Our enrollment for the past year has been 285, but the average attendance has not been quite up to the usual mark, owing to sickness, “hard times,” etc. Death has entered the school, taking away two of the number, both youths of special promise.
Our workers have never been more untiring in their efforts to advance the cause of temperance and morality. A flourishing Band of Hope, taking in nearly every pupil in the three lower departments, has been doing its good work throughout the year. The society for the older ones, not strictly confined to the school, has also been doing its work. White Cross societies have been formed, and without doubt will prove of great help to their members. The Band of Mercy belonging to the First Primary Division should not be forgotten. The school prayer-meeting has been encouraging, and considerable time has been taken up in the study of the Scriptures.
GEO. A. WOODARD.
THE INDIANS.
CLOSING EXERCISES AT SANTEE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
A beautiful feature of the Commencement season here at Santee was the communion service of last Sunday, at which time six young Indian men came forward from among their companions and publicly united themselves to God’s people! We call them boys, but they are not boys; they are old enough to realize the position they now occupy, and it has come to them only after the long, hard struggle which seems always to insure earnest lives for the future. Most beautiful of all was the baptism! Tears rolled down their cheeks as they bent for a blessing from the white man’s God and their God.
The eyes of the teachers, who had prayed and labored so earnestly for this very occasion, were filled to overflowing. Five different tribes were represented by these boys: Mandan, Ree, Assinaboine, Yanktonais and Titon. Two of the young men are the sons of chiefs still in their blankets, who, recognizing the great needs of their people, are urging their sons on to more earnest study, so that they may come back as missionaries to those who wait for them as for deliverers.
It would seem enough of an achievement that these scores of Indian boys and girls have been brought out of the superstition, the unbelief, the savagery of their tribes, into the customs, manners and religion of civilization, even if the work stopped there; but the three days following the communion Sabbath have shown such results in regard to a growth as well as change of mind, that to one seeing the work for the first time it is simply marvelous.