Every Friday Mr. Hall gave a dinner in the mission house to his pupils. We Indian children thought these dinners wonderful. Many of us had never tasted white men’s food; some things, as sour pickles, we did not like. Mr. Hall wanted us to learn to eat white bread and biscuits, so that we would ask our mothers to bake bread at home. He hoped this would be a means of getting us to like white men’s ways.
On Saturdays we had no school, and Mr. Hall would go around the village, shaking hands with the Indians and inviting them to come to church the next morning. Later, Poor Wolf acted as his crier, and on Saturday evenings he would go around, calling out, “Ho Washte, Ho Washte! Come you people, to-morrow, and sit for him!” He meant for them to come to church the next morning and sit in chairs.
Mr. Hall’s janitor, a young Indian named Bear’s Teeth, swept out the mission house, made the fires, and got the school room ready for the services. There was no bell on the mission, so a flag was run up as a signal for the congregation to gather.
Not many came to the services, fifteen or twenty were a usual congregation, sometimes only ten. Mr. Hall preached, and to make his sermons plainer, he often drew pictures on the blackboard.
My father thought the missionary’s religion was good, but would not himself forsake the old ways. “The old gods are best for me,” he used to say, but he let me go to hear Mr. Hall preach. I cannot say that I always understood the sermon. Sometimes Mr. Hall would say, “Thirty years ago, my friends, I saw the light!” I thought he meant he had seen a vision.
But I learned a good deal from Mr. Hall’s preaching; and my lessons and the songs I learned at school made me think of Jesus; but I thought an Indian could be a Christian and also believe in the old ways.
It came over me one day, that this could not be. A story of our Indian god, It-si-ka-ma-hi-di, tells us that the sun is a man, with his body painted red, like fire; that the earth is flat, and that the sky covers it like a bowl turned bottom up; but in my geography, at school, I learned that the earth is round.
In our earth lodge, that night, I said to my parents, “This earth is round; the sun is a burning ball!” My cousin Butterfly was disgusted. “That is white man’s talk,” he grunted. “This earth is flat. White men are foolish!” This I would in no wise admit, and I came home almost daily with some new proof that the earth was round.
As I grew older and began to read books, I thought of myself as a Christian, but more because I went to the mission school, than because I thought of Jesus as my Saviour. I loved to read the stories of the Bible; and Mr. Hall taught me the Ten Commandments. Some of the Indian boys learned to swear, from hearing white men; but I never did, because Mr. Hall told me it was wrong. I thought that those who did as the Bible bade, would grow up to be good men.
I had a cousin, three years older than myself, in the Santee Indian school, who had become a Christian. One day I received a letter from him. “I believe in Jesus’ way,” he wrote. “I believe Jesus is a good Saviour. I have tried His way, and I want you to try to join in and have Him for your Saviour.” This letter set me to thinking.