The American Missionary by Various
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Various >> The American Missionary
She was then a teacher in an Indian school. She had little children in
her school that came some seven, eight, or ten miles barefooted, and
winter was coming on, and her heart sympathized with these poor children
who came so far to be taught. They happened to have a good agent, and he
said, "Send an order for shoes for these children;" and she sent an
order, with a request that they send the shoes, as they were really
needed, on account of the frost and snow. The order went to Washington,
went through the regular routine, and the next spring, after winter had
passed, a case of shoes came for these little Indian children. When it
was opened, she found it full of brogans, that had been made for the
Southern negro in the rice-fields; and every shoe in that case was so
large that there was not an adult Indian on the reservation that could
wear it. That is how the Indian Bureau provides for the little Indian
children when there is a case of special necessity. (Laughter.)
I could mention numerous illustrations showing that it is impossible to
do any work that is required immediately, through this Indian Bureau. If
people are starving, you cannot get food for them until they die.
Now, what is the remedy? I believe that Christianity is the only
remedy--the only solution of the Indian question. Where they have had
good Christian agents--and they have had some--where they have
missionaries, the Indian has made wonderful progress. I think we can
point to a few civilized and Christianized communities among the Indians
that can find no parallel among the whites of the country. There is less
crime, less immorality, more faithfulness to the requirements of the
Christian religion and better observance of the Sabbath, more sincerity
and earnestness in the performance of every Christian duty, than we can
find in the same number of whites anywhere. At Metlakatla, as told by
Mr. Duncan, the Indians now form a community of twelve hundred people,
who have their churches, their stores, their town-halls. They live in
houses, like other people; they appear like civilized people; they carry
on all the vocations of civilized life; and all this has been done by
the work of one man. There is no liquor-drinking or liquor-selling
there. A majority of this twelve hundred people are earnest, faithful,
consistent Christians. They get no help from the Government. They have
built up and support their churches. Where can you see anything among
the whites that equals it?
Then there is another reason why we should go to them with the gospel of
Christ. It is a good thing to engage in works of charity and
benevolence, but before we do this we should pay our debts. We owe so
much to the Indians of this country, that I think before we go anywhere
else we should do something to atone for the years of wrong, for the
centuries of injury, that they have suffered at our hands. We have taken
their homes from them. We have driven them from reservation to
reservation. We have taken their crops when almost ready to reap. We
have removed them into climates where they have died by hundreds. We
have not listened to their cries. We have on various trumped-up charges
frequently slaughtered these people, and treated them in the most cruel
manner. There is no question that I know of that so holds a man, once
interested, and so grows upon him, as this Indian question.
I was first interested in this subject about ten years ago in the city
of Boston, where Bright Eyes, Mr. Tibbles, and old Standing Bear came to
tell of the wrongs of the Poncas. They were to hold a public meeting.
Wendell Phillips was to speak. I went to that meeting more with a desire
to hear Phillips than from any interest in the Indian. At that time all
I knew about him was what I had learned from the current literature and
romance, and my idea was very far from correct. At that meeting a state
of affairs was shown to exist that seemed astounding and impossible. A
committee was appointed to investigate these statements. They found that
the half had not been told. That committee started measures that
rectified these wrongs done to the Poncas. It commenced suit under the
Fourteenth Amendment to see whether the Indians were citizens. The
Judges of the Supreme Court decided that the Indian was not a person
under the law. Then it tried other channels; to get legislation that
would help the Indian. Senator Dawes soon became interested in this
question, and from that time to the present he has been interested; and
how much the Indian owes to the legislation which has been started and
carried forward by Senator Dawes, but very few people know; but it must
be followed by other legislation before the Indian is safe.
In Boston, Mrs. H.H. Jackson listened to the statement of Bright Eyes
in regard to the wrongs suffered by her people. She came to her and
said, "It is not possible that these things can be true." Bright Eyes
showed her the official documents; she convinced her that it was true.
From that hour that woman's whole soul was in the work. She afterwards
wrote "A Century of Dishonor," and "Ramona," which has preached for the
Indians, and will continue to do so. She gave her life finally for the
Indians, the sickness that caused her death being brought on while
engaged in work for them. This work gets hold of a man, if he has any
blood in his veins and sympathy in his heart, and makes him feel, if he
would stand without condemnation before God in the last day, that he
must do something to redeem his country from dishonor, and deliver this
people from worse than slavery.
Suppose we do not do it. Suppose we allow the Government to care for
them. The Dawes Bill gives them citizenship, but what does the Indian
get? One hundred and sixty acres of land--and he as naked as a babe on
that land. He has had no training in education and systematic work of
any kind; he has no tools--and if he had he would not know how to use
them. He is in the midst of white enemies, who want his land. He has
turned his back upon all the traditions of his ancestors. He has turned
his face toward the whites, and his friends of the past are now his
enemies. He is in the midst of his reservation. His homestead is his
own, yet no American citizen has a right there. If you and I go to teach
him, we can be ordered off by the agent; and if we do not go he can put
us in prison.
If we do not give protection and Christianity to them, there is no hope
for these Indians. Their fate will be the same as Indians on the
reservation in the State of New York, who have been for one hundred
years in the midst of our best civilization, but are still lazy and
shiftless, their reservation being permeated through and through with
unmentionable vices. They have no interest in the civilization of the
present. They are living in the past, dreaming over the glory of their
ancestors. They cannot be reached through civilization without religion.
To an Indian there is nothing secular. Everything pertains to his
religion. When he goes on a hunt, if he has no success, it is because
the gods are opposed to him; and if he is successful, the gods were in
it. When we go to an Indian and seek to change him, we must first change
his gods. We must Christianize him if we would civilize him. There is
where many of our experiments have been wrong.
Is it not laid upon us, who know something of this work, to do this? I
believe if we will not do it, that in the last great day, as we stand
with the Indian before the judgment bar of God, our position will be
worse than that of the Indian. It seems to me that I can hear what the
Judge would say to him at that time. The Indian comes before God, a
pagan from a Christian land; he comes having improved none of the powers
that God gave him. The Lord might say to him: "Did I not give you as
good opportunities and as good capacities as the white man in whose
midst you were? This Christian nation is the foremost for missions. It
has sent to all the lands of the earth, and yet here you come a pagan,
not knowing God, uncivilized, a barbarian." Might not this Indian say:
"I was in prison. I was surrounded by a reservation around whose outside
lines were the soldiers of the United States, and I would be shot if I
went off this reservation. I had no business with which to support
myself; I had no chance for trade or commerce; I had to buy of and sell
to one man. What opportunity had I? When an occasional missionary came
to me with the gospel of Christ, I looked upon this man as one of my
enemies--a man from the nation that had robbed me of my opportunities;
and, my Father, why should I listen to him, especially when he spoke in
a strange language? Am I to blame that I come here empty? Am I to blame
that I must go away?" I believe the Lord would turn to us and say,
"Inasmuch as ye have not done it to one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have not done it unto Me." And, speaking for myself alone,
I would rather at that last day be in the place of that darkened
Indian---savage, barbarian, pagan, as he is--than in the place of the
Christian that knew of his need and would not help him.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
DOES RESTRICTION RESTRICT?
As a son of Maine, I am one of those who believe that prohibition _can_
prohibit, and will do so effectively, if you will give it a fair chance,
but I doubt whether restriction restricts, and have expressed that doubt
in these columns more than once already. But we have been favored with
fresh lessons on this subject, in its application to Chinese
immigration. Chinese women are held in our San Francisco market, at
prices ranging from nothing up to about $2,000. The soul, being that of
a woman, has no value at any time, but the body, till worn out, is held
at a fair percentage of its weight in gold.
Such being the demand, a supply became assured. No artificial barriers
could exclude them. There would soon come to be some "Open Sesame" which
no bolts could resist. As a matter of fact these women have been landed
in numbers so great, and with an effrontery so flagrant, that even the
Chinese Consulate now takes the matter up and puts to shame the
appointed executors of American law. As to persons of the male sex, they
come by various routes: some with certificates sent out to Hong Kong by
our own officials to be sold there and viseed by themselves on this side
the sea; some come with strange stories of previous residence--stories
confirmed by their vivid recollection of deep _snow_ on Clay Street, and
of _Chinese_ conductors on our street-cars: some come smuggled from
British Columbia, across Puget Sound, and others cross the invisible
line between Canadian soil and that of our own _free_ land with none to
say them nay. Meanwhile some of our recent officials who have grown rich
with strange rapidity, or have spent money with lavish generosity, are
under arrest, and sensational developments are the daily promise of
"live newspapers" in San Francisco.
What shall be done? Some of these papers (however incredulous they may
be about prohibition prohibiting) are disposed to try it upon Chinese
immigration. Nothing else, they tell us, can deliver us from a perpetual
invasion by these Asiatic hordes. But, so far as I have seen, no ringing
or enthusiastic response has greeted this suggestion. So long as it
lives only in newspaper paragraphs, and no serious danger appears of its
being put into effect, few men will have courage, or zeal and
forwardness enough to contend with it, but let it be taken up in
earnest, and pressed to actual enactment, and it would soon go the fit
and ignoble way that the _boycott_ has travelled. There are multitudes
who do not object to cursing the Chinaman, but who don't mean to lose
the double eagles which Chinese labor, and that alone, enables them to
put to credit on their bank account.
It seems to me, however, well worth questioning whether a law that after
six years of trial has been found to be fruitful in little except
perjuries and briberies,--a law which cannot be shown to have benefited
a single American laborer, but has had some effect to compel
house-holders to pay larger wages to Chinese domestics, and to enable
Chinese fruit-pickers to make better terms with our fruit-growers:--it
seems to me a question whether a statute of that sort might not be
suffered to expire through its own limitations, without any damage to
the Commonwealth.
Whatever the fate of this law may be, it is sufficiently evident that
our gospel work need not be stayed for lack of souls to work upon, till
China herself and all her broad domain, becomes the Lord's.
* * * * *
YONG JIN AT SACRAMENTO.
I reserve a little space in order to give our readers a little sample of
this gospel work as it appears in a letter from our helper, Yong Jin. He
has recently returned from China where he did good service under Rev.
Mr. Hazen, and he has resumed service with us. "I will tell you what I
had to do with the brethren. Monday night after the school is out [i.e.
9:30] we have the Bible lesson of Chinese, and Tuesday night too.
Wednesday night we have a prayer-meeting after school is out. Thursday
night we have ten or fifteen minutes to speak the gospel before the
school is out. Friday night we have a Bible lesson in Chinese too.
Saturday night we have a prayer meeting again. Sunday night all the
same. But last Sunday noon I preach on the street where the Chinese
live. Perhaps I will preach in the street nest Sunday. By and by, if I
do not preach on the street, I shall preach in the mission-house on
Sunday noon. I shall do as best I can, and I hope God will help us to
do."
I will add that we are hoping to commence special evangelistic work
early in December. Loo Quong will go to our missions in Southern
California, and Chin Toy to those north of us, beginning in Stockton,
where the door seems to be opening wide, and an earnest spirit among the
brethren gives promise of good results. I wish these brethren might be
remembered by our Eastern brethren with special prayer.
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.
CONN.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171
Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.
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, 2,760
Second Ave., South, Minneapolis, Minn.
N.Y.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C.C. Creegan,
Syracuse, N.Y.
OHIO.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal,
Oberlin, Ohio.
ILL.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151
Washington St., Chicago, Ill.
IOWA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Miss Ella B. Marsa,
Grinnell, Iowa.
KANSAS.--Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary, Mrs. Addison Blanchard,
Topeka, Kan.
SOUTH DAKOTA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary, Mrs. W.E. Thrall,
Amour, Dak.
* * * * *
FOUNDATION LAYING AND HOME BUILDING IN THE SOUTH.
BY MISS JOSEPHINE KELLOGG.
The estimation in which "woman's work for woman" is held by our more
thoughtful colored students, will be shown by some extracts from an
address by a graduate of Tougaloo University in Mississippi.
The effect of very unhappy experiences in early youth upon an
exceedingly sensitive temperament, was to make this son of a white
father and black mother cherish a feeling of intense hatred toward all
white people as he was growing up; but being led, in the good providence
of God, to a Christian training-school where he heard of One who
suffered every indignity, and when dying in torture and ignominy prayed,
"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do," new thoughts and
feelings came to him.
He thought there might be cruel men in the world now who know not what
they do. He was led to bow in penitence and submission at the feet of
Jesus. It is now his chief joy that since he entered upon the path of
learning, he has, as a teacher, given several thousand children a start
in the same path.
The little old chapel at Tougaloo having burned down in January, 1882,
he graduated in the spring of that year, from our elementary normal
course, in the new barn, Ayrshire Hall. He has since passed through our
higher normal and college preparatory course, and is pursuing further
studies in another institution, in the intervals teaching, and going
from place to place with the great desire in his heart of bringing about
a better condition of feeling and living, among the people of the State.
I quote from his printed speech: "We read of a time when 'a nation shall
be born in a day.' We have seen it come to pass, and this people is a
babe yet. 'Is not the babe a blessing in the house? Its very
helplessness is a blessing, in that it educates the finest sensibilities
of humanity.' The problem to be solved now is how to nurse this babe
aright. The thoughtful observer will be easily convinced that the
careful and proper education of girls is the first step in the solution
of this problem.
"The education of girls is of the most vital importance for the
uplifting of the colored people of the South. Yes, I venture to say that
_the whole South_ will depend upon their condition for its prosperity.
True progress depends upon the sacredness and sanctity of the home. That
a people or a nation may be happy or prosperous it must have enlightened
and intelligent homes, and for this purpose the girls must be educated
in virtue, industry and self-reliance.
"The colored woman in all conditions and under almost all circumstances
is abused by all races and classes. There are individuals who love and
respect her, but no one fears to _insult_ her as they fear to insult
other women. Let her turn wheresoever she may, she is met by all sorts
of evil influences of a character too indecorous to think about, and I
fear that I should never be forgiven if I should name them, yet we are
compelled to look upon them everywhere we go. Now a reform must begin in
the treatment of women, and it must be commenced by paying more
attention to the education of girls. Only wise mothers can train
champions for great causes like this. Therefore let our voices and our
influence be given to the work of elevating the women who have the care
of making and preserving society."
Thus it has come about that a larger and larger proportion of girls come
to our schools, and it has seemed much better that they should be
educated _with_ their brothers than _apart_ from them, for a great and
grievous lack among the colored people, is a pure, safe and wholesome
social life for the young people, and with all the other labors laid
upon these "universe--ities" is that of fostering such a social life
and, as far as may be, setting forth the pattern for it. Permit me to
introduce you to one of these schools which is in many of its features
doubtless like all the rest.
Tougaloo University is one of the six chartered institutions maintained
by the American Missionary Association with some aid from the State in
which it is located. It is but a few miles from the capital of the great
but undeveloped agricultural State of Mississippi, a State in which the
largest town had, at the last census, less than twelve thousand
inhabitants. This is very far south, in "the great black belt," where
the plantations are large, and upon the country roads you will
constantly see ten or more colored faces to one white one. It contained
at the last census, above two hundred thousand more colored people than
at Emancipation, and above one hundred and seventy thousand more colored
than white. Do you not see how rapidly Christian education and training
must go forward to keep pace with such facts as these?
Stepping off the afternoon train down the Chicago and New Orleans
railway at the little station of Tougaloo, we look up through a pleasant
vista about three-quarters of a mile and see the Mansion, Ballard Hall,
Ladies' Hall, and Strieby Hall, the latter a brick house three stories
high above the basement, dedicated Thanksgiving Day of 1881 in the
presence of the venerable secretary for whom it was named. The work on
this building was done by colored mechanics, students of the school
making the brick and the stone, a sort of concrete for the trimmings.
Strieby Hall has accommodations for nearly a hundred young men, besides
a teacher's family or two. It is kept in scrupulous neatness by the
young men under their matron's eye. She teaches them to nurse one
another in sickness; she also instructs them in the care of their
clothing and requires them to mend when the weekly wash comes in. One
young man became so proud of his skill in this line that he wanted to
put his darned old socks--old darned socks would sound better,
perhaps--into our industrial exhibit for the New Orleans Exposition,
among the chains and wheels from the blacksmith and wagon shops, the
brackets, step-ladders, etc., from the carpenter shop, the cups and
coffee-pots from the tinshop, and the girls' plain sewing and
fancy-work.
There are regular apprentices to all the trades named, and all the boys
of certain grades have lessons, one hour daily, in the several shops, to
get the use of tools and simple work; there is also a course of
industrial drawing running through the school grades for boys and girls
alike.
The school is upon a plantation of five hundred acres, worked by the
young men under the direction of the farm superintendent, a graduate of
the Massachusetts Agricultural College, who gives them "talks," as he
terms his lectures, upon practical themes pertaining to general farming,
fruit-growing, and the care of stock.
As we walk up from the station through, first a wood of water-oak,
sweet-gum and hickory, then an open glade with scattering persimmon
trees upon it, and lastly, a fine park of postoaks draped with Spanish
moss, we approach the old southern "Mansion," which was the only
building of any account upon the ground when the Association purchased
it in 1869, and which is still the handsomest one. It has a little
romance of its own, having been made spacious and beautiful for a bride
who never came into it; but, notwithstanding this disappointment of its
builder, it has in God's providence been greatly connected with
home-building.
Here live the President's family and some of the other teachers. Here
are business offices, a pleasant reading-room with an open fire upon its
hearth, and a small library adjoining. In this house is a guest-chamber
where all friends of the school are made welcome, and here are the
music-rooms, one containing a piano and one a cabinet organ.
More and more highly is the department of musical training esteemed by
those who understand the work. All receive training in vocal music as a
part of their daily school work, and would there were more with means to
take instrumental lessons!
The best of music is taught, from the primary grades upward; and it is
an inspiring thing to hear almost everybody who is at work or play, not
at books, singing and chanting the most beautiful compositions; the
girls from attic chamber to basement laundry, may be chanting,
"Thou who leddest Joseph like a flock," while the carpenter's
apprentices--perchance upon a barn-roof--may be rolling forth the
temperance Marseillaise, and our ears may distinguish from the
neighboring "quarters" the little children of the day and Sabbath-school
singing cheerily,
"Angry words, O let them never
From the tongue unbridled slip;
May the heart's best impulse ever
Check them ere they pass the lip."
Nothing, perhaps, more commends the school to the notice of our white
neighbors than its music, and greater numbers of them will come to a
concert than to any other exercise.
In the Mansion are our rooms for the Normal Department, a study room and
a laboratory. The primary, intermediate and grammar grades are taught in
the new school-house, between the Mansion and Strieby Hall, the upper
part of which is a neat and commodious chapel. The primary school is
free of tuition as a practice-school for the Normal students, and brings
in many little ones from the region round about.
We send forth many teachers for the public schools, and despite the
shortness of the terms and the want of appliances, we see encouraging
evidences of better work done there from year to year. Besides test-book
teaching, these young home-missionaries labor in many lines for the
moral, social and material improvement of their people, and deserve much
help and cheer.
A Biblical department is preparing young men to preach the gospel, and
as they have the industrial training too, they will be fitted for a very
practical sort of evangelism.