—In the coming fall, twenty more girls will be added to the number of Indian students at Hampton. Their due proportion is regarded as essential to the success and value of the effort. When the Indian prisoners from St. Augustine returned to the Territory, and their wives and families turned out to welcome them home with rejoicing, the long dreamed of meeting proved such a shock to the reconstructed braves that some of them broke from the company and ran away to the woods, refusing to have anything more to do with their affectionate but very dirty squaws. The situation was humorous but tragic, and withal very natural. How could they walk “the white man’s road” in such companionship? And how could they walk it alone? The co-education of the Indian boys and girls, with its lessons of mutual respect and helpfulness in the class-rooms and work-rooms, is the hope, and the only hope, of permanent Indian civilization.
—The Secretary of War has turned over to the Department of the Interior the U. S. Army barracks at Carlisle, Penn., to be used for the purpose of Indian education, under charge of Capt. R. H. Pratt, who has been sent West to collect 100 Indian youths for his school, as well as the girls for Hampton. Captain Pratt’s wise, Christian philanthropy toward the Indian prisoners at St. Augustine was the origin of the present movement for Indian education, and has demonstrated his eminent qualifications for the work.
Africa.
—Mr. Mackay gives most interesting accounts of his intercourse with Mtesa and his chiefs. Every Sunday, after Wilson left, he conducted service at the palace for the king and chiefs, speaking in Suahili without an interpreter, and Mtesa interpreting into the Uganda language for the benefit of those who did not understand Suahili. On Christmas day a special service was held, all the chiefs being in “extra dress,” when Mackay explained the great event of the day. He regards Mtesa as most intelligent, and quite inclined to listen to the word of God. Gratifying instances are mentioned of the influence already exerted upon him. Some Arab traders arrived to buy slaves, offering cloth in exchange, and saying they had come from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Mackay vigorously opposed them, informed the king of the Sultan’s decrees against the slave traffic, and of the cruelties perpetrated upon its victims. Then he gave a lecture on physiology, and asked why such an organism as a human body, which no man could make, should be sold for a rag of cloth which any man could make in a day. The result was not only the rejection of the Arabs’ demand, but a decree forbidding any person in Uganda to sell a slave on pain of death! By another decree Mtesa has forbidden all Sunday labor, and the question of the evils of polygamy has been seriously discussed by him and the chiefs. He was on capital terms with the chiefs, and was teaching numbers of people to read, having made large alphabet sheets for the purpose. He describes the Arab traders as most bitter against the Mission. They are distilling ardent spirits from the plantain, and drunkenness is spreading in consequence.
THE FREEDMEN.
REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D.,
FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.