REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON INDIAN MISSIONS.
Your Committee, to whom has been referred that part of the annual statement of the Executive Committee which relates to the American Indians, desire to report as follows:
The chief event of the year, in the Indian department, is the adoption by this Association of the Indian Missions of the American Board. Your Committee look upon this as an event of conspicuous importance in the history of the Association. As long ago as 1872, at the annual meeting of that year, the Committees on the Indian and the foreign work suggested a double transfer—namely, the transfer of the foreign missions of the Association to the American Board, and the transfer of the Indian missions of the Board to this Association. The propriety of such an exchange has seemed obvious to many patrons of the two societies for some time. However satisfactory the explanation of the existing condition of things afforded by the historical development of the two organizations, it was plain that the time had come for such a unifying and concentrating of the work of this Association as would result from leaving the foreign field to others, and assuming the care of those missions in our own country which our foreign missionary society had so well established.
These missions are among the Dakotas, one of the most widely extended and important of the American Indian stocks. The largest of these missions—that at the Sisseton agency, formerly under the care of the lamented Stephen R. Riggs—has chosen for its new mother not our Association, but another missionary board, by which it will doubtless be thoroughly cared for and warmly cherished. The missions which actually come under our care constitute an important group of churches and schools, and should be received with a hearty welcome by an Association with such antecedents as this. The new trust committed to us calls for new purpose and energy in our specific work.
We find that these Dakota missions are not dead or dying, but thoroughly alive. And because they are thoroughly alive they need very real help. The men in charge of them are men awake to their opportunities, believers in a forward movement, and in whatever legitimate experiments may be involved therein. We feel that in all such experiments they should have the ready co-operation of the Christian Church. We therefore heartily endorse the Executive Committee in their plans for enlargement in the Dakota field—for improvements in the mission property and in methods of work, where they are called for, and the establishment of new missions in places which promise success.
One project, your Committee believe, deserves to be regarded with special favor, the establishment of a school—agricultural, mechanical and normal—at Fort Sully. The Executive Committee have secured a delightful site for such a school, and they know the man to take charge of it. What is wanted is money to furnish the proper financial basis, and we can scarcely doubt that this will be forth-coming. The industrial school method of missionary work has already been thoroughly tested at the east—in Hampton and Carlisle—and the verdict is altogether favorable. There is good reason to believe that the adoption of the same method among the Indians themselves would result in real benefit. Let the work of instruction, in all its interesting details, be carried on where the red man can see it, and it will surely make its impression upon him. At all events, we have in favor of this view the opinions of men who may be looked upon as experts in this matter.
In adopting as its aim these Dakota missions, and thus enlarging its strictly missionary work among the American Indians, the American Missionary Association gives its approval anew to the attempt, now so long continued, to Christianize the red men. There are those who scoff at the idea of such a work; but history—not to say the Gospel—teaches us better. No race of men has yet been discovered so low that it cannot be reached and moved by the religion of the Crucified, and the American Indians are certainly no exception. The Indians as a whole are by no means the lowest or the least susceptible; and the results on record are far from insignificant. God has blessed the efforts of his church in their behalf throughout the past two hundred years, and we know he will continue to bless them. Respectfully submitted.
Joseph Anderson, Chairman.