They were occasionally accorded the privilege of attending religious services, and at Doaksville, during the ministry of Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, were permitted to hold occasional Sabbath afternoon meetings in the Choctaw church. Primers, catechisms and testaments were sometimes presented to them, and in this way a few of them learned to read the Bible. The kindly interest of these missionaries won their esteem and confidence and awakened in many of them an abiding love and affection for the Presbyterian church.
It is related that when one of them was asked to unite with another church because it was "more free" he replied, "You are too free for me, I need a stricter church. I believe in staying by the old missionaries. They were our friends when we were slaves. They treated us well and did us good, and I mean to stay by their church as long as I live."
SLAVERY AMONG INDIANS
The state of religion among all of the people, both Indians and Negroes, was low, "very low". One of the missionaries described that of the Negroes as being like that of the Samaritans. "They fear the Lord and serve their own gods. As their fathers did, so do they. Their condition is bad, morally and religiously."
It could not easily have been otherwise. The tendency of slavery, under the most favorable conditions has always been in the direction of a low standard of morals and life. Slavery to untutored Indians, in a sparsely settled timber country, suggests the most deplorable condition imaginable. Such a slave lacking the example of intelligence and uprightness, often common among white masters, was subjected to generations of training in every phase of depravity and had no incentive whatever to live a better life.
When, however, these slaves of the Indians were accorded their freedom and became entitled to a part of the public school fund of the Choctaws, they manifested an earnest desire to have ministers and teachers sent them, that they might have churches and schools of their own.
Their great need was a boarding school where the boys and girls especially those in the remote and neglected rural districts, could be taken from their homes and trained under the personal supervision of christian teachers, to a higher standard of living, and, some at least, become fitted to serve as teachers of their own people.