The Last Refiige of the Red Man ! — The CJmrch and 02t7' Westeiii Tribes. ip ~~ ^j lWO centuries and a half of war and treaty-making with the ab- r original owners of our soil by a nominally Christian nation, have left them stripped of their lands, reduced in numbers to less than 350,000 souls, without the knowledge or means requisite for self- support, naked, wandering and destitute on the outer verge of our civilization. Around them, year by year, are drawing those fatal lines of frontier settle- ment, which in their long and bitter experience with white men they have learned with so much reason to dread, and which, closing in now on all sides in the rapid processes of our Western growth, must in a very few years, like the sure and regular approaches of a beleaguering army, drive them into their last retreat and accomplish their final destruction. In ex change for the lands which we have taken from this people, and which we now occupy with our cities and churches, we have given them all the vices belonging to our lowest, most degraded forms of civilization, even teaching them moral ofi'ences which in their savage nature they knew not of, and com- municating new and horrible forms of physical disease and death among them. By a strange perversity which ])Uts to shame all heathen blindness, we have acknowledged the manhood of this people to be of an heroic type, enshrining their fortitude, valor and eloquence in our choicest literature, and interweaving their poetic names and majestic legends with the history and daily life of the nation, and yet, as a people, we have withheld from them the light and blessings of Christianity — even of what is known as Christian government, and have assiduously ministered to and actually cultivated their lowest appetites and passions. It has been the “Indian Policy” of our Government to pamper and stimulate their native vanity and indolence, and to supply them with the weapons of savage war. While we have rendered their permanent instruction and Christian training impossible by the frequent removal of the tribes from place to place under our wretched Treaty System, we have never failed to provide at an immense cost for supplies of trinkets, war-paint, tomahawks and scalping-knives ; and that they might not be tempted to forsake their savage ways and learn the industrial arts (it would almost seem) the Government has fed them with rations or by annuity money. The key to most of this injustice and inconsistency in our dealings with the Indian tribes, is found in the necessities of partisan politics, which 2 have compelled the distribution of Indian contracts and agencies as among the choicest spoils of party triumphs. Within the past forty years over five hundred millions of dollars have been expended by the Government in In- dian wars — caused by the oppressions, frauds and injustice practised by the political agents and traders. “ I have lived on this frontier fifty years,” says General Harney, “ and I have never known an instance in which war broke out between us and these tribes that these tribes were not in the right.” At length in the latter days of this deeply wronged and injured peo- ple, God in His mercy, it would certainly appear, has opened the door for their deliverance. For the first time in the histor}' of this Government the experiment is being tried of dealing justly and mercifully with our aboriginal brethren, as with reasonable and accountable beings, entitled to our protec- tion and care, and with whom it is desirable on every account that we should live at peace. For the past three years the Nation has witnessed, and Christian people ever)'where have watched with joy, the operation of this new Peace Policy. That it is proving a complete success, the intelligent reader of these pages will hardly need to be informed. The Board of Indian Commissioners in their last Report [1870] to the President of the United States, declare : Increased experience in dealing with the Indians only tends to confirm the Board more and more in the wisdom of the policy of peace so uniformly advocated by the President, and supported by the liberality of Congress and the humane sympathies of the people; and the Board confident- ly look forward to the day when the bitterness which now assails this policy in some parts of the United States, where it is least understood, will fill a page in history as unnatural and curious as that which records the old hatred against freedom and the friends of the slave WHAT IS THE NEW PEACE POLICY.? The main features of this Policy are : i. The withdrawal of the nomina- tion of Indian Agents from among the gifts secured by party patronage ; or, in other words, the removal of the Indian from the arena of party politics. 2. The apportionment of the several tribes to the moral keeping and training of the dift'erent religious societies, to whom also is assigned the duty and responsibility of selecting and supervising the Agents ; and, 3, The joint superintendence, with the Government, of all the tribes, and their careful yearly visiting and inspection by a Board of Indian Commissioners composed of eminent philanthropic and Christian citizens. Under this policy the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregational ists. Reformed Dutch, Roman Catholics and Friends have each been allotted the guardianship of tribes and parts of tribes, and the appointment of their Agents, and under this policy, with the distinct understanding that the trust is to be kept free fr(?m all political entanglements, the Church in the United States has accepted her share of the obligations devolving upon the members of her communion as good citizens and Christians. The denominational bodies have entered the field in earnest, and are planting their schools eveiy^where. The Govern- ment is pledged to the protection of the tribes on their different Reservations, and small appropriations are at the disposal of the Agents for the erection of school-houses for the Indians. Everything seems favorable, at length, ayid for the first time in the history of the Government, we repeat, for the training and Christian civilization of this remnant of a most interesting people. OUR JUBILEE YEAR SHOULD PROCLAIM THEIR DELIVER- ANCE ! This golden opportunity of the Church has fallen to her in the fiftieth year of her Missions, and it well becomes her to celebrate this her first Jubi- lee by a special effort directed to the liberation of these heathen from the bonds of ignorance and vice in which — it must be said to her unspeakable shame — she has indirectly helped to retain them. Forty-five years ago our fathers solemnly proclaimed it to be “among the earliest and best pur- poses” of our Society of Domestic and Foreign Missions, then just formed, “ to take an efficient part in the great and benevolent work of extending to the Indian tribes the blessings of Christianity.” How have we kept that pledge t Alas for our heavy sin ! The remembrance of the cruel apathy, the selfish indifference and the unwillingness to endure the trial of prolonged Missionaiy effort among them should humble us in the dust. But God has been merciful to us and blessed us and permitted us to behold the light of His countenance in the noble fruits of our recent labors in their behalf He has raised up for us a Bishop who has given his life for their sake, and to whom more than to any other man is this Nation indebted for the reversal of that inhuman policy which has governed its relations with these Indians in the past. It has remained also for the Church to prove, by her pure Gos- pel teaching and the self-denying labors of one of her Missionaries, the power which the Christian religion can exert over the most warlike of the Western tribes. No brighter example of this power of the Cross, and no more won- derful illustration of Missionary success is to be found in the history of the Gospel among the heathen than this triumph of our Mission among the Santee Sioux. And finally, as a crowning token of Divine mercy and good will, we are permitted to behold, for the first time in many years, the draw- ing near to each other of brethren long divided in our Home and Foreign work, and the perfecting of an organization known as the Indian Commis- sion, composed of clergymen and laymen of diverse schools of thought in the Church, but of one mind and purpose in the task assigned to them, and full of zeal for the success of the new Indian Missions. These are the health- ful and cheering auspices under which the Church returns to her work of giving the Gospel to the heathen tribes of America. THE FIELD AND THE WORK. The Indian Commission, which is charged by General Convention and the Board of Missions with the oversight and direction of the Missions to the Indians, and the nomination to the Government of Agents for certain 4 tribes placed under the training of the Church, is composed of fifty clerg) men and laymen, selected from differents parts of the countrj'. The Commission acts in connection with and under the general direction of the Domestic Committee of the Board of Missions, and its duties are delegated to an Ex- ecutive Committee, with an office at the Mission Rooms [22 Bible House] in New York. The Indian tribes for whose welfare and moral and religious training the Church has consented to become responsible, belong mostly to the Sioiix or Dacota Nation, the most formidable of the Northwestern sav- ages, and believed to number between thirty and forty thousand souls. Our Missions to these Indians are limited at present to the Santee and Yankton Reservations on the Missouri river, near the boundary line which separates Nebraska and Dacota, the Saniees being in Nebraska and the Yanklons twenty- five miles above, on the opposite or east bank of the Missouri, in Dacota. Immediately across the river from the Vanktons are the Poncas, a tribe long hostile to the Sioux, but for -many years friendly to the whites, and gathered upon a Reservation on the west bank of the river, within the boundaries of the new Indian Territory of the Northwest, to which our Church has given the name of Niobrara, attaching it for the time being to the Episcopal juris- diction of Bishop Clarkson. \Ve have planted a l\Iission among the Poncas and are now seeking to extend our work further up the river, where the Lower B rules, the Yanktonais, the Tivo I^eltles, the Softs Arcs, Alinneconjons, the Oncpapas, and other Sioux tribes are located. Four of the Government Agencies on this river are filled by persons selected and nominated to the President by the Indian Commission of the Church, the first above the Yankton and Ponca Agencies being at Crow Creek, too miles above, and the remaining' ' one being at Cheyenne, nearly 200 miles from the Yankton Reservation. It is in connection with these posts and with the co-operation of these Govern- ment appointees, who are. communicants of the Church, that we desire to establish our Mission schools and chapels on the Upper Missouri. The other Agencies assigned to the supervision of the Church are with Spotted TaiFs and Red Cloud’s bands, and among the Shoshones and Bannocks in Wyo- ming Territory. Spotted Tail's location has not been finally determined, but it will doubtless be somewhere in the southwestern part of Dacota, or across the line in Nebraska. Red Cloud’s band is on a Reservation in Wyoming, west of the Black Hills, and the Shoshones and Bannocks in the Northwestern part of the same territory. In accepting from the Government the care of these tribes and the nomination and supervision of their Agents, it has been expressly stipulated by our Missionaiy^ Boards that the Agencies shall be free from all party domination or interference, and the Agents have power to ex- clude all persons from the Reservations except those whose characters and occupations have their approval. The Government has agreed to sustain them in the exercise of this authority, and in every way in its power to aid in the civilization of the Indian. 5 thp: santees, or KNIEE-INDIANS— their story. On the banks of the Minnesota river, a few miles above Eort Ridgely, in the fall of i860, Mr. Hinman, then a deacon, began the Church’s work among the Dacotas. The tribe of the Santees, with whom he commenced his labors, were, as their name suggests, of a warlike and cruel disposition, and had been regarded as among the most unfavorable of all the Sioux (or Dacota) tribes for the reception of Missionary teaching. Through the efforts of a former Agent they had been induced to attempt the cultivation of the soil, and some of them were making fair progress. In 1862, their wilder brethren came in from the Plains by appointment with the Government agents, to receive their annuities. They were in a starving condition, and many of them had travelled with their wives and children four and five hundred miles. They reached the Agency only to find that no provision had been made for them. In their hunger and desperation they first fell upon the cattle and crops of the “farmer Indians, ’’and finally, goaded to madness by their wrongs and sufferings, they desolated the white settlements in that frightful raid long to be remembered as the Sioux Massacre. The Santees were stripjicd of everything and forced to join the savages in their fiendish work by threats of the butchery of their wives and children. Their doing so, however, was Providential, for they were instrumental in saving the lives of over three hundred white settlers. The “farmer Indians,” with others, gave themselves up to the Government at the first opportunity, and were marched in chains and treated with great cruelty along the road, to Fort Snelling, on the Mississijipi. From thence some of them were taken to Mankato and hanged, the innocent with the guilty. The Santee prisoners at Eort Snelling sent imploring letters to IMr. Hinman to come to them, which he did, sharing their miserable encampment within an enclosure, and resuming the Services of the Church in their rude tepees. And here was witnessed that memorable Confirmation scene, when over one hun- dred men and women, kneeling at the feet of Bishop Whipple, were received by him into the Church. From P'ort Snelling these prisoners were sent into a cruel exile on a barren tract in Dacota, where during three years, unable to raise crops, they suffered frightfully from hunger and destitution. Over three hundred, including all the young children, literally starved to death in a few months. They nevertheless erected here the first church, built of rude logs. IMr. Hinman remained among them all this time, sharing their poverty and trials, unremitting in his efforts to inspire them with Christian forbearance and fortitude, and striving to effect their release from this second imprisonment. He acquired their language and obtained an influence over them and the surrounding tribes such as few white men ever before possessed among these wild Sioux. At length the Government was persuaded to re- move them to their present Reserv'ation on the border line in Nebraska, where the change that has since been wrought in their condition is the theme 6 of wondering comment by Christian men and heathen, whites and savages, far and near. Out of one thousand souls, composing Mr. Hinman’s charge, aver three hundred are devout cotnynunicanis. Bishop Clarkson testifies to the Mission as he saw it nearly three years ago : “I really think there is nothing in our day on this continent more in- teresting to visit than this Santee Indian Mission. It is impossible for a Christian man to spend a single day among the monuments and the results of this heroic Christian eflfort without the profoundest emotions of gr-titude and the deepest feelings of wondec and of awe. Nearly all the oldest mem- bers of Mr. Hinman’s Indian congregation have been confirmed and are communicants. I entreat those who love Christ’s word and who are inter- ested in the melancholy condition of this Pagan race that is passing to a heathen grave within an arm’s length of our boasted Christianity, not to allow this Mission to be crippled for want of means. Mr. Hinman, with one Indian Deacon and two or three candidates for the Ministry now at his side, can very readily extend his operations almost indefinitely.” Mr. Hinman writes in his Journal, 1870: “We have nowhere, in a population of fifteen hundred souls, one thousand baptized persons, three hundred r;nd thirty-seven communicants, two hundred children in our care, four young men preparing for the Sacred Ministry, two candidates for Holy Orders, and one native Deacon.” The beautiful Chapel and Mission House among the Santees, destroyed by a tornado in 1870, have been replaced by buildings equally fine and com- modious, mostly through the generous aid of Mr. William Welsh. Mr. Hinman and his family were buried in the ruins of the Mission House, but Providentially escaped severe injury. THE RIPE FRUIT OF THE SANTEE MISSION. We have a recent letter from Mr. Hinman, in which he writes concerning his work : “ Our Indians are now prepared to occupy their farms, and in a few )’ears will be able to aid in our support. Instead of one school we are obliged to have three, for having taken up claims, they are scattered for miles along the River and in the back country. We must have a school sustained at Wa- pashaw, six miles from the Mission, and at Bazille, twelve miles. Both these valleys are filled with our best Indians, who have taken farms and built houses and are at work. “ On Sioux River, both the Bishop and myself, and also Bishop Whipple, have promised the Indians our influence toward aiding them to build a church, and promised them a school absolutely, and we have maintained there for a year a catechist and teacher. This settlement is peculiar, and is the crowning glory of our w'ork. The Indians, some three hundred in num- ber, formerly lived here. [Some of them are Presbyterians.] They were fed and helped by the Government ; but the long delay of the Government, and the positive refusal of their Agent to survey and allot their lands, dis- couraged them, and they resolved to become independent of Government aid. They renounced their tribal relations, gave up their Reservation and all aid that they received annually from Washington, and went out an hun- dred or more miles on the Sioux River, and took ‘ claims ’ of land, one hundred and sixty acres each, like the whites, under the Homestead Act. / They have now been two years on their farms, and they have supported them- selves without any foreign aid of any kind, and their number is gradually increasing until it must soon include fully one-half our tribe. This case is singular and commendable, and shows what has never been shown before : that Indians can think for their children as well as themselves, and that they are ready and willing to do anything to advance their own civilization. Among these settlers are two hereditar}" chiefs, who gave up all their honors, rights and emoluments to become citizens and farmers. Both these are communicants of our Church. I feel that this is our most interesting and promising station, and that we ought to have a church and school there, well sustained, at least for the present.” THE YANKTON SIOUX AND THE “LIGHT” WHICH THEY SAW AFAR OFF. “This evening” writes Mr. Hinman in his Journal of the Santee Mission (Jan. 1869), “a Yankton Indian Pipe), the head soldier of the chief called Feather in the Ear, came to see me. He had walked forty miles to be here [at Service] to-morrow. He said his people were looking this way for help because they could see the light here from far.” This call was shortly afterward followed by a ceremonial visit from the head chief of the Yanktons who addressed our Missionary as follows : “ Koda (friend) you are small in stature, but your name has grown large, so that you seem to us like a pine-tree of a ravine, tall and straight. . . . You have a good work, and although these Santees were very bad, you have washed them and made them appear good Come and help us — go from nation to nation. When one has been blessed, come on to yet another, and before you die you will lead our people to a great salvation. Our people want you. ...” This appeal was followed by others still more importunate, and led to the establishment of our Missions among the Yanktons, in 1870. This tribe numbers 2,500 souls. Our first Missionary among them was the Rev. Paul Mazakute, a native Santee Presbyter, one of the five native clerg}^ ordained in the last five years. The Rev. J. W. Cook joined Mr. Hinman at Santee in 1870, and took charge of the Yankton Mission the same year. We have now a Mission house and three chapels in different places on this Reservation. Over two hundred have been baptized within the last eighteen months. At Choteau Creek, the site of one of our Yankton Missions, a chief and his whole band have recently been brought into the Church. Two or three of the sons of head chiefs are being educated in Nebraska for the ministry, and others are waiting to be taken and trained, either as teachers, or for Holy Orders. Mr. Welsh, who visited these Indians in 1870, relates among other inci- dents of his visit, the following, showing the sharp contrasts which are pre- sented between Paganism and Christianity at our Missions : “ We reached the Yankton reservation on Saturday evening and chanced, in visiting by moonlight a cluster of tepees, to enter one that was owned by a member of the Presbyterian Church. It was cheering to hear that Chris- 8 tian Indian, so lately a heathen, uniting with the Rev. J. \V. Cook, the Episcopal Missionary, in singing the praises of our God and Saviour in the Dacota language ; the bright fire in the middle of the tent enabling them to read and us to look with gratitude on the strange scene. From an adjoining tepee we heard the groans of a child dying under the infliction of heathen rites ; and presently, as his spirit passed away, there arose a most piteous wail from the whole camp. Whilst these fearful shrieks of the hopeless heathen were still sounding in our ears, we were made hopeful by the strains of praise that came from the Episcopal chapel. “The Santee Christian choristers, after having walked some forty miles that day, were in the chapel chanting and singing, to prepare for the mor- row’s Service. On Sunday morning the contrast between Heathenism and Christianity was equally striking. The day was very cold, and the wind furious ; yet the heart-broken father and his adult son, both naked, except a girdle about their loins, marched slowly past the chapel, their heads bent, and their bodies covered with earth, wailing piteously. This occurred just as numbers of Indians, warmly clad in civilized garments, or wrapped in their new blankets, were wending their way to the chapel to unite with us in public worship and to listen to words from the Book of Life. The chapel was filled with chiefs and Indian soldiers and others ; the men outnumbering the women, all seeming reverent and attentive worshippers. ” DE.SIRE OF THESE TRIBES FOR CHRISTIAN CIVILIZA'ITON. Just as the wonderful success of the Santee Mission led to the establish- ment of the Missions among the Yanktons, so these are beginning to throw their light far into the surrounding countr)-, and among the tribes of the Upper Missouri. Delegations from the Blackfeet and Matida7i Indians and others have waited upon Mr. Cook, and urged that a INIissionar}- be sent among them. In a recent letter Mr. Cook says: “The tribes above are constantly sending their messages or their delegations to l\Ir. Hinman and myself with reference to establishing Missions among them. I hope the Church will soon be able to extend her work further up the River.” Mr. Hinman writes to the same effect, and pleads for liberal offerings to enable him to respond to these frequent calls. “After a while,” he says, “when the Upper Sioux have Missionaries and teachers, the Indians will depend upon them for counsel and advice, and so relieve me ; but at present I cannot prevent them from coming here, and they sometimes come in large numbers. It adds, of course, to our expenses, but it does them vast good to see here, with their own eyes, what Indians can do for themselves, and what we have done for them in the way of instruction and sympathy. Last fall, I gave two wagons to two Indians (not chiefs) of the Cheyenne Agency, our outmost post, where the people are entirely wild. The result has been, the biiildmg of ten log-houses and a school-house, where an Indian is a teacher of his own people. They have done this under ridicule from both whites and Indians.” THE PONCAS— A FRIENDLESS PEOPLE AND A NOBLE WORK. 'Phe Indians next adjacent to the Santees, on the North (on the opposite side of the river from the Yanktons), are the Poncas, a distinct people from the Sioux, with whom they have long been at enmity. It is but the remnant 9 of a tribe, numbering less than 800 souls. They have been steadfast friends of the whites for years, but no tribe on the Missouri has been more neglected and ill used. During the past winter they have been in a state bordering on starvation, subsisting almost entirely on parched corn. Like the Yanktons, they besought Mr. Hinman to send them a Missionary, and the Sioux pres- byter, Rev. Paul IMazakute, was the first to help Mr. H. diffuse the light of the Gospel among them. In 1871, the Rev. J. O. Dorsey, of Maryland, went among the Poncas, and schools and a Mission have been regularly opened. Mrs. Stanforth, the step-mother of Mr. D. , joined her son in November last, giving up the comforts of a city home, and cheerfully accept- ing the rude fare and hard service incident to a new Mission. She writes of her reception : “ We reached the banks ol the Missouri River just at dark. We were a long time making them hear us across at the Ponca Reservation, but at last an Indian answered and asked if it was (teacher) ; soon we heard the boat coming ; we were very thankful, for it was so cold that I was afraid we would be frosted. Our agent, I\Ir. Gregory, and five Indians came over for us, and we were soon on the other shore. There we were met by a crowd of Indian boys. I believe that every boy who heard of our arrival came out to meet us. I cannot describe my feelings as I saw that crowd of heathen boys around us. They shouted and then all commenced to say the Lord's Prayer in English. Such a welcome ! They completely surrounded us ; they were rolled up in red, blue, or black blankets, and most of them had a feather in their hair. I was introduced as Waga 7 iyi hihanaai (Teacher's mother), and introduced also as a friend of the Poncas. As we stood there on the river's bank I had to shake hands with all ; then we started for Mr. Gregor)- 's house, with the whole crowd of Indians as an escort. " Mrs. Stanforth is ministering to the physical and mental wants of these people with unwearying love and patience, and amid a multitude of dis- couragements. In a recent letter she says ; “ 'Phe sick and the aged come daily to me for relief. They cannot eat the parched corn. Mr. Lewis, the .\gency farmer, was here this afternoon. I asked him if it was true that the i’oncas were living on parched corn. He said it was. There are now one hundred government cattle on this prairie around the village. They walk up to the very doors of the Ponca houses ; but a Ponca has never been known to trouble them, even when in a state of starv ation. Mr. Lewis has been here fifteen years. He told me that he has known this people to be without bread, or even corn, and that they would go into his corn-field, and break off the suckers and chew them for the nourishment that could be drawn from the sap, and yet never touch a stalk of corn. As this was told me, I thought of the bread-riots among civilized whites. I do not like to go near a window and look at the Ponca houses and tents, for I know that grouped around every fire are many sad hearts, hearts that ache for their naked and hungry children. . . . The destitution here is truly heart-rending. ” THE CHIPPEWAS IN MINNESOTA— “ ENMEGAHBOWH.” We have but a solitary Mission among the Chippewas in Bishop Whipple’s Diocese, where we should have several stations. The way was opened about lO the time that Mr. Hinman went among the Dacotas. In the same way that his flock were made instrumental during the massacre of 1862 in saving the lives of hundreds of white prisoners, our native Chippewa presbyter (then a Deacon) was the humble means, under God, of preventing an attack being made by some of Hole-in-the-Day s band upon Fort Ripley, which would have involved us in a war with the Chippewas and delivered over the northern frontier of Minnesota to the scalping-knife and torch. This Indian deacon was a pupil of Bishop Whipple, the son of a chief who, on his death-bed, yielding to the entreaties of his son, renounced paganism and became a Christian. He is widely known to the Church as Enmegahbowh (“ The one who stands before you”), his Christian name being John Johnson. He has labored continuously among his people, contending against bitter opposition from the medicine-men, and enduring trials of hunger and destitution that would have disheartened many white Missionaries; but he has been the means of bringing several hundred of his people out of darkness into light. Most of those under his ministiy have laid aside the blanket and the weapons of the chase, and adopted the dress of white men and become industrious tillers of the soil, living in comfortable log-houses. Over 200 are communicants of the Church. Enmegahbowh’s station is at the White Earth Reservation, a track 36 miles square, in the Northwestern part of Minnesota. He has a comfortable frame chapel, erected last summer, neatly furnished and painted, and his con- gregation have built, within the past year, 25 log-houses, and have from three to five acres of land each under cultivation. The Government is endeavoring to induce the remaining tribes of Mississippi Chippewas to remove to this Reservation, and it is reported that fifteen hundred will join their brethren al- ready there this spring. We earnestly desire to strengthen the hands of our faithful Chippewa Missionary in this most inviting field. Bishop Whipple visited the White Earth Reservation last July. He there met the Christian chiefs and head men whom he had last seen several years before, on the Mississippi, in their feathers and war-paint, dancing a scalp dance before his tent. They were then on the war-path against their heredi- tary' enemies, the Sioux. They prolonged their savage orgies late into the night, and the next morning, drunk with savage fury, started on their hostile errand. From that expedition these same men returned with bloody trophies of their prowess. One of them is said to have taken nine scalps. At the close of the Service last Christmas-day (says a clergyman who has visited the Reservation), one of the principal chiefs asked permission to “make little speech ” to his people. Among other things, he said ; ‘ ‘ My Brothers, some of you have been watching me to-day, because my many tears have dropped on the floor. I cannot keep tears when I see and know what that great good Man call Jesus do for me. The more I learn of Him, the more I be- come you call coward. Let any of you come strike me with war-club, strike me deep, strike my body, I never feel pain, much less shed tears. But when I see Jesus doing this for me, I drop tears on floor.” The man who made this “ little speech” was none other than the hero of the nine scalps whom Bishop Whipple saw on the Mississippi. He and his fellow-warriors are now the most earnest and devout co-workers with our Missionar)-. Wabashaw, the head chief of the Santees, is also a remarkable ex- ample of the power of Christianity over the tribes of the Northwest. “Thirteen years ago,” says an army officer, “I saw this hereditary chief, who was also their great warrior and medicine-man, covered with paint and feathers, riding at full speed through the streets of St. Paul, fran- tically brandishing his scalping-knife, under the influence of intoxicating drink.” “A few weeks ago,” writes the originator of the Indian Commission, in a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, published last fall, “ I listened to words of great wisdom and Christian propriety uttered by him in council ; then, on Sunday, I saw a large worshipping assembly in his spacious log- house, the old chief and his children reverently engaged in the public Ser- vices of the Church.” “ If the people,” says the same writer, on another occasion, “who are skeptical about the conversion of these home heathen, could have been pre- sent, witnessing their reverent worship, and hearing them sing such hymns as ‘ yerusalem the Golden ’ and ‘ Nearer, my God, to Thee ' — instead of re- maining in unbelief, they would fill the IMissionary treasury to overflowing. The Rev. Christian Taopi, a Santee Deacon, though quite sick, was present at one of the Services. That man is a miracle of grace ; so humble and de- voted, and so zealous, that during his illness he could not be restrained from ministering to one whose life seemed to be in still more danger.” The Rev. S. K. Stewart, who visited White Earth Reservation last Fall, says of the Services of the Church at the Chippewa Mission: “ It would have rejoiced your heart to have been with that congregation. To witness their neat appearance, their reverent and devout manner of conducting them- selves during the Service, to hear them devoutly making the responses so far as they had learned them, and singing hymns of praise to God in their own native tongue, was indeed delightful.” The same writer bears testimony to the unrivalled opportunity presented in this Northern field of heathendom for the work of the Church. “Though my trip took me through all the Chippewas of the State,” he says, “it is worthy of note that I heard of no Protestant Christians among them except members of our own Church.” Bishop Clarkson, in his last Report to the Board of Missions, thus refers to a Convocation of the clergy and laity of our Indian Missions which he had attended at the Santee Mission House : “ It was one of the most interesting events of my whole life. It would be utterly impossible for me to convey to this Board or to the Church an adequate idea of the great solemnity and the deep significancy of this gather- ing of Christian representatives of these but lately pagan tribes. The absorb- ing thought of these regenerate people was, ‘ What shall we do to carry the Gospel to the brethren of our own blood beyond us t How shall we teach others what we now know V One could almost fancy himself back among the assemblies of Apostolic times, w'hen every heart glo’wed with Missionary fire. The whole scene was indeed a most impressive and inspiring exhibi- tion of the necessity and power of true religion to communicate itself. The opportunity of the Church here is indeed well-nigh unrivalled. Here is a whole people kneeling at our feet, and, with upturned and hopeful gaze, im- ploring us to lift them from the mire and filth of paganism up to the light and joy and purity of Christianity.” THE ONEIDAS— 1702 AND 1872. It is a ver\- interesting fact, and one that ought to inspire members of our communion with confidence in the wisdom of the Church in accepting the responsibility of her present relation to certain tribes, that the spiritual training and social elevation of these | eople has been publicly acknowledged as our ' solemn duty by the fathers and founders of the Church in America from its very earliest days. The Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, to whom we owe so much, sent over its first ^Missionaries in 1701 and ’2 “to preach the Gospel among the Six Nations of the Indians,” and our present Church among the Oneidas at Green Bay, is a continuation (after a long lapse, and many failures and discouragements) of the work whose founda- tions were laid by the Mother Church of England in the Valley of the IMohawk before the Revolutionary War. This ^Mission at Green Bay has been main- tained under a variety of adverse circumstances, and its success teaches us two important lessons. The first is, that God’s Word from the lips of His holy Church to these heathen tribes shall not fail though a host of evil influences be laid against it — “ it shall prosper in the thing whereunto it is sent. ” The second lesson meets the secular objection that our American Indians do not thrive under civilization — that the race is doomed, and must soon pass out of existence under the best care that Christian civilization can bestow. Mr. Goodnough, our IMissionart' among the Oneidas at Green Bay, states ; “ Since 1838 the population has doubled, and as they advance in civilizattori, the ratio of increase contimtes to grow greater." IMr. G. also says: “ In a population of 800, aver 200 are devout Connn unicants. ” This is the story of the Church’s ^Missions to the Northwestern Indians. We cannot better enforce the moral which it teaches than by citing an incident related by Bishop Whipple : IMAZASHA. Red Iron was a man in the prime of life at the time that the Sioux sold their beautiful country to us. There were transactions connected with that sale which ought to make every American blush for ver}- shame. I will not write it. It is written plainly in the book of God, and I can leave it for the Judgment. The Indians say that the chiefs were bribed to betray their own people ; that they were deprived of the Reser\-ation which they had expected ; that the money for the first payment was given largely to satisfy claims : that they were kept waiting until at last many of their people died of starvation. Some of the Indians were indignant, and made threats against us. The Go- vernor sent to Red Iron, and asked him what this meant, and what he intended to do. The Red i\Ian drew himself up to his full height, and said, ‘ I will leave the bones of my people here on the prairie, and some day the Gre.\t Spirit will look the White Man m the face, and ask him what has become of his Red Brother. I leave it to Him. ” The Executive Committee of the Indian Commission ask the liberal offerings of the Church to sustain these IMissions to our Western tribes. 22 Bible Hoiise, Neiv York.