FORT BERTHOLD, D. T.
REV. C. L. HALL, MISS’Y OF THE A. B. C. F. M.
Yeast.
So Kingsley entitles one of his books; and we may give the name to all those influences which help in preparing the bread of life for this people, or in preparing them to receive it.
First comes the article itself; we have been furnishing them with it to make wholesome bread. Their Indian way of preparing flour, is to fry soggy dough in a panful of grease over a fire made of sticks in the centre of the lodge. Any one who goes back with longing memories to the old days of open fireplace cookery, may enjoy it to his heart’s content without the least contamination with modern conveniences in, a Ree or Gros Ventres or Mandan earth-covered lodge in this place, a journey of only two or three days by railroad and steamboat from Minneapolis. The Indians, however, take kindly to cooking-stoves when our “Uncle” furnishes them; and we are trying, as the first requisite of household health, to teach them to make good bread. Our first step was to create a desire for it, by giving them good bread. But the preference for “white man’s bread” has been created, and the cry for yeast to make it has been daily heard at our door this summer. Lately, we have said, “no more yeast,” but “go and pick hops, and we will teach you how to make yeast”; and specimens of gathered hops are exhibited. It is a great gain to have the people eating wholesome food, for the want of which, in their changed condition of life, and the absence of the former abundance of game, they are dying off. It is greater gain to have them beginning in any way to make home more comfortable, attractive, decent; to have the women improving in cooking, and tidiness of home management; the men drawn to an interest in building better houses; the family to have an ambition for doors and windows and bedsteads, and cups and saucers and tables, and cupboards made of old boxes with calico curtains. But chiefly is it gain to get through such work the confidence and the hearts of the people, that we may lead them to Christ; and if yeast will set the leaven at work by which we may leaven the whole lump, we say, Amen!
Flowers.
We have not limited ourselves to yeast. On Friday afternoons we have given the children who attended regularly, a good meal at a table, with all the accessories of a Christian board, including grace. Other little means of attracting the people to higher things have been beautiful clusters of scarlet blossoms, blooming all the season on the fence, and handsome dahlias and zinnias and four o’clocks, by the house. Groups of little Indians stand open-mouthed before them, or some old woman, with her willow-basket full of corn or squashes on her back, is attracted and cheered by these beauties—gifts of God’s love. That they do notice the flowers at all is a hopeful sign. Early in the spring, I picked a bluebell, and spoke of its beauty to an Indian man who was helping me set fence posts. He said, with a scornful expression at my ignorance: “That isn’t anything, it isn’t good to eat.”
Farming.
Then they study our garden, with its variety of different vegetables and roots, and its young trees. They are doing well at agriculture—better than most Indians in the territory of Dakota. This year their crops of corn, potatoes, squashes and beans are large and fine; but they raise nothing else; and they have not learned to care for stock, to milk, to make butter, and grow feed for cattle. They do not put up hay for their ponies, but let them grow poor during the winter, on such dried grass, and corn-stalks, and cotton-wood bark as they can pick up on the prairie or the bottoms by the Missouri. They are not of much value in harness, but are one with their rider, and endure fatigue and hunger with him marvellously. They think I ought to keep a horse. I tell them my cow gives milk and butter, and their horses don’t. So they look on at our methods of life, and see their superiority; and gradually want to copy them.
Death.
We have striven to open the way for the Gospel by sympathy with, and help for, the sick and dying. One young man among the Mandans died last year as I stood beside him. Before he grew unconscious, he had said to his friend that the white people were coming for him, and he was going. Perhaps some revelation of heaven and God’s love came to him in that shape. There was a woman once who touched only the hem of a garment. There is One who does not quench the smoking flax. Another poor consumptive died this spring, telling her people not to believe what bad Indians said about our malign influences; that we were good; that if she got well she would come to church; that father and mother must not grieve for her, but, if they felt sad, go to us to be comforted. God has been teaching us how to comfort bereaved parents and friends by taking away our own baby, Harry, to the home over there. An atmosphere of sorrow is about all our Dakota mission-stations. Mrs. Thomas Riggs has been suddenly taken from a useful, active life, near Fort Sully, D. T., and lies buried on her field of work; and Mrs. Renville is taken from the Flandreau people, and Miss Williamson from the Yankton people. But “sorrow is the atmosphere that ripens hearts for heaven,” and, ripe for heaven, they are best for earthly usefulness also.
Conversions.
The white employés and white men living among the Indians were all interested this spring, and we hope there were several conversions and much good influence at work. One young man, born of missionary parents in the South Seas, who had wandered here from England and from the Lord, we trust has gone back home to live a better life. One man, with a half-breed family, said: “The white people have been teaching the Indians better ways of living; then you have had school, a good school, and now we are going to have church and religion, and do better.” God grant it, but we have to sow and wait, and wait. Our seasons are short, our spiritual zone northern. Yet God will conquer!
From Devil’s Lake three or four days’ hard travel across the prairies to the north-east, there came a word of cheer in the early summer. Some, especially one man who had been under missionary influence in the Southern part of our Territory, but apparently cared for none of these things, came to see us, and to sympathize with us in our loss (he had lost children), and to get what help he could from us in understanding his Bible, and teaching his friends to read. He went away with the urgent request that we come to Devil’s Lake and preach to them.
Devil’s Lake is a Roman Catholic agency, and they do not preach to them in their own tongue. One thing is certain: if the sons are to talk English to us, we must preach in the Indian tongue to the fathers.