A good man has fallen, and a great gap is made in the ranks of laborers at the front; but the Lord who loves his own cause better than we do will see that it suffers no loss. As the Lord has taken care that his servant rests from his labors, it is ours to see that they follow Him.
IYAKAPTAPI.
That is, the ascent from the plains of the head-waters of the Minnesota River to the Coteau du Prairie, or high table-land to the west. The old trail up-hill here gave the name Ascension to the place. There the tribes—Dakota tribes—met together for their annual autumn feast—the missionary conference on the 24th of September. On the Sabbath the little church was too small, and 400 Indians, with a sprinkling of white people, sat outside in the sun, some on benches, and most on the grass, around the Communion table. The tents of those who had come in from long distances were pitched on either side in the ravines, among the fall foliage, and the wide brown plain, with a long gleam of shining lake far off, lay below. As we took the bread and hid our faces in our hands, we thought of that distribution by Galilee, when they sat in companies on the grassy slope by the lake. It was not "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still," but the real presence of Him who said "I am the bread of life," to these 400 Christian Indians whom He had brought up from the low, dead level of barbarism to the present heights of Christian life.
One little dark baby in a white dress was baptized, and four young people publicly confessed their faith in a newly-found Saviour.
Solomon, "His Own Grandfather," who has gathered a church of the Dakota refugees from the Minnesota troubles of 1862, over in Manitoba, spoke to us of the spiritual nature of God's kingdom; and Ehnamani, who years ago laid down his warrior weapons, administered the bread, telling us of the tribulation and fire through which Christ went to become bread for our life. Then the "beloved John," our brother missionary who threw his young strength into the Dakota work at its darkest hour twenty-five years ago, could hardly control the emotion with which he spoke of the trials out of which the Dakotas had been brought to this present joy and strength through "His stripes."
It has been a long ascent for fifty years, but now fourteen churches, with a thousand members; eleven young men's Christian associations; a native missionary society, receiving contributions amounting this year to $1,165, much of it the fruit of hard labor by Dakota women, with the needle and at the wash-tub; a Christian community with its own native justices of the peace, rigidly enforcing temperance and marital law, and, according to the testimony of the United States agent on the ground, more careful of religious observances than white communities, and no less exemplary in morals; thousands of acres of cultivated land; these are some of the outward signs of the inner life of God in the heart.
Add to this the 1,000 or more converts gathered in later years and claimed by Episcopalians and Roman Catholics; add the long roll of those who have ascended to their Lord; add the white people who have been saved and inspired by the example of their Dakota brethren, and compute if you can the spiritual fruit of the Dakota Indian Mission.
Then think of this result wrought out, in the midst of what is fast becoming one of the most influential communities of our land. Christian churches by hundreds, Christian colleges and Christian homes, all built on this early Indian work as a foundation. Then, as we rejoice in the present interest in work for Indians, remember the obloquy and opposition of the past through which the early workers struggled.
To appreciate this ascent, one should come up from Western Indian barbarism, and not down from Eastern culture.