imparting information and increasing interest, as many have
testified, and one letter per month serves as report to the
Association and also to contributors. Is it not reasonable that the
excess of letter-writing by teachers should be thus relieved, since
their time is so valuable to the needy people about them? Referring
to her large correspondence, one of our faithful missionaries
writes: “If for all the help we receive in our work so much is
required, we shall have but little time for anything else.” Let us
reduce all this writing to one letter per month and use each such
letter for its full worth, by free circulation.
Desiring to interest children and youth, that they may become
familiar with the American Missionary Association and its work,
and contribute habitually to its support, we have selected a
“Children’s Missionary” to write especially for little children in
mission bands and Sunday-schools, and one who will write also for
the young people, both boys and girls, that they may early imbibe
a missionary spirit, in consecration of money and of personal
service. A collecting card, called “The A. M. A. ‘True Blue’ Card,”
has been prepared as an aid in raising money, and this card will be
furnished to all who wish the missionary letters.
During the year the Woman’s Bureau has been given direct
representation by its Secretary at the meetings of the ladies in
their State Unions, and in connection with State Conferences East
and West, thereby establishing an acquaintance and confidence of
exceeding value, while giving more full intelligence of this great
mission field.
This has helped to develop the plan for the ladies of any one
church or association of churches to take some definite part in
aiding the American Missionary Association to carry forward its
work. The suggestion has been cordially acted upon, and with good
results. Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois,
Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin now have each their special schools
or missionaries under the American Missionary Association, with
whom they have communication through the Bureau of Woman’s Work.
Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Michigan are beginning to respond
to this call, and we are led to hope that we shall have from each
of these States also the help found in concentration and union,
thus making twelve States in which this work is hopefully begun.
In this plan for woman’s work in definite lines, it is not our
purpose to divert funds from the usual church contributions. There
would be nothing lost in this, but neither would there be anything
gained. What the American Missionary Association needs is more help
than it has hitherto received, and that without diminishing the
usual church contributions the ladies will by special measures make
a cash contribution annually in the support of teachers. In order
to secure the results of the work in schools and homes, prompt
action is taken in the establishment of preaching missions and
churches, thus requiring a constant advance. It is for this reason,
ladies, that we urge upon your attention the fact that a portion
of the field is peculiarly yours. If you will do your part, the
advance can be made.
Look in upon a single mission station. A group of three buildings
attracts our attention as a bit of New England transplanted, a
church, a good-sized school-house, and between the two a neat white
painted cottage. The missionaries number four, of whom three are
ladies from the North. Over 200 children and youth come daily to
the school, where these missionary teachers instruct in branches
usual in primary to grammar grades, and also in Christian morals
and manners, with the Bible for a text-book, seeking earnestly to
develop heart, mind and body to honor and righteousness. The little
New England home gives practical illustration of what otherwise
would be but dimly comprehended by those who have never known
a home. It is open, day and evening, to all who will come. The
morning devotions, the pleasant social meals, the group around the
table in the evening, which the older pupils often join, are phases
of home life sharply in contrast to the shiftless, joyless homes
about them. With the influence of this home as a starting-point,
these teachers, in visiting from house to house, suggest, advise,
encourage, finding always the children the most ambitious to
improve and make the little cabin like the teacher’s home. You
would think this sufficient to occupy these three ladies, and so
doubtless they would were it not for the dire need about them. So
time is found for a sewing-school, for meetings with the women,
for temperance societies, for mission Sunday-schools, and numerous
other forms of systematic work—for the purifying of the home life,
and to guard the children from the fate of the parents. Who but
women could win an entrance into such homes and hearts? It is to
counteract the ignorance and desolation of womanhood that woman’s
help is needed in this broad field.
But is it more the duty of these to go and teach, than for us who
remain in the enjoyment of our great home privileges, to send them?
Can any lines be drawn in the personal responsibility resting upon
us as Christian women, for the redemption of womanhood in these so
long cast out and bound down?
Help is needed, and it is needed now, before the millions of
children grow out of our influence and reach, to become like their
parents, and even a more dangerous element in society.
How shall the help be given? Every church is an organization
which bands together Christian workers. The nearer all can come
to the very heart of the great societies appointed to the work of
missions, the stronger and warmer are the missionary pulsations.
Here is the American Missionary Association, with its forty years’
experience in church and school planting, combined with woman’s
work. It has every facility for examining the field and selecting
central points with view to the largest results, and it invites
and urges your co-operation through its Bureau of Woman’s Work,
which is prepared to furnish information and to put you into direct
communication with the missionaries. With your own heart full of
this need, try so to lay the case before others that they, too, may
feel it, and constitute yourselves a church mission band, to raise
money to aid the American Missionary Association in carrying on its
work in the South, and for the Chinese and Indians.
Thus can the ladies of every church take part with us in overcoming
ignorance, superstition and caste prejudice in behalf of womanhood
in this our land.
* * * * *
WORK AMONG THE FREEDMEN.
BY MISS BERTHA ROBERTSON.
_Dear Friends:_—It gives me much pleasure to bring you a report,
which will not be a discouraging one, of a part of the work this
grand old American Missionary Association has undertaken. It would
be simply impossible to give you a true idea of the work done among
the colored people. Already you have heard many accounts, but to
fully realize what is being done, you must either see the people
over whom the influence of our schools extends, and compare them
with those who have not enjoyed such privileges, or enter the field
as a worker. In giving an outline of our work at McIntosh, Ga.,
perhaps a general idea may be gained of what the A. M. A. is doing
for the freedmen. The colored people where we are, and I think it
is the same throughout the South, have an idea their teachers can
do anything from housekeeping to preaching a sermon or mending
clocks, but before we should be allowed to undertake similar work
in the North, it would be necessary that we should have M.D., D.D.,
or some other initials after our names.
We teach school. This does not mean exactly what it does in the
North. You must remember, when the children come to us, they have
had no home training whatever.
You can imagine something of their condition, when you remember
that the majority come from miserable log cabins, consisting of one
room, where parents and children live huddled together, and where
the furniture is a mere apology, consisting generally of a table,
bench and two chairs.
They have no hopes and ambition such as white children have. They
never think of the possibilities the future may hold for them. When
we ask our boys and girls what they are going to do when they leave
school, they look at us in blank amazement. This is a new idea to
them; they had not looked beyond the present.
Their standard of morality is low. Did you expect anything else?
Who were the parents of these children? Slaves. Slaves who in
return for hard labor received from the white man the cruelest
wrongs and basest indignities; and yet people to-day speak as
though this first generation born in freedom should be pure and
virtuous. On every side you hear, “They lie, they cheat, they
steal, are lazy, and it is simply impossible to do anything
with them.” Many times this summer I have heard this sweeping
assertion made, and by Christian people, who had simply traveled
South, and who drew their conclusions from the servants they met
in the hotels. Had they visited some of the A. M. A. schools
their statement would not have been quite so extended as to the
impossibilities of improvement.
The Bible is the foundation of all our teaching. Religious and
moral training first. A half hour each morning is given to
devotions. Friday morning the school all meet together for prayer,
in which our pupils take part. We have been greatly blessed in
these meetings. Friday afternoon the girls all meet in one room,
and while they are taught sewing, the Principal of the school gives
the boys a talk on morality, in another room. We visit the pupils
in their homes, and they, with their parents, feel at liberty to
come to our cottage at any time. It is with much pleasure we note
the improvement in their cabins and the taste the girls display in
trying to make their homes resemble our cottage. After school every
Friday afternoon, we have a missionary meeting for the mothers.
Here, while they sew, simple religious stories are read to them,
and before they go home we have a Bible reading and prayers. Three
years ago this society sent ten dollars to the Morning Star, and
for the past two years they have sent fifteen dollars to the A. M.
A. for the Indians. They are trying to do a little for the Master’s
Kingdom.
Besides these meetings, we have Sunday-school and mission-school,
and on Saturdays we go to settlements six or eight miles distant
to hold mothers’ meetings. Many a poor soul in these meetings has
heard for the first time the blessed news of personal salvation.
I know, dear friends, that what I have already said is not new
to you; you have heard it many times and are anxious to know if
any progress is noticeable. I wish, oh, how I wish, I could tell
you of the progress they are making. How they are working under
cast-iron laws to pay for their land and get little frame houses.
People tell me, in a general way, that they are lazy and there is
no hope for them; but I know them to get up at “day clear” and work
until sundown to pay for their land under conditions that would
discourage nine white men out of every ten. I could name a dozen
families around us who have their land paid for, and nice little
homes. The children come to school, their tuition is paid regularly
and their books are provided as soon as needed.
Are they progressing? For an answer I would like to show you the
nice little two-story frame building in which two of our pupils who
were married last winter live. On the lower floor is the parlor,
dining-room and kitchen; above are the chambers. The pretty chamber
set, white spread and pillow-shams, were purchased with the money
Sarah earned off her cotton patch.
People say they are dull and stupid. Yet children ten years old
will criticise letters received by their parents, and in two and
a half years we can fit a boy for the second preparatory year in
college. He works his own way, pays for his books, and at the end
of a year has enough to pay his traveling expenses home, and when
his teacher asks him if there is anything he needs, he replies,
“Oh, no; can’t I do something for you?”
People say, “You can’t trust them.” Yet I know of one of my little
girls on sewing afternoon, when almost home, returning with a
needle that somehow got stuck in her dress; and I have never missed
a pencil or book out of my desk, on which there is no lock, during
the years I have spent in McIntosh. How often you are told they
are ungrateful, and do not appreciate what you are doing for them.
Once and forever this idea would be banished from your minds could
you be present at our meetings, and hear the fervent, heartfelt
prayers of both young and old that God will pour out his richest
blessings on this Association and the friends who uphold it. It has
also been said they do not care to be educated, they would just as
soon remain as they are. We have many pupils in our room who walk
sixteen miles every day, and who do a task before leaving home in
the morning, and another when they return at night. One of my boys,
Josiah Roberts, walked this distance every day last year with the
exception of two, making a total of 2,250 miles during the school
year, and was not tardy one morning. Can any other school show such
a record?
Among the colored people great stress is laid upon “joining
the church.” This is one of the evils against which we have to
fight. It is the only idea many of them have of what it is to be
a Christian. One day, when returning home from making a call on
Aunt Judy, the minister’s wife called me, saying the girls wished
to see me. She has a number of girls from “up country,” who board
with her and attend our school. I followed her into the room where
they were, and said, on entering, “Well, girls, what is troubling
you?” There was silence for a moment; then one bright girl looked
up saying, “Oh, Miss Robertson, won’t you tell us what to do? We
thought we were Christians, we belong to the church, but we are
beginning to find out that that isn’t enough. We are not living for
Christ. Won’t you tell us how to be such Christians as our teachers
are?” With a short prayer for help, I pointed them to the Divine
Example, and during the remaining days of school we had proof that
they were imitating Him. Those girls went out into various parts of
the country this summer to teach, carrying Jesus with them. Who can
estimate the good they will do?
Every Tuesday and Thursday evening at the cabins the people hold
neighborhood meetings. Desiring very much to see how these were
conducted, I started out one evening with one of my girls. After
walking about a mile through the woods we reached the cabin, which
was crowded with dusky faces. As I entered, room was made for me
at one side of the fire-place, in which was a crackling fire of
pine knots. They asked me to read to them, so I opened my Bible to
the CIII. Psalm. How eagerly and attentively they listened as it
was read and explained. Then each one took part, either singing or
praying. Then together they began to sing their old slave songs,
keeping time by clapping and shaking hands, bobbing their heads and
scraping their feet. Every part of the body seemed in motion. As I
watched the strange scene, I thought, “Will this form of worship
die out with the old slaves, or will it be continued by our young
people?” I turned at that moment to look at my companion. A woman
had just stepped up to her saying, “Why don’t you shake hands?”
“Because I see no sense in it,” was the reply. On our way home she
inquired of me if I did not think the last part of that meeting was
more like a frolic than praising God? How rejoiced I was to hear
that young girl express herself in such a manner. Truly, “Our labor
is not in vain in the Lord.”
Dear friends, I would not give you the impression that there are no
discouragements in our work, for there are many. It is with heavy
hearts we oftentimes watch some of our scholars returning to their
homes in the evening, for we know that there everything tends to
overthrow the religious teaching received during the day. Girls
going home to mothers who have no sense of purity and virtue, and
who cannot realize the degradation of their lives. Sometimes those
the most promising, those for whom we have entertained bright hopes
for the future, fail us, and we are almost constrained to cry out,
“This is greater than I can bear.”
But He, whose promises never fail, has shown us that the seed sown
in tears will surely bring a harvest, and the encouragements,
together with the joy of being in His service, outweigh the
discouragements.
I could tell you of young men who have come to our school addicted
to drink, using profane language and tobacco, who to-day are
earnest, faithful Christians, the hope of our school. We gladly
would keep them, yet we bid them “God speed,” as this year they go
to Atlanta University. I could tell you of young girls who, out
of the wickedness and immorality around them, have grown up pure,
consecrated Christian women, doing what they can for the Master
they have promised to serve.
Such is the work the A. M. A. is doing throughout the South. Is
there anyone who can afford not to have a part in this glorious
work? Think of the privilege of being permitted to help lift these
souls, born in ignorance and vice, into the marvellous light of the
gospel of Jesus Christ. Last year, for want of room and help, we
had to turn many away from our doors, and that means sending them
back into the wickedness and ignorance from which they desired to
rise. When I take up the AMERICAN MISSIONARY MAGAZINE and
read therein the appeals for help, the feeling that comes over me
is not unmixed with indignation, for in God’s precious word I read,
“If I were hungry I would not tell thee, for the earth is mine and
the fulness thereof;” and again, “The silver is mine and the gold
is mine, saith the Lord of hosts;” and yet the stewards to whom He
has entrusted this vast fortune do not allow Him enough to carry on
His work. I heard the remark, not long ago, “When money is needed
you can’t compensate with prayer.” Faith and works must go hand in
hand. Shall not the treasury this year be full to overflowing so
that “the barnacles may be cleared off this old ship,” and there be
nothing to impede her progress?
Won’t you multiply your prayers for the work and workers, so that
this year may be the most prosperous, so that we may indeed “have
souls for our hire”!
* * * * *
WORK AMONG THE INDIANS.
BY MISS H. B. ILSLEY.
Six years of life among the Dakotas has taught me many things. Very
plainly I recall the first glimpse of their homes, as, October 1st,
1880, I wended my way, the sole occupant of the stage, between
Yankton and Yankton Agency, Dakota—a distance of 65 miles, to the
home of Rev. Mr. Williamson.
Home warnings were still ringing in my ears—for, had I not been
told, “You are doing a foolish thing, seeking only adventure,
spending your strength for naught; _Indians can’t be educated_;
you will live in one common room with only a sheet partition, and
you will have only a penny candle for your evening luminary, and
the Indians _may scalp_ you.” I saw the tents, I saw the one-room
log houses, and I met blanket Indians face to face in paint, bells
and feathers. Home warnings came vividly before me as possible
realities. But in a moment the hearty welcome of Mr. and Mrs.
Williamson, and their children too, changed my thoughts. The
cheerful sitting room itself had a welcome, and home letters were
there to greet me, which uttered no more warnings, neither have I
thought of them since, except as fund for amusement. This was my
introduction to life on a reservation.
From among varied experiences, I would like first to take you on a
recent trip with me, to some of the homes of the Dakotas scattered
along the Missouri and its tributaries, in our Oahe field. There
are now a number of stations, varying from five to fifteen miles
apart, where native teachers are at work; they having been prepared
for this at our schools in the past. There are day-schools of
between twenty and thirty pupils each. The teachers have religious
services on the Sabbath, and also visit among the people, becoming
acquainted with each man, woman and child.
At one of these stations, Cherry Creek, the Indians have been
associated with Sitting Bull, and it is of their homes I wish to
speak as types of the field when taking the first steps toward
civilization. Log houses of one room, with the earth only for a
floor; bedsteads of planks loosely laid on wooden posts about a
foot high from the ground. These serve also for chairs in the
daytime. A cook stove is found in the center of each room and this
is all. On the log wall hangs the coffee pot, the iron kettle and
their extra coats and dresses (if they have any). They still keep
their tents and use them in summer, which adds greatly to their
comfort.
At most places the women were working industriously; some
embroidering with porcupine quills, some preparing corn for drying
by braiding the husks into a rope, leaving the various colored ears
hanging; others were pounding between stones their native fruits,
which they dry and preserve for winter use.
A few men were building their log houses and plastering the
crevices with earth; some were at work in their fields, and many
sat with their friends smoking and telling entertaining stories.
The religious influences at these homes are foreign to ours, of
course, but there is an influence. The Dakotas worship all nature.
They pray to the spirits of heaven and earth; to the winds, the
sun, the moon, the stones, and for fear something should be left
out—it is summed up in the great mystery—the Great Spirit. All
trouble and even sickness comes from evil spirits, hence the young
never want to care for the sick, and do not dare for fear they
shall be visited with disease too. Near the tipi of one of the
women we noticed a large new tent; and we asked, “Whose is this?”
“My tipi wakan,” (holy house) she replied. “May we enter?” “Oh, no,
we do not allow white people there.” “But,” says my companion, Miss
Collins, “they always allow me.” “Do they? well, come.” She led the
way inside and told us the following incident:
Her son, a boy of thirteen, had died; and during his sickness all
the relatives had promised to make a certain number of gifts, to be
finished at a set time after his death. The tent was very large,
and half way around on the inside were several rows of Indian
travelling cases, which held the gifts. The mother opened one of
these and showed us her offerings: moccasins, leggins, tobacco
pouches, pipes and many articles for which I knew no name. All of
them were beautifully embroidered, and she had handled them so
carefully that the deerskin of which they were made was spotlessly
clean. This poor sorrowing mother had worked so diligently that her
wrist was very lame, but she was being doctored by one of their
medicine men, and hoped soon to finish all she had promised. “My
son has counted every one of these gifts,” she said, “and when
the time comes we will call a feast, and our sacred men will say
prayers, and we shall give these gifts away. This will please my
son and he will pray for us.” _So_ she hoped to merit blessings
for herself and others. Do we not hope that the dear Lord may soon
grant this faithful woman a revelation of Himself?