Our opportunity is enlarging further by the breaking down of the old pagan prejudices of the Indians. The testimony of all the workers on the field is to this effect. The Indians are desirous of living as white men. They are rapidly losing their distinctive Indian ideas and are imbibing the notions of their white neighbors. This is seen in their burials, which now are not uniformly, as of old, on scaffolds, but are more and more interments. It is shown in their feeling and behavior when death comes into their households. They no longer fill their houses with hideous outcries, but instead seek the missionaries to inquire about the life in the other world.
A further opportunity is to be noted in the fact that the Dakota Indians have specially fallen into our care. Our chief missions are located among them, at Santee, Rosebud, Oahe, Standing Rock, and outlying stations. But the Dakota Indians number 40,000 in all, or about one-sixth of all the Indians in the country. We have mastered the Dakota language; and a Bible, hymn-book, dictionary and other books are printed in that tongue. We have, then, special ability to carry on mission work among them, and are bound to utilize it to the full. The time is ripe for immediate action. It must be taken without delay if taken at all. The opening up to white settlement of a large strip of land though the center of the great Sioux reservations is to bring the Indian into contact with the influence of white men as never before. It is impossible that that influence shall be altogether good. The contact of the Indian with the frontiersmen of our own people has resulted most deplorably in the past, and we cannot hope for much better results now. Rum and licentiousness are sure to work untold harm to the Indian unless they are met by the gospel. This opening up of Indian territory to white settlement lays, therefore, a most imperative and immediate obligation on Christian people to protect the Indian from ruin by giving them the gospel.
We are satisfied that nothing but the gospel will suffice. Education alone can not save, and may simply give new strength to evil habits and influences. It must be a Christian education; schools should be simply preliminary and altogether subsidiary to the most energetic and wise presentation of the gospel. The uniform policy of the American Missionary Association in all departments of its work has been in this direction, and we gladly recognize the fact that its Indian work has steadily progressed with the idea of evangelizing the Indian.
We know very well that the Association is laboring for 8,000,000 Negroes and for 2,000,000 Mountain White people and for 125,000 Chinese, as well as 262,000 Indians. We know that the proportion of the Indians is comparatively small. At the same time we urge that this disproportion is to a large degree counterbalanced by the special opportunities we have considered. The Indian problem is before us for immediate settlement. It admits of no delay. Care for these few Indians now, Christianize them now, as we may, and the Indian becomes as the white man, and our missionary efforts will then be released for other fields.
In this special emergency we feel strongly the necessity laid on the Association for an enlargement of its administrative force. Since the death of our lamented brother, Secretary Powell, the force at the New York office of the Association has been short-handed. We hope that the earnest efforts which are being made by the Executive Committee to find a suitable person to become another Secretary of the Association may be at once successful. An emergency is upon us, and we say this with the conviction that the demands of the Indian work are now so imperative as to require a large portion of the time and thought of such a Secretary. It is a necessity that such a Secretary should frequently visit the field and be in constant communication with the workers.
REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.
BY REV. E.A. STIMSON, D.D., CHAIRMAN.
This is the smallest and least conspicuous department of the work of the American Missionary Association, but the one that stands in the closest relation to ourselves, and the one also that can show the largest returns. The Chinese in America are few in number, but they are scattered everywhere, as if God intended in them to put the spirit of our churches to a crucial test, and, where that test is endured, to give to his servants a prompt reward and an unanswerable confirmation of his promises and of their faith.
These strange little men from "the land of Sinim," mysterious, silent, capable, incredibly industrious, money-making, with their pig-tails and their felt shoes, their "pidgin English" and their unintelligible "turkey tracks," their wooden countenance and their "bias eyes," their opium, and their "ways that are dark," who, in spite of restrictive laws and brutal personal treatment, are filtering in everywhere, until they may be seen crouched in the corner of any street car, and are a familiar object in the village street—why are they here? here just now and here so persistently? It is no mighty immigration of men, such as De Tocqueville liked to dwell upon. It is no conquering host, no familiar immigration. Whatever may once have been the attractive force of the California gold fields, washing soiled linen can hardly be regarded as satisfying a national instinct, or thumping through the long hours of the night upon an ironing table a soul-filling amusement. Much may be said of "the golden fleece," but these are no modern Argonauts. They are money-making as our friends the Jews, but no "high emprise" or "grand endeavor" fires their calm pulse, and much as has been written of the coolie system and the "Six Companies," nothing has been adduced which seems adequate to explain the movement.