IOWA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union, Secretary,
Miss Ella E. Marsh, Grinnell, Iowa.
KANSAS.—Woman's Home Miss. Society, Secretary,
Mrs. G.L. Epps, Topeka, Kan.
NEB.—Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. F.H. Leavitt, 1216 H St., Lincoln, Neb.
DAKOTA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. T.M. Hills, Sioux Falls; Secretary, Mrs.
W.R. Dawes, Redfield; Treasurer, Mrs. S.E.
Fifield, Lake Preston.
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REPORT OF SECRETARY.
It is fitting that woman should have a part in a work that finds its centre of operations in Christian schools and homes for the training of the exceptional classes reached by the American Missionary Association.
Let us not forget that the Indians for whom we work have been excluded from our civilized communities, until it is difficult to win them to our customs, our language and our religion; that until only about twenty-five years ago, generation after generation of our colored people had been born to bondage, and had groaned its hopeless life away in far greater misery than the same conditions brought in uncivilized Africa—misery made deeper and keener by contrasts in civilized America. Is it a wonder that the women of a slave race lost their womanly instincts; that the moral nature was blunted and marred; that the mind became impoverished, the heart a waste place for poisonous weeds to grow?
Let us not forget that the mountain people have been passed by, until shrinking farther and farther into the seclusion of their hills and ravines, and living unto themselves, they have lost the sturdy qualities of their ancestors.
What kind of homes do we find among these people, where the children with their impressible minds are receiving their first instruction?