THE PRESENT NEED OF THE INDIANS.
BY MISS ANNA L. DAWES.
It would appear that there was a certain definite loss to the cause of Christianity among the Indians when that work ceased to be called Foreign Missions, and became Home Missions. In the face of much opposition and many sneers since the day it first discovered its "marching orders," the Church has never ceased to believe it to be its duty to go out into all the world and preach the gospel, and persecution, neglect, or starvation have only served to intensify its zeal. It must preach the gospel to the heathen. But in regard to Home Missions the Church has felt that it may preach the gospel to neighbors, not that it must—that it is a good and desirable thing to do, but by no means an inexorable duty. If the Indians had remained foreign heathen, we might hope for a Students' Volunteer movement, for an Inland Mission, for a zeal beyond wisdom which even sets forth to preach the gospel in the midst of war. The Indians are as pagan as the Japanese or the Hindus, for instance: their redemption is as great a necessity as the redemption of the Chinese. Their chiefs plead for help and teachers in no less touching fashion than do South African kings. But those fill us with missionary zeal. We cry unto heaven for money and opportunity to go over seas to convert those; but these, the heathen in our very midst, most of us neither see nor hear. Can it be because there is neither romance nor mystery about these others? The test of the reality of our zeal is before us here and now. We may measure the value of our professions for ourselves.
At this present time the need of the Indians for missionaries is greater than ever before. They have reached not only a new crisis, but a crisis of a new kind. Practically speaking the Government has done what it can for them, or very nearly all. The Indian has law, land, education, he is fast becoming absorbed in the surrounding people, but never was he in worse need. All these great fundamental principles of social life have been thrust upon him, oft against his will and largely unprepared; certainly with very little comprehension of their resulting privileges or duties. He needs a friend beside him at every step. Thrust out into an alien and hostile community, he is in some sense in a worse case than when he dwelt alone in undisturbed barbarism.
And again, civilization is not Christianity. This truth, so obvious everywhere else, seems to be lost sight of when the Indians are considered. We discover that, although educated, they will not stay refined, that they are civilized, but will not remain moral. Behold, says the caviller, there is no good Indian until he dies, and even his friends complain that the young men will "go back" to gambling games and horse races. It is true that some measure of refinement and fine morals is peculiarly necessary to the Indians just now, but these are not any necessary part of civilization. They are, however, inseparable to Christianity, and by this token the red man needs Christianity for his everyday life even more than the white man, who is surrounded by a Christian atmosphere. If we would have the newly-liberated Indians a valuable and reliable part of the community in this world they must be Christianized. Just why goes back a long way; but a fact it is, that whatever may be true of Chinese or Poles or Bohemians, if the Indian is to have any staying power, if he is to be anything but a despair to his friends and a curse to all around him, he must be converted as well as civilized. The use of his land, the best system of law, an absolute restriction upon liquor, all together, will do no more for him in the Northwest than it has done for Cherokee or Choctaw. It is the building up of the individual that is needed to-day quite as much as any legislation which shall improve the community.
Not only has the Indian come to a time of special need, not only does he need Christianity to make his land and his education of any value, not only is his law unsupported by his own character of little worth, but he needs Christian missionaries more and more, because he has ceased to be the Indian and become Indians. It is peculiarly true that every tribe, every group, every family almost, has reached a different state of need. The varying pressure of circumstances combined with the differing methods of education furnished the children, has brought the race to a time and place when it needs many, many helpers, who, living with them as Thomas Riggs has lived with them, will find their reward in their growth and development. Wherever the Riggs family live, there the Indian problem is solved. Where Bishop Hare and Mary Collins work the answer is already plain. Let the Omahas without any missionary testify also to the darker side of the question.
It is not further efforts by the churches for the education of the Indian that are needed. There are many schools, good, bad, and indifferent, but still schools, and it is certain that the Government will attend to the education difficulty. But it is missionaries that the Indian needs; missionaries to convert heathen. This is an inglorious service and one of plenteous hardship, but beyond measure it is a patriotic service, beyond measure it is the work of Him whose "all the world" began "at Jerusalem," who taught us to find Himself wherever the least of His children were in sore need.