The experience of the General Council in Porto Rico has been that of all workers in Latin America. They have discovered that the Roman Catholic Church has lost its hold on the people and that thousands are longing for a better way.
The American Indian.
The American Indian was so called, as we know, from the fact that the discoverers of this continent supposed they had reached the eastern coast of India. Indians belong to one race, though they call themselves by many different tribal names. How large their number was before the advent of the white man it is impossible to tell; now, greatly diminished by wars among themselves, by oppression, by diseases brought from abroad and especially by the white man’s brandy, they number about three hundred thousand. Of these the majority live in reservations appointed to them by the government of the United States whose later policy has been to care for them with such thoroughness that for most of them independent development is difficult. It is reckoned that among the three hundred thousand about ninety-two thousand are Christians. These are reliable, sober and settled. Almost none of the Indians educated in the Christian schools return to the habits of their forefathers.
The work of the Lutheran Church among the Indians began, as we have seen, in the Swedish settlement along the Delaware River. In Georgia the work of the Salzburgers was closed by the removal of the Indians, an almost inevitable consummation in the days when the Indians were constantly shifting in flight or by compulsion from place to place. The Rev. J. C. Hartwig, one of the pioneer ministers of the American Lutheran Church who died in 1796 left his property, amounting to about seventeen thousand dollars for the establishing of a training school (Hartwick Seminary) for ministers and missionaries. He had in mind especially missionaries who should work among the American Indians. The school was established and when application was made to the government to begin work among the Indians of Otsego County, New York, President Washington answered that a special act of Congress would be required before permission could be given.
Among the unconverted Indians the Lutheran Church is at work in various places to-day.
The Norwegian Synod has had a mission among the Winnebago Indians in Wisconsin since 1885. For its support they contributed in 1915, $6,000. Here also Elling’s Synod of the Norwegian Church has a mission.
In Arizona the Missouri Synod has a mission.
In Arizona the Wisconsin Synod has four mission stations--at Globe, a town of about eight thousand inhabitants, at Peridot on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, at East Fork, and at Cibecue. The community at East Fork has been recently visited with serious epidemics, but the twenty-five children in the Lutheran school all survived and were able to return. The village of Cibecue lies far from the railroad and the Indians there have not been affected by the vices of civilization. Here it was not possible during the last year to receive all the children who came.
The Danish Synod has been at work in Oklahoma since 1892. It contributed in 1915, $2,500 to this mission.
Alaska.