the picture of Fisk University (Jubilee Hall), he immediately
volunteered to work for me. He and I went and saw nearly every man
in the community before 9 o’clock that night.
The majority were against me, but I had resolved to open school
there and then. Time would not permit me to delay longer. The
next day (Sunday) I was given a Bible class to teach in the
Sunday-school. To my surprise, on going out doors I found that a
preliminary school meeting had been held under the trees and that
the Sunday-school teacher, though against me on coming there, had
changed and was marshalling his forces for the great meeting on the
morrow.
At 11 o’clock that same morning I heard a rousing blast by a
huntsman’s horn. On inquiring, I found that my childless friend was
telling the people to come together the next day. In the meantime,
Jack Davis came over and discussed the matter with me. He closed by
saying that I talked too fast for him, but that one thing was sure:
he would send no children.
I did a great deal of talking that Sunday; not willingly, but on
being introduced to the people as they came around to see me,
nothing was left but to discuss in full the question of opening.
It was an ox in the mire. Well, Monday came. The horn once more
resounded through the woods. The people gathered from far and
near. The chairman was elected, and, on stating the object of the
meeting, took occasion to show them the impracticability of opening
before the first of July. “There,” thought I, “whipped again. The
chair is against me.” I arose and spoke ten minutes. On taking my
seat, one opposed to me spoke. Among other things, he said: “Too
many rascals are out from school, anyhow.” Here one would rise
on my side; there one on the other side. Every man, including
myself, seemed to do his best to talk loud enough. The chairman
showed weakness in presiding, and was lacking in a knowledge of
parliamentary usage. Thought I, “here is my chance.” Every time
he blundered I arose and pointed out his error; showed him how to
appoint his committees, and instructed him as to what motions took
precedence. He saw my object, and informed me openly that he had
participated in conventions in Helena. “It makes no difference,”
said I; “you are wrong in your ruling.”
He began to look pitiful in the eyes of all. Men began to leave
the room. Soon one-half of them were on the outside. The tide was
turned. I went out to inquire more fully into matters. Nearly every
man was now for me. “Then, come in,” said I; “you can’t help me
out here.” I remained behind to see that all came. The previous
question, namely, to open the school on the first of June, was
called. All stood up in the affirmative except the man who had
seen the “rascals.” I had won through the chairman’s ignorance. I
have often thought of it since, and see more fully every day that
most battles are lost or won through incompetency on one side and
superiority on the other, and that knowledge is truly a power.
I will add that Jack Davis was my best friend after opening that
school, and Dick Brown, whom I met plowing on going from Aunt
Daffney’s house, carried my trunk a quarter of a mile for nothing,
and loaned me his watch while I taught there. On going away, the
man who was so afraid of the “rascals” came four miles to my house
and carried my trunk thirteen miles to Hope—all for nothing. The
crop turned out well. I gained twenty pounds, and, in a word, we
were all happy.
THE INDIANS.
* * * * *
SPEECH OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.
At a Fourth of July celebration held at Lidgerwood, Dakota, a
novel feature of the exercises was a speech by Magayohi (Chief
Star), in the Sioux dialect, which being translated reads as
follows, and which shows that if all the Sioux Indians were as
intelligent and as well disposed as this chief, the Government
Commission would have little trouble.
“This land which lies about us was once the property of my people;
you have now possession of it and have made yourselves homes and
are rearing your families on the land which formerly belonged to
my forefathers. I have no complaint to make of this fact, for it
is perhaps better as it is. Our desire is to become like the white
man; to learn to cultivate the land and to make a living from it;
to learn to read and to write and to transact business; to learn
the principles of government and become citizens; to acquire title
to 160 acres for each member of our tribe. We have faith in the
Great Spirit and in the Great Father at Washington, and believe
that in time your people will teach my people to be like you; the
negro’s skin is darker than ours, and you have made a man of him;
we ask the Government to do us the same justice.”
* * * * *
FORT YATES, DAKOTA.
FROM MISS M. C. COLLINS.
What are we going to do? This is a question coming to us
continually. The A. M. A. doubtless is in a happy mood and smiling
condition, now that it has strengthened our forces by two new
men—one, Rev. Mr. Cross, 300 miles below here, and one, Rev. Mr.
Reed, 32 miles from here at the Agency. It is a good thing—a great
deal better than not to have sent anyone. But now, think of it: An
Agency containing 6,000 souls, scattered in villages of from twenty
to fifty families in a village, and the settlements from five to
ten miles apart.
I could put a hundred Bibles in as many homes now among Catholics
and wholly heathen families where one, at least could read it who
has learned in some school of ours or the Presbyterians. I could
give out a thousand Dakota Primers, or First Readers, into as many
homes where they are anxious to read in their own tongue. There
is no law against a Dakota’s owning a Dakota Bible, nor reading a
Dakota primer in his own home. We could establish ten schools where
Sabbath services could be held, at once. We could so reach a great
many homes and hasten the civilization and Christianization of
these Indians by many years.
I go long distances into Catholic houses as well as others, to
administer to the sick. Last night I had a Government teacher (a
Catholic) and his sick wife, whom I have been treating, and their
two children, here all night. I have been riding sixteen miles to
treat her, and then riding home, the man always coming for me and
bringing me back.
I have now given twelve years to this work. I have seen wonderful
changes. I have seen men with painted faces and feathers following
the leader on to darkness and death. I have seen the same men,
clothed and in their right minds, stand before a heathen audience
of their own people and heard one say, only last week, “Men and
brethren, you know me as a man fierce in war—a man whose hands are
stained with blood—a man bearing many wounds. My body still bears
the marks, but Christ has made me whole. I am another man. My body
is the same, but my heart is new. My soul is clean; my will has
changed; I think differently. The Gospel has renewed me.” It was
one of the grandest pleas for the Gospel I ever heard. O! will you
not empty your gold and your silver into the treasury? Will you not
advance, and take every post as fast as ready to surrender? Let
us guard these people with a great army of the Lord. Send on the
advance guard and bring up your reinforcements. _I_ do not want to
fall till I see Dakota taken for the Lord!
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
CHRISTIAN CHINESE EN ROUTE TO CHINA.
It is some of the experiences of our Chinese brethren on their way
to their native land that I have in mind in this title—not the bare
fact that they do so return, or that their presence in their old
homes cannot but become a leavening and a gradually revolutionizing
influence there.
The subjoined letter is of special interest only because it is a
little more full in its statement than others relating to other
voyages. The writer, Ng Hing, was brought to faith in Christ at our
Barnes Mission, and the letter is addressed to his teacher, Mrs.
H. W. Lamont. Ng Hing is a modern Nathaniel. I scarcely ever spoke
with him during the first months of his discipleship to Christ,
but I felt like repeating that greeting which Jesus gave to the
first Nathaniel: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no
guile.” And I have found this impression abundantly confirmed by
the testimony of his brethren and my own closer acquaintanceship.
The letter is a little old, being dated Nov. 17th. When it was
first placed in my hands I asked the privilege of laying it before
the readers of the MISSIONARY, but it has been crowded out till
now. I give it with no attempt to set it right in its English.
It will be understood as it is, and will be read, I trust, with
all the more interest, revealing, as it does, the attempt of an
intelligent Chinese to wrestle with what must seem to him the
awkward idioms of our outlandish tongue:
“_Dear Teacher_:
“I am arrived here safely, Nov. 15th, Tuesday, at noon. I thank
you and Miss Lilian [daughter of Mrs. Lamont, and, like her
mother, one of our teachers] very much indeed for your lovely
present and the letter which you given me. I used to read it
very often because it is very improve to me, and that I know
the Lord Jesus has opened my soul-eye and raised me from the
death of sin to a life of righteousness. I will to tell all my
countrymen what great thing Jesus has done for me, just as much
as I can speak to.
“Now I want to tell you about our journey. We have met fifteen
missionary ladies and gentlemen. Some go to Japan and some to
China. And several Chinese Christian brethren were there, and
we have joined with the missionary to have service on every
Sunday morning. I am very glad we have so pleasant opportunity
on the ship—sing to praise God and spoke the gospel of Jesus.
“But on the Oct. 26th we meet a great tempest; the waves run
over the deck, and the wind against the ship, dreadful. That
made the Chinese heathen complain and say many wicked words
against us Christians; and they said to themselves, too: ‘We
must not allow these Chinese Christians have the meeting on
the ship because they tell us believe in Jesus and not worship
the idol and image; therefore the evil spirits made the wind
and the waves against the ship.’ Oh, I am very sorry for them,
so foolish, when I heard that. For we trust in God and know
he will take care of us, and even the tempest so great. God
made it peaceful, and carry us all to get through safely—never
drown. We should all thank God for his mercies and praise him
so great and so powerful. But the heathen not mind God and do
not care for their souls.
“The missionary was very kindly to them and pity them so
ignorant.
“On the 6th of Nov. Mr. Chalfant read Acts 17:24-30, and I read
it in Chinese and we try to explain it to them, but they were
very proud, and not want to hear the Gospel of Jesus. They only
crowd round us and make terrible noise, with revilings and
indignity to us. That was to be fulfilled the words which Jesus
had said to us Christians: ‘Ye shall be hated of all men for
my name’s sake.’ Well, no matter what _they_ said; the Bible
says: ‘Love your enemies and do kindly to them that hated you,’
and we know God will be with us and help us in trouble, and
even the heathen so persecuted us, but we do kindly to them
and pray for them. Now please pray for me, for the temptation
is great here; and pray for the missionary in China. * * * I
do not forget all your kindness to me. Let God bless you and
your family and all the scholars, and increase the number that
believe in Jesus our Saviour. From Your scholar,
NG HING.”
I have room for a sentence or two from Chin Toy at Sacramento, in
a letter just received: “The tracts and small books were duly
received. I was very glad for them. I think will do much good to
our people. Street meetings here every Sunday. I give out some of
the tracts at the end of the preaching. All hearers seemed very
glad to come and get them. Each one say, ‘Give me a piece.’ I trust
the Lord will bless the seed still growing, which were sown on
these ground. This school is better lately. Had five or six new
scholars come last week. The Christian brethren are all well and
attend the meeting regularly.”
And here is a little of the “shady side” in another field: “I found
these three brethren here not quite love each other. They too much
complained each other’s faults. I felt very sorry for them. I think
every one of them is try to do right, but they are all impatient;
that is the trouble. I visited some stores in Chinatown; invited
men to come to school. Some men told me many scholars stayed away
because the Christian boys quarrel. So I thought better write you
that you will pray for them on that matter. I told them we must
love and forgive each other, hold fast together in the bond of
peace, and serve the Lord with the pure heart, then we will bring
forth fruit.”
Sound doctrine, to which many a company of American believers would
do well to take heed, though it comes from the pen of one who once
sat in darkness and worshipped idol-gods!
WM. C. POND.
* * * * *
BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.
MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.
* * * * *
WOMAN’S STATE ORGANIZATIONS.
CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
ME.—Woman’s Aid to A. M. A., Chairman of Committee, Mrs. C. A.
Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.
VT.—Woman’s Aid to A. M. A., Chairman of Committee, Mrs. Henry
Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury, Vt.
VT.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Ellen Osgood,
Montpelier, Vt.
CONN.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. S. M.
Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.
N.Y.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. William
Spalding, Salmon Block, Syracuse, N.Y.
ALA.—Woman’s Missionary Association, Secretary, Mrs. G. W.
Andrews, Talladega, Ala.
OHIO.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal,
Oberlin, Ohio.
IND.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C. H. Rogers,
Michigan City, Ind.
ILL.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C. H. Taintor,
151 Washington St., Chicago, Ill.
MICH.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Mary B. Warren,
Lansing, Mich.
WIS.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C. Matter,
Brodhead, Wis.
MINN.—Woman’s Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. H. L. Chase,
2,750 Second Ave., South, Minneapolis, Minn.
IOWA.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Miss Ella E. Marsh,
Grinnell, Iowa.
KANSAS.—Woman’s Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. Addison
Blanchard, Topeka, Kan.
NEB.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, President, Mrs. F. H. Leavitt,
1216 H St., Lincoln, Neb.
SOUTH DAKOTA.—Woman’s Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. S. E.
Young, Sioux Falls, Dak.
LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO.
_My Dear Miss Emerson_:
Having just returned from my class of Chinese children, my mother
thought, for the sake of variety, I might give an account of this
interesting though curious gathering. This class was formed about
three years ago. There was no Sabbath-school for Chinese children
at the time, and seeing the great need of one, and being unable to
attend to it on Sunday, I decided to have it on Friday afternoon,
at three o’clock.
About three-quarters of an hour before the time for commencing,
I start for the children, going from home to home, inviting and
coaxing them to come. I sometimes carry with me pieces of cake and
candy or a bright text-card to attract those who seem more timid
than the rest.
If I meet a stray child on the street, I say “Na lie dook she?”
(You come to school?) Sometimes my labors are rewarded by seeing
a bundle of clothes slip past me, and a minute afterward all is
lost in oblivion in a small alley; but sometimes they slip their
dirty hands into mine and trudge along with me, amid the jeers and
contemptuous smiles of those passing by. Finally we arrive at our
school room, between twenty and thirty children being present,
ranging all the way from five to twelve years. We commence by
singing three or four hymns; then all rise and repeat a prayer
after me in concert, sentence by sentence. I then explain the
Sabbath-school lesson through an interpreter, and either show the
picture of the International Lessons, or a black-board drawing, and
sometimes an object. I find, as with all children, their interest
can be awakened and held by means of an object or picture. After
letting each repeat the text given the week before, we close with
the Lord’s Prayer in Chinese; and after good-bye is said all
around, I dismiss them, taking some of them home, as their parents
are afraid to trust them across the car tracks alone.
These children are exceedingly bright and attentive, and as to
their good behavior, I can sometimes hold up their example as
worthy of the imitation of my class of American boys. Only to-day,
in speaking of the lesson on “Worshiping the Golden Calf,” I asked
which they worshiped, God or idols, and one little girl said, “Me
worship God; idols no good. They have eyes, no see; hands and
feet, and no walk.” And when I asked all to raise their hands who
would worship Jesus, she raised both hands. When shown the picture
of Abraham offering Isaac, one of them said, “Why did not he run
away?” One day, when taking home a little girl of five years of
age, she looked at the cable car which was passing, and said, “What
for does that car go faster than that one (pointing to a horse
car)? That has no horse.” They ask innumerable questions, and want
to know the why and wherefore of everything.
Oh! my dear Christian friends, pray for me, that I may be aided
in teaching and guiding these precious souls, on whom so much of
China’s progress depends.
Yours in Christ,
LILIAN LAMONT.
OUR YOUNG FOLKS.
* * * * *
LITTLE INDIANS.
Perhaps there are little children in some of the beautiful homes
in the cities who cannot understand that the Indians are not all
born grown up, with feathers on their heads and tomahawks in their
hands. One little blue-eyed girl once said to me with a very long
O-o-o-o and her hand over her mouth, “Oh, o-h! I did not know there
were little Indian boys and girls!” but let me tell you, little
Golden Hair, there are Indian boys and girls.
They have some very funny names, too. But there is one thing
pleasant about it; their names are given to them because they mean
something. As I write this article, I look out from my window and
see an Indian boy with a roughly-made sled drawing his little
sister up the hill so that she can slide down again behind him.
Little Indians are not wholly unlike little white boys and girls.
They eat and sleep, laugh and cry, but they do not fight. That
comes with civilization.
I can from my window watch the boys and girls playing on the
hillside every day as long as the snow lasts, and I never have
heard a child cry nor have I seen one child hurt another. I can
hear them laugh and shout and cheer when one tumbles off the sled,
but no angry or bad words are ever used. They are very merry and
happy when we remember that there is no Indian child that does not
know what it is to be hungry and have the mother say there is no
food.
When a little baby comes into an Indian home, he is wrapped up in
a blanket and it is tied all about him so that he cannot use his
arms or legs, and he looks very much like a rag doll, but he cries
and laughs just like a real flesh and blood and bones baby. But,
little Golden Hair, let me whisper to you one secret of the Indian
baby’s happy life: he never gets _spanked_! They leave that to the
uncivilized white mother. So, after all, the white boy does not
have all the good in life; does he? Only think of sliding down hill
a whole morning without even a board between the smooth snow and
the trousers, going home with wet and worn clothes and not getting
whipped; not even sent to bed!
Indian children are never punished; but, after all, they are not
bad. The boys like to hunt the snowbirds with bows and arrows. They
kill a great many too. The little girls play with corn-cob dolls
and little tents and travois, or _toshoes_, as they call them,
sometimes drawn by dogs.
The Indian children have hard lives after all. They cannot live to
grow up unless they are pretty strong. A great many little ones
die for want of good, wholesome food, and many for want of fresh
air and warm clothes. We want all the little boys and girls in
Christian homes to remember the little Dakotas. There is much good
in them; and if they had the advantages you have, perhaps they
would be fully as well behaved, and as true and faithful to God, as
are you. Will you help us to save the little Indians?
MARY C. COLLINS.
* * * * *
LITTLE INDIAN CHILDREN IN THE BIRDS’ NEST AT SANTEE AGENCY, NEB.
They are such happy little girls, and so easily entertained. Just
now I saw two of them getting such a merry time out of dragging the
bowl of a large pewter spoon over the ground for a wagon, putting
a little stick in the way to represent water they had to cross—for
our recent rains have flooded the bottom-lands in several places.
There was a nail lying in the spoon, and I asked what that meant.
“Oh,” Maggie said, “that is me, and I am going to the store to buy
some beads.” A shorter nail was there to represent her younger
playmate. No little girls to-day, pushing their red-cheeked wax
dollies in their miniature baby carriages, are any happier than
our little Indian girls, drawing their broken pewter spoon and
representing themselves by old rusty nails.
At our Missionary Society, which meets every Saturday for an hour,
I generally read them a little story; sometimes from “The Pansy,”
which was sent us last year, or from “Our Little Men and Women,”
also a gift from an unknown friend. They enjoy it always and like
to see the pictures; but the book that holds the charm, and of
which they never tire, is “The Story of the Bible.”
They have pieced two small quilts and one large one this season,
and will finish two others of medium size. Our mite box contains
$2.50 at this date. These are the pennies that their parents send
them to be used in this way, and occasionally they earn one by some
little service for us.
HARRIET B. ILSLEY.
* * * * *
RECEIPTS FOR JULY, 1888.
* * * * *
MAINE, $1,281.94.