The Little Oak Creek people have set the pace in helping themselves. I enclose a picture of their Messiah Chapel and congregation.
The out-station work among the Cannon Ball people began in 1891, after the ghost dance trouble, and has had to contend with the baleful influence of the Indian dance.
CANNON BALL CHAPEL, N. D.
For two years the native worker lived in a hired house, where all the meetings were held and the house was generally crowded. Not 200 feet away was a big dance-house, crowded every Saturday till late in the night. This was the time given by the native worker and a few trusty followers for most attractive praise services. The tired dancers, a few at a time, would drop into the meeting for a half hour. Again the dance would attract nearly all from the meeting. The result fully justified the bold experiment, for in a year the dance-house was torn down and has never been replaced. This people have been a long time in beginning to help themselves, but in the last few years have given well to missions and this year are enlarging their small chapel at a cost of over $400, more than half of which they have given. A picture of this with congregation is enclosed. With this people the mid-week prayer-meeting has been the prominent feature, many coming over six miles to attend. Here most have learned to read the Dakota Bible, by studying in their own homes with the aid of the native preacher or others who could read, and good work has been done in Bible study. A picture of the meeting-house and congregation at our youngest out-station shows the long dirt-roofed log-house which the people hope to replace with a chapel, having in hand nearly $100. In such a house, not always so good, have we begun every out-station.
CANNON BALL OUT-STATION, N. D.
Only as a worker could be spared from another out-station has work been done here. In this community the dancers are the ruling element, though in a quarter of a mile of a large day-school and sub-issue station. This month we begin with a man in charge of the work. In the last two years sixteen of these dancers have come into church membership. Nowhere else does our work come into such close conflict with heathen practices. But sickness and death of many children have made tender the hearts of heathen parents and opened the way for the bearer of words of true comfort.
