The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 01, January, 1896

by Various

ADDRESS BY MISS ANNETTE P. BRICKETT.

In the few minutes which are assigned me in which to bring before you the work of our Indian mission and boarding school at Fort Berthold, among the Rees, Mandans and Gros Ventres, there is no time for me to discuss the "Indian Problem," about which I am not at all wise, nor to talk of the Indian character, nor to defend it against the numberless unjust opinions and popular newspaper and magazine prejudice with which you are all so familiar.

I think you want to know all that I shall have time to tell you of our past year's work, our encouragements, our difficulties and successes.

There has been an increasing spirit of loving, gentle, helpfulness among our school girls, both in the home and school life. We have all gladly noticed that our boys have become more courteous and thoughtful. Many of them have learned for the first time, under their wise and consecrated matron, the value of strict adherence to God's great law of obedience in the forming of manly characters and in the making of happy homes.

Our older Ree girls came back to school this fall more neatly and cleanly clad than ever before. Some of them made tasteful calico dresses for themselves with which to return to us. Several of these older girls, under the leadership of one of our ladies, organized themselves into a "Cleaning Club" at the close of school in July and have kept faithfully at work all through the vacation, each week meeting at a certain house and giving the poor little log home, with its mud-plugged walls and dirt floor a most vigorous and thorough "scrub." After the beds had been made up cleanly with sheets and pillow cases, which were in each case the property of the school girl at whose house they met, and putting up cheap scrim curtains at the two little windows, then these students of scrubology, on a stove, shining with a perhaps unprecedented coat of blacking, prepared before their somewhat dazed parents a neat and wholesome meal of such simple material as they had, set it out on a white covered table just as nicely as they are taught to do at school, and invited their parents to eat with them. This improvement has not been merely spontaneous. It was a principle of the society that each girl who had been thus assisted should do all in her power to keep the home clean and neat, and our girls have greatly delighted us by the brave way in which they have kept this pledge.

This past year several of our older boys and girls have, without urging or even suggestion from the teachers, told us of their earnest desire to go out into the world and attend a higher school. They were quite prepared to enter the school at Santee and though reminded of the opposition they would undoubtedly encounter in getting permission from their ignorant and in some cases heathen parents, as well as that of the Government Agent, they have still been quite determined. "Maimie," one of the girls, first asked consent of her uncle and aunt with whom she has her home. They both refused, being unwilling to have her go so far away and also to lose the small help which the little money Maimie earned by doing extra work at school brought to them. Both the uncle and aunt are members of our church and our prayers that Christian principle might triumph in this case and make these two an example to the rest were answered, for soon "Hand" and his wife "Alice" cheerfully went to the Agent and told him of their previous unwillingness but also of their present decision that they were glad to have Maimie go away and learn more of God's ways so that she might better teach and lead her people.

John, one of the boys, has met with much bitter opposition from his people who are under the influence of the Catholic priest at the Agency. They have forced him into the Government school, which is of a grade entirely below his present attainments, and he is much discouraged, but we still trust that God's plan for our boys and girls, into whose souls he has put these aspirations, will be worked out in His own time and way.

Our church members who are as yet but "babes in Christ" have had numerous testings this year, which, while they have been times of severe trial to us as well as to them, have been but passing clouds, which have only for a time hid from them the "Guiding Hand," and which has made them all the more strong and distinct as members of Christ's body.

There have been disappointments in the past year; a few of those from whom we hoped much have become careless and indifferent. But more have grown in spiritual strength and are manifesting the new spirit of godliness in their lives in many practical ways; in neater personal appearance, in better houses and cleaner homes, and in much more industrious attention to their farm work. The Christian women nearly all ride on the seat of their wagons beside their husbands and not squatted down behind in the old way which indicated their inferiority and degradation.

Our church and women's missionary organization have cheerfully contributed from exceedingly scanty means to all the branches of our Congregational work. While our school on account of the reduced appropriations has been reduced to forty-two pupils, our further outstation among the Mandan people, which for two years has been closed, has this fall been reopened, and one of the lady missionaries is already living among them in her little log house. Shall I speak of the needs of our school boys and girls? You patient mothers know so well what are the needs of forty-two play-loving active children, who wrestle, play football, tag, jump rope and barbed wire fences; and the needs of Indian boys and girls are nearly identical with those of the same number of white children.