CHRISTIAN ENDEAVORERS AMONG THE INDIANS.
F. B. RIGGS.
It will be ten years this February since the first Indian Christian Endeavor Society was organized in Santee Normal Training School, at Santee, Nebraska.
Chapel, Santee Normal School, Neb.
Meeting-place of our Indian Endeavor Society.
MAMIE DAKA ELDER,
Pres't Santee Endeavor Soc.
The Christian Endeavor movement was rapidly gaining everywhere, and it was not long before other societies were started—in the Oahe mission school, and the Presbyterian mission school at Sisseton, South Dakota. Fourteen months later the first Indian Christian Endeavor Society was started at Santee.
This year at Santee the young people's society includes twenty-one of the Indian pupils with three or four of the teachers, and there are two junior societies, one of girls and one of boys. There is a mothers' society, which was started three or four years ago among the women of the mission church. All these societies have an important place in the Indian mission work.
ETTA R. STAMFORD,
Sec'y Santee Endeavor Soc.
In the young people's society many of the members remain the same from year to year; but during the ten years one hundred and thirty-two young people have joined. They have come from eighteen different agencies, and in several cases from more than one village in the agency. Out of this one-hundred and thirty-two, twenty-three have been engaged, since leaving school, in direct missionary work, most of them as preachers and teachers of day-schools, but a few as the wives of such teachers, or as teachers in mission boarding-schools or missionary helpers. Some of these have done excellent work, and those of whom this is true are nearly always those who were most faithful and active during their school course in the Christian Endeavor Society. Three or four of the most promising have died before they had any opportunity to work at their homes, but some of these short lives were so faithful and patient that perhaps they did more good than many longer lives.
SANTEE JUNIOR ENDEAVOR SOCIETY.
Three other societies have been started among the Indians, where the leaders were chiefly from those who had been members at Santee. But the societies not connected with mission schools have been transient, or intermittent in their life. Those at Santee and Sisseton, and one at Fort Berthold mission school in North Dakota, have lived. A society is to be started at the Omaha Agency soon.
DAVID P. FLYINGHAWK,
Chair'n Lookout Committee, Santee Endeavor Society.
FRED INYANHOKJILA JOHNSON,
Chair'n Prayer-meeting Committee, Santee Endeavor Soc.
The young people's society at Santee has been a training school for its members. It has broadened their feeling of Christian fellowship with the great army of fellow Endeavorers. It has given them songs that they enjoy very much. It has increased their interest in missions and deepened their feeling of responsibility for service to the Master.
The junior work at Santee has been especially encouraging among the girls, who are rather more responsive than the boys. Of the twelve little girls in the picture, one died last year, but eight are now members of the senior society.
In the monthly meetings of the Mothers' Society of Christian Endeavor many questions are asked and answered concerning the care and training of children, and the children are remembered in prayer.
One thing, at least, these Christian Endeavor Societies have done. They have emphasized the idea of endeavor and service. It expresses itself in the use of a new word, or rather the use of an old word a thousand times where it was used once before. The name in Dakota means "The society of those who want to work for Jesus," and "working for Jesus" has become a more prominent thought in all their religious life.
KATE WAMNIYOMNIWAJTEWIN FRUH,
Chair'n Missionary Committee, Santee Endeavor Society.
MINNIE WANMLIWIN LAST-HORSE.
Chair'n Flower Committee, Santee Endeavor Society.
Last year a Junior Endeavor Society of Indian girls gave one dollar to the Church-Building Society, one dollar to the Education Society, one dollar to the Dakota Native Missionary Society, and one dollar to the American Board. A Junior Endeavor Society of Indian boys gave one dollar to the American Missionary Association. A Senior Endeavor Society of Indian boys and girls last year gave fourteen dollars to the American Board and three dollars to the Woman's Missionary Union. The Endeavor Society proves, therefore, among the Indian boys and girls and young people just what it does everywhere else. It gives them larger views of the kingdom of God, it stimulates them to greater sacrifice in giving of their means to the spread of this kingdom, and awakens within them deeper spiritual earnestness. The life of a Christian Endeavorer, wherever that life may be spent, cannot be a narrow, selfish life, if loyal to the great Christian Endeavor idea. This society is an important factor in Christian enlargement and quickening among our young people on the prairie.
JUNIOR ENDEAVORERS MAKING A MISSIONARY QUILT.