Statistical Bureau 
 Antertran UtoBtonarjj ABBonalton 
 
 By REV. C. L. HALL, D.D. 
 
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 287 iFmtrtlf Amw - New fork 
 
 
Chapel and Missionary's Home, Elbowoods, N. D. 
 
 The building is the missionary's home, and the 
 home of little girls and their teacher and matron. 
 The center of the building is the Chapel. 
 
 Independence Church, Built by Indians. 
 
 This building was done partly by volunteer labor 
 by the members, and with money furnished almost 
 entirely by the Indians and their friends on the Res- 
 ervation. The bell in the tower was transferred to 
 the church from the old Mission at old Ft. Berthold, 
 where it was first hung in 1880. It was the gift of 
 the Broadway Tabernacle Church, N. Y., in memory 
 of Deacon R. L. Hall, father of C. L. Hall, and is 
 so inscribed. 
 
THE MISSION HOUSE AT ELBOWOODS, N. D. 
 
 REV. C. L. HALL, D.D. 
 
 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 
 
 Returned Pupils and Children. 
 
 years of labor to put the gist of the gospel into 
 several Indian languages that had no literature, 
 that our 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, and who knew not the 
 God and Father of our Lord. 
 
 Difficult as all this work was, it is only a be- 
 ginning, only elementary. The message must be 
 applied to all phases of life. A constant educa- 
 tional process must be kept up to incorporate 
 Christian ideals into the daily thinking of the 
 
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people, and Christian purposes into their con- 
 trolling motives. This is to be done by the reit- 
 erated daily teaching of the schools, and the liv- 
 ing 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 
 
 School Girls, Teacher and Matron. 
 
 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 his religion. He 
 lived by the help of his gods. We are trying not 
 to destroy this faith, but to transfer it to the liv- 
 ing 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, be- 
 cause it is the work of a child of God to do these 
 things well. We are trying to teach our neigh- 
 bors 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 enlightenment, and 
 
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prosperity, and any other virtue of endowment 
 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 accord- 
 ing to present-day methods and earning a sup- 
 
 Sisters of Blossom in Party Dresses. 
 
 port for their growing families, building their 
 meeting place, and making some contributions to 
 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. The blight of rit- 
 ualism shrivels the budding life. 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 idola- 
 try. It is true that environment does not regen- 
 erate the soul, but the renewed soul transforms 
 the environment. Then better conditions are evi- 
 dence of the new life. On the contrary when 
 some fall away back to heathenism, they fall into 
 slovenly attire, ill-kept homes, and neglected 
 fields. 
 
 The struggle for clean bodies and healthful 
 conditions demands much attention from a mis- 
 
 Mission Oat Field, 70 Bushels to the Acre. 
 
 sionary. Christ healed diseases. We must bring 
 help to the bodies of our people. 
 
 In the Indian country tuberculosis and tra- 
 choma especially must be fought. Nearly one- 
 half of our people at the present time have tra- 
 choma in various stages. For more than six 
 months we have given daily treatment to six cases 
 in our little home school. There is good prospect 
 of curing this eye disease in the case of young 
 children, but it is a fight of years to win the vic- 
 tory over this malady in a tribe. In the case of 
 consumption we have again and again watched 
 the life sapped out of promising youth that we 
 
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hoped to depend upon in the church and com- 
 munity. The bodies of the people must be re- 
 deemed or there can be no abiding Christian com- 
 munity. It is bad enough to have weak members 
 in the churches, but dead ones are yet more in- 
 operative. It is not that Christian principle does 
 not triumph over disease. Brother Porcupine 
 was a notable instance of such a victory. For 
 years he had one foot in the grave. Once his 
 
 Blossom Chase. 
 
 Romanist neighbors tried to win him over to 
 their way when, as they thought, he was on his 
 death bed. They made the offer of a burial in 
 their fine graveyard, round which they had put 
 a new fancy iron fence. He recovered enough 
 to get about and for several years he laughed at 
 the picture of a happy corpse inside an iron fence. 
 He could not read, but delighted to carry about 
 
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a testament that he might get some friend to in- 
 terpret a little of it to him. Coming to church 
 in all weathers and giving his testimony with 
 difficulty in a husky voice to the very end, he was 
 an example to the flock, a hero though in a body 
 almost repulsive from the ravages of disease. We 
 have seen such triumphs all along these well-nigh 
 forty years, but to build up a church we need 
 able-bodied men and women filled with God's 
 spirit. So it is part of our effort to improve 
 physical conditions for our members and espe- 
 cially for our growing children. 
 
 It is necessary to have hearts sprinkled from 
 an evil conscience and also bodies washed with 
 pure water ! We want a church on earth as well 
 as one in heaven. Struggling and imperfect it 
 may be, yet triumphing over adverse conditions, 
 both physical and spiritual. For godliness has 
 the "promise of the life that now is, and of that 
 which is to come." 
 
 DISTRICT OFFICES: 
 
 Eastern District: 
 615 Congregational House, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Western District: 
 19 South La Salle Street, Chicago, III. 
 
 Pacific District: 
 21 Brenham Place, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
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