She was then a teacher in an Indian school. She had little children in her school that came some seven, eight, or ten miles barefooted, and winter was coming on, and her heart sympathized with these poor children who came so far to be taught. They happened to have a good agent, and he said, "Send an order for shoes for these children;" and she sent an order, with a request that they send the shoes, as they were really needed, on account of the frost and snow. The order went to Washington, went through the regular routine, and the next spring, after winter had passed, a case of shoes came for these little Indian children. When it was opened, she found it full of brogans, that had been made for the Southern negro in the rice-fields; and every shoe in that case was so large that there was not an adult Indian on the reservation that could wear it. That is how the Indian Bureau provides for the little Indian children when there is a case of special necessity. (Laughter.)

I could mention numerous illustrations showing that it is impossible to do any work that is required immediately, through this Indian Bureau. If people are starving, you cannot get food for them until they die.

Now, what is the remedy? I believe that Christianity is the only remedy—the only solution of the Indian question. Where they have had good Christian agents—and they have had some—where they have missionaries, the Indian has made wonderful progress. I think we can point to a few civilized and Christianized communities among the Indians that can find no parallel among the whites of the country. There is less crime, less immorality, more faithfulness to the requirements of the Christian religion and better observance of the Sabbath, more sincerity and earnestness in the performance of every Christian duty, than we can find in the same number of whites anywhere. At Metlakatla, as told by Mr. Duncan, the Indians now form a community of twelve hundred people, who have their churches, their stores, their town-halls. They live in houses, like other people; they appear like civilized people; they carry on all the vocations of civilized life; and all this has been done by the work of one man. There is no liquor-drinking or liquor-selling there. A majority of this twelve hundred people are earnest, faithful, consistent Christians. They get no help from the Government. They have built up and support their churches. Where can you see anything among the whites that equals it?

Then there is another reason why we should go to them with the gospel of Christ. It is a good thing to engage in works of charity and benevolence, but before we do this we should pay our debts. We owe so much to the Indians of this country, that I think before we go anywhere else we should do something to atone for the years of wrong, for the centuries of injury, that they have suffered at our hands. We have taken their homes from them. We have driven them from reservation to reservation. We have taken their crops when almost ready to reap. We have removed them into climates where they have died by hundreds. We have not listened to their cries. We have on various trumped-up charges frequently slaughtered these people, and treated them in the most cruel manner. There is no question that I know of that so holds a man, once interested, and so grows upon him, as this Indian question.

I was first interested in this subject about ten years ago in the city of Boston, where Bright Eyes, Mr. Tibbles, and old Standing Bear came to tell of the wrongs of the Poncas. They were to hold a public meeting. Wendell Phillips was to speak. I went to that meeting more with a desire to hear Phillips than from any interest in the Indian. At that time all I knew about him was what I had learned from the current literature and romance, and my idea was very far from correct. At that meeting a state of affairs was shown to exist that seemed astounding and impossible. A committee was appointed to investigate these statements. They found that the half had not been told. That committee started measures that rectified these wrongs done to the Poncas. It commenced suit under the Fourteenth Amendment to see whether the Indians were citizens. The Judges of the Supreme Court decided that the Indian was not a person under the law. Then it tried other channels; to get legislation that would help the Indian. Senator Dawes soon became interested in this question, and from that time to the present he has been interested; and how much the Indian owes to the legislation which has been started and carried forward by Senator Dawes, but very few people know; but it must be followed by other legislation before the Indian is safe.

In Boston, Mrs. H.H. Jackson listened to the statement of Bright Eyes in regard to the wrongs suffered by her people. She came to her and said, "It is not possible that these things can be true." Bright Eyes showed her the official documents; she convinced her that it was true. From that hour that woman's whole soul was in the work. She afterwards wrote "A Century of Dishonor," and "Ramona," which has preached for the Indians, and will continue to do so. She gave her life finally for the Indians, the sickness that caused her death being brought on while engaged in work for them. This work gets hold of a man, if he has any blood in his veins and sympathy in his heart, and makes him feel, if he would stand without condemnation before God in the last day, that he must do something to redeem his country from dishonor, and deliver this people from worse than slavery.

Suppose we do not do it. Suppose we allow the Government to care for them. The Dawes Bill gives them citizenship, but what does the Indian get? One hundred and sixty acres of land—and he as naked as a babe on that land. He has had no training in education and systematic work of any kind; he has no tools—and if he had he would not know how to use them. He is in the midst of white enemies, who want his land. He has turned his back upon all the traditions of his ancestors. He has turned his face toward the whites, and his friends of the past are now his enemies. He is in the midst of his reservation. His homestead is his own, yet no American citizen has a right there. If you and I go to teach him, we can be ordered off by the agent; and if we do not go he can put us in prison.

If we do not give protection and Christianity to them, there is no hope for these Indians. Their fate will be the same as Indians on the reservation in the State of New York, who have been for one hundred years in the midst of our best civilization, but are still lazy and shiftless, their reservation being permeated through and through with unmentionable vices. They have no interest in the civilization of the present. They are living in the past, dreaming over the glory of their ancestors. They cannot be reached through civilization without religion. To an Indian there is nothing secular. Everything pertains to his religion. When he goes on a hunt, if he has no success, it is because the gods are opposed to him; and if he is successful, the gods were in it. When we go to an Indian and seek to change him, we must first change his gods. We must Christianize him if we would civilize him. There is where many of our experiments have been wrong.

Is it not laid upon us, who know something of this work, to do this? I believe if we will not do it, that in the last great day, as we stand with the Indian before the judgment bar of God, our position will be worse than that of the Indian. It seems to me that I can hear what the Judge would say to him at that time. The Indian comes before God, a pagan from a Christian land; he comes having improved none of the powers that God gave him. The Lord might say to him: "Did I not give you as good opportunities and as good capacities as the white man in whose midst you were? This Christian nation is the foremost for missions. It has sent to all the lands of the earth, and yet here you come a pagan, not knowing God, uncivilized, a barbarian." Might not this Indian say: "I was in prison. I was surrounded by a reservation around whose outside lines were the soldiers of the United States, and I would be shot if I went off this reservation. I had no business with which to support myself; I had no chance for trade or commerce; I had to buy of and sell to one man. What opportunity had I? When an occasional missionary came to me with the gospel of Christ, I looked upon this man as one of my enemies—a man from the nation that had robbed me of my opportunities; and, my Father, why should I listen to him, especially when he spoke in a strange language? Am I to blame that I come here empty? Am I to blame that I must go away?" I believe the Lord would turn to us and say, "Inasmuch as ye have not done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have not done it unto Me." And, speaking for myself alone, I would rather at that last day be in the place of that darkened Indian—-savage, barbarian, pagan, as he is—than in the place of the Christian that knew of his need and would not help him.