Whatever a girl or boy may need away from home to maintain habits of neatness and order, and for refining influences, these students need in our boarding-schools. We can always assign special schools to those who will render this form of help.
CHRISTMAS AT FORT YATES, DAKOTA.
Our readers will be glad to welcome Miss Josephine E. Barnaby to her new field of work, and to a place in the pages of the Missionary. She is of the Omaha tribe, was a student at Hampton, then spent some time in a training school for nurses in New Haven, Connecticut, and is now the assistant of Miss Collins at the Grand River Station.
Miss Collins writes of her: "Josephine is very much interested in her work. She said to-day, 'I wish every one interested in Indians could come here and stay long enough to see how the foundation ought to be laid, and how much better off our native teachers, Elias and Wakanna, are with the Bible knowledge they have without the English, than the Indians are who speak English and are without Christ.' She knows, for her people are largely godless but English-speaking."
My Dear Friends:
We have been so busy getting ready for Christmas that we have had no time to write to our friends. Miss Collins told the Indians on Sunday last that we were going to have a tree and wanted all the Indians to come, the real old ones as well as the young men and women. She told them of how our Saviour was born on Christmas day, how the people came and gave him gifts, and we, in remembering his birthday, would give them little gifts. The next day, a very old woman came to the school-house and told Mary (that is the native teacher's wife) that she heard we were going to have a "Ghost feast" and give away everything we had, so she thought she would come and ask for one of the school-room lamps for fear she might not get it if she waited, as there would be so many people to get the things, and she needed a lamp very much.
Doesn't that sound like an Indian? I was very sorry the poor woman did not get the lamp.
Yesterday morning, while Miss Collins pinned the names on to the presents, I went up to the school-house, and by the help of two native teachers planted the tree in a cracker-box and put the little colored candles on. In the afternoon, we took the presents up and hung them on the tree; we put up a curtain to hide the tree, and then in the evening put out several Japanese lanterns on the corners of the house and over the door, and rang the bell; while the bell was ringing, you could see the Indians coming from all parts of the village. It was a pretty sight. The ground was covered with snow, it was just between the light and dark, and a few bright stars were shining through the clouds.
The room is not very large, so Miss Collins proposed that they should stand. It was well they did, for they were packed tightly together, the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other.