the meaning of our institutions, the interpretation
of our national past, and a reverence for the national symbol--the
flag."
It is a fusing force whereby children of many nationalities,
differing in feelings, sympathies, purposes, and class, become
Americans.
The forty-eight States in the year 1912 spent $450,000,000 on the
public schools of the country. The nation's tobacco bill for the
same period was nearly three times as great, and it spent five times
as much for liquor.
Even with this large expenditure, the provision for the school
population of the country is, in places, fearfully inadequate. In
our large cities, if the truant and labor laws were properly enforced,
the lack of school provision would be still more apparent. In New York
City alone more than 100,000 children are attending school but half
the time.
As we turn to study the need for Mission Schools, and their place
as an educative force, it is well that we should seek to realize
something of the splendid achievements of our public schools as
well as where they seriously fail.
Their efficiency differs with the vision and effectiveness with
which they are administered by the different states.
Many states have added incalculably to the usefulness of the
schools by relating the curriculum to life through industrial and
vocational training, but much remains to be accomplished in attaining
a proper balance in the adjustment of the cultural and the practical
in the public school courses.
The state of Ohio affords an interesting illustration of the wider
relation of the public schools to the life of the school
population.
"In the winter of 1914, nearly one thousand boys and girls of
Ohio, in five special trains, were sent on a tour which embraced
the cities of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, as a reward
for their efficiency in agriculture and domestic science. The
people of Ohio have found that it pays to encourage thrift and
industry in their children, for since these "corn tours," as they
are termed, were started, the annual value of the corn crop of Ohio
has become almost twenty million dollars _more_ than it formerly was."
[Footnote: Outlook, Dec. 16, 1914.]
Public School, No. 23, of Mulberry Bend, New York, stands in the
heart of an Italian district of more than 100,000 souls, and draws
also from the great Chinese section. Various other nationalities in
less degree contribute their quota, so that the school ministers to
the children of twenty-nine different nationalities.
This school is fortunate in having a teacher of unusual ability
and magnetism for its new students in English. A visit to her room
on the top floor well repays the effort of exploration in a very
foreign quarter of America's greatest city, and the long climb up
the winding cement stairs of the school building.
As you enter, the class is asked to bid you "Good morning," and
the familiar greeting comes to you in the soft Italian accent,
mingled with the higher-keyed voices of the Japanese and Chinese.
The group of ten Chinese young men impress you by their alertness,
neatness of appearance, and evident eagerness to learn. An Italian
boy who had been set at a trade when very young is now having a
belated chance to learn to read. A number of girls of various sizes
help to make up the class, with little Italian Mary, ten years old,
quite new to America, beautiful and winning in spite of her unkempt
appearance and poor clothing.
With the exception of two who had acquired a little English, the
class entered school three months before with no knowledge of
English. All are able to write their names and addresses and simple
sentences in English on the blackboard.
They can go through the transaction of buying a newspaper, explaining
each action involved, and making correct payment or exacting correct
change.
When questioned, they give quickly and correctly the names of the
President of the United States, the Governor of New York, the Mayor
of New York City, and answer other questions on civic affairs.
It was deeply stirring to see a little Italian whose patois English
was scarcely intelligible, step forward, with conscious pride, to
be the standard-bearer and hold the flag while the class, with eager
enthusiasm, saluted, touching foreheads and extending arms at full
length as they repeated, the foreign tongues giving queer twists to
the words:
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it
stands, one nation, indissoluble, with liberty and justice for all."
Many night classes likewise afford opportunity for new Americans
to learn English. Public School No. 95, located on Clarkson Street
in the old Greenwich Village of New York, where now many Italians,
Irish and a few Jews find homes, carries forward a remarkable
service to its neighborhood.
Here the opportunity of helpful evening recreation is given to
girls and boys. These evenings include basket ball games and
athletics, Boy Scout activities, moving picture exhibits, public
concerts and meetings, with such speakers on popular themes as
Commissioner of Corrections Katharine B. Davis. Other public
schools give carpentry training in actual shop work, qualifying
the students for positions in trade. They also prepare students to
pass the civil service examinations for public positions and give
suitable training for positions on the Police and Fire Department.
The establishment of continuation schools in a few stores and
factories is an inestimable boon to some of the toilers thrust too
early into the livelihood struggle.
The employers are finding it to their interest to spare their
workers for certain hours and days for such schooling because of
the increased efficiency and intelligence of their service.
A peculiarly neglected group in the foreign quarters of all our
cities are the older women--workers and mothers in the homes. To
these Home Missions is striving to bring some knowledge of the
tongue of the new country through classes arranged especially for
them.