Seven Months.—Receipts from collections and donations, $116,081.44, and from legacies $20,571.35, making a total of $136,652.79. An increase from collections and donations of $6,905.71 over last year, but a decrease from legacies of $21,640.83, making the decrease of total receipts for the seven months of $14,744.12. We must again remind our friends that it is necessary to largely increase our collections and donations or incur a debt.
OUR ILLUSTRATED ARTICLE.
It gives us pleasure to place before our readers in this number an illustrated article on our Dakota Mission. The plates were prepared for the use jointly of the Illustrated Christian Weekly and the American Missionary. The article was written by Rev. Addison P. Foster, one of our Executive Committee who visited the mission last year. The popularity of the Indian number of the Missionary which we issued in April, 1883, leads us to hope that this number will be welcomed and preserved for use as occasion may offer.
OUR INDIAN MISSIONS.
Nine schools, with 356 pupils; five churches, with 271 members; five stations; thirteen missionaries; thirty-seven teachers, are the statistics. The churches are Congregational, and the church and school go hand in hand. A careful survey of the necessities of these missions was made early in the year, and the estimate called for an appropriation of about $30,000. Repairs and improvements in old buildings and construction of new buildings, imperatively demanded for the efficient prosecution of the work, forbade a lower estimate.
In surrendering our African missions, obedient to the voice of the churches that our appeal might be simplified, we gave up the proceeds of invested funds that in large part sustained that work; while in receiving from the American Board its Indian missions, there was placed just so much additional demand upon our treasury. Our inevitable outlook was a trilemma—either enlarged receipts, or retrenchment, or debt.
We therefore sent to about fifteen hundred Congregational ministers in February last a printed circular asking: