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THE

Missionary Review of the World.

Vol. XVIII. No. 7 —Old Series. — JULY. — Vol. VIII. No. l.—Xew Seriet.

LIFE AMONG THE RED MEN OF AMERICA.

■ / ■■'■ >^

ff^v' '.>■ ,,,

* '^ ' • • •

1 ' ;'A ;'■■ I.'... ■

-•.' ■■'■ '• ..

BY REV. EDOEKTON R. YOUNG, TORONTO, CANADA.

In 1 868, when pastor of a church in Hamilton, Canada, I was asked
to go with my young wife as a missionary to the red Indians, northwest
of Hudson Bay, north of Manitoba. It was a strange call ; we had not
been tliinking of the Indian work, or the foreign field, and were very
liappy in our home work. ]>nt wc made it a subject of prayer. We laid
the letter before the Lord, and though all our friends, with one or two
exceptions, opposed us, yet as («od seemed to call us, we went, and we
have never regretted it to this day.

It took us two months and nineteen days of hard travelling to reach
our field. You can go around the world in that time now. It was a
lonely far-off place, more inaccessible even than the heart of Africa is
now. We travelled as f;vr as wc could by steamboats atd railroads, then
we journeyed for thirty days with horses over the prairies and plains of
the north, and then for the last fourteen days we want in a little skiff
manufactured by the Indians and manned by them. The place assigned
us in the skiff was a bit of a slab seat near the stern of the boat. Behind
us stood a big Indian with an oar reaching out behind, with which he
steered, and before us were our stalwart Indian oarsmen. When we had
gone about forty miles from Fort Garry toward the north, we saw the
Indians turning toward the shore, and we wondered what they were going
to do. We soon found out. They took on another passenger, which to
our amazement proved to be a great, big, lively, struggling ox. Ilis head
hung over one side of the boat and his tail over the other, and for four-
teen days in the month of July my wife and I had to sit in that skiff close
to that live ox. But we were full of life and anticipation, and enthusiastic
in our work, and these little things didn't trouble us much.

We reached our destination at last. We were first stationed among
the Cree Indians, four hundred miles from the merest vestige of civiliza-
tion. We had a good chance of testing the Indians. You know the very
conflicting opinions about the red men. After studying them for many

'■■■ ) •.■*,y.-r/

■- JL' ^2.J.L. '.■^.jl-'Jir

LIFE AMONG THE KBD MEN OF AHBIIICA.

[July

years, my opinion is that tlicy are just about like tlic rest of poor liuman-
ity. They need the Gospel, and the blessed Gospel is just the thing for
them. We had a little log-house, in which to live. A gentleman
wouldn't keep a decent horse in it, but it was the best the country afforded ;
the Indians were living in wigwams, and wo wore glad to ha"e that log-
house. We thought the best thing was to come thoroughly in touch with
our people, so we gathered them together, and stood before them with
our Bibles, and said, " Now, look at us. We have not come here to buy
your silver foxes, your beavers, your otters, your minks, or your martens ;
we have not come to make a fortune in the fur trade, but we have come
with this book to do you good, and to help you to a better life, that you
may be happier here and happier beyond. We know you are sinners,
and that you have your fiiults, and need the Gospel, but we are goin^,- to
trust you as well as help you." We knew the majority of white people
think that the Indians are thievish, dishonorable, and unreliable. We do
not believe that. So we decided to trust them. We took the fastenings
off all the windows, and the bolt off of the door, and the keys out of every
drawer and chest, and threw them away, and from that day to this we
have never fastened a window or locked a dt)or in an Indian country ; wo
have never had anything worth six])enco stolen from us by the Indians.
Th . is our experience among the Indians, when putting them on tlieir
honor and treating them fairly.

We mas,tercd the language as quickly as possible, because I b( iieve in
all missionaries being able to look into the eyes of the people and tell
them the truth in their own language. We worked and toil»,d among
them, and we had at first the effects of the work of some blessed men who
had been before us, and before we had been there live yeari, in addition
to what had been done, we had gathered a congregation of from eight to
ten hundred Christian Indians, who used to pack our church ever}* Sab-
bath, although some of them had to come from their hunting-grounds fifty
or sixty miles distant, on Saturday, to be present, and on Monday they
would walk back to their distant hunting-grounds. We had the Bible
translated into their language by Mr. Evans, one c: our missionaries, not
printed in the letters of the alphabet, but in syllabic characters. These
characters are so easily acquired that in a few weeks an Indian can learn
to read the Word of God. It is a marvellous invention, and as a result
of it in some of the missions 90 per cent of the people are reading the
Word of God in their own tongue. Often have I oeen made ashamed of
the littleness of my love by the devotion of these Indians and by their
love for the Bible. Let me give you an incident. One of our Indians
with his son came away down from the distant hunting-grounds to fish on
the shores of our great lakes. We catch our winter's supply there in
October and November. My good wife and I have lived chiefly on fish
twenty-one times a week, for six months, fish and salt with a cup of tea,
at .times no bread or vegetables at all. We Uve six months on fish, and

1895.]

LIFE AMONG THK RED MEN OF AMERICA.

483

the other six months on reindeer and muskrats, gulls and owls, anything
we can get, sometimes glad to have two tiieals a day. I have been in
your penitentiaries — not unwillingly — and I have seen the food provided
for the worst criminals. My wife and I would have been glad to liave
had anything approaching what you give to your murderers and house-
breakers. I have been for three days without a mouthful. To go on
with my story. This man and his son came down to fish, and they made
splendid fisheries, put up the whitcfish on a staging where the foxes and
wolves could not reach them, and one night the father said, " My son, wo
leave to-morrow morning early ; put the book of heaven in your pack ;
we go back one hundred and forty miles to our distant hunting-ground to
join the mother and the others in the wigwam home." So the young man
put his Bible in his pack that they might take it home. Later on, along
came an uncle and said to the young man, " Nephew, lend me the book
of heaven that I may read a little ; I have loaned mine. " So the pack
was opened and the BiMe was taken out, and the man read for a time and
then threw the Bible back among the blankets and went out. The next
morning the father and son started very early on their homeward journey.
They strapped on their snowshocs and walked seventy miles, dug a hole
in the snow at night, where they cooked some rabbits, and had prayers
and lay flown and slept. The next morning bright and early after prayers
they pushed on and made seventy miles more and reached home. That
night the father said to his son, " Give me the book of heaven that the
mother and the rest may read the Word and have prayers." As the son
opened the [)ack, he said, " Uncle asked for the book two nights ago and
it was not put back." The father was disappointed, but said little. The
next morning he rose early, put a few cooked rabbits in his pack and away
he started. lie walked that day seventy miles and reached the camp
where he and his son had stopped two nights before. The next day he
had made the other seventy miles and reached the lake and found his
Bible in his brother's wigwam. The next morning ho started again, and
walking in the two days one hundred and forty miles, was back home
once more. That Indian walked on snowshoes two hundred and eighty
miles through the wild forest of the Northwest to regain his copy of the
Word of God ! Would we do that much to regain our Bibles ? O the
power of the Gospel ! It can go down very low and reach men deeply
sunken in sin and can save them grandly, and make them devout students
and great lovers of the Blessed Book,

The worst class we had were the conjurers and medicine men. Some
of these men hated us, and often used to put our lives in jeopardy because
they knew that if we succeeded it was the end of their reign. But the
Gospel reached even some of them.

These northern Indians are hunters. They roam over a vast country
in search of game, and the missionary must follow them. My mission-
field was about five hundred and fifty miles long and three hundred wide,

ir.abjg

484

LIFn AMONfl TUB IlED MBN UF AMERICA.

[July

and over it I tnivi'lliMl in Hurninor in a lurch (;)inoi', and in the winter with
dogH. I am soiiu^tiuios called a '• D.D.," and 1 Bay if it means anytliing
it is " Dojj-drivcr. " I travelled many niilos each winter with the dof^H,
and thus reached hands who had never seen a missionary. I wish you
might look in with me upon a company of Indians who havo never seen
that l>ook before, who have never heard that 1 Messed Name. It is a
blessed work, this prearhing C^hrist to a people for the first time.

After five years amoni; the ('ree Indians wo went among the Saultcaux.
It is so hard to get volunteers for this Indian missionary work ! Wo Imd
made our log-house among the Crees quite comfortable and cheerful, but
the Saulteaux were calling for a missi«)nary. I used to visit them once in
summer with my birch canoe, and once in winter with the dogs, but there
was such a long interval between these visits that when I went back to
them I sometimes found that some who had become Christians were grow-
ing cold, for lack of instruction, and so they pleaded for a missionary to
live among them. They cou'd not get one, as none would volunteer for
such a work. At length I got a dear young minister so far interested
that he said, "I know a very nice girl, and if you and your good wife
will give us your home among the Crecs and go among the wild Saulteaux,
we will take your place am<mg the Crecs." We jumped at his offer, and
thanked God for it. We took in a birch canoe and a little skiff only what
we absolutely needed. We left the furniture, dishes, table-linen, and a
number of dogs, canoes, and other things, and all the home we had for a
year was a poplar log-hut twelve feet one way and fourteen the other,
with a roof that was covered with mud and grass. God blessed us there,
and hundreds came to Christ. So quickly, so believingly, and so thor-
oughly did they come that I must say in my ignorance I was sometimes
staggered. When I heard men get up and say, " I know whom I have
believed, I know this Jesus is my Saviour, and I will trust in liim ; I have
a sweet joy in my heart," I would say in my stupidity, " Can it be true ?"
I had to go out in the woods and sit down all alone, and take out my
Testament and read through the Acts of the Apostles. Then I could
say : Yes, it can be true. The Holy Spirit can do its work here as in
those apostolic days. If a heart is honestly seeking God there is a won-
derful guide and helper in the Holy Ghost. Now, after knowing some
of those men over twenty years, their consistent lives have been a testi-
mony of the genuineness of those conversions, even if they had only heard
a very few sermons. I believe that if we could send out the right kind
of men and women all over the world, it would not take long to convert
the world.

After we liad been in this new mission for some time, and the work
was going on blessedly, the tribes of Indians around heard about the
white man and his wife who had come among the Saulteaux, and they
came often to see us. One day there marched into our little home a great
big Indian woman, quite different in style from the ordinary Indian

1805.]

LIVE AMONO THK IIKI) MKN OP AHEKICA.

4«r.

woman. Those women are the most modest, timid, and retiring; people
yoii ever saw. I>iit here was one; who came in witli her liead up and
looking at us as tiiough slio was sizing us up. Her actions wore different
from the other womei:. This we learned after was because t»f her posi-
tion. She was u cliieftainess. Her father was a great chief, and her
iiusband had Itiren a great t^hief, and wlien he died she ruled her people.
She was a clever woman. She lived far in the interior, and she liad heard
of the paleface and his wife, who, with their wunderfid Hook, had come
to live down there among the Saulteaux. She did not believe what she
Iieard, and had actually come nuiiiy days' journey to find out whether
what .she had heanl from the hunters about the Book and the Great Spirit
was true. I found that of all the incpiirers that I ever liad, she was the
most insatiable in her curiosity and in her desire to learn. She would
talk morning, noon, and night. Nor could we seem to satisfy her curi-
osity. She stayed with us about two weeks. Before she went away.
I said to her, '* Now, you are going back home, and I want to say some
things to you. Christians keep one day in seven, wliich is God's day.
We do not attend to worldly matters on that day, but we worship God.
I want you to be a Christian in everything, so you must keep this Sabbath
day. I am going to give you this big sheet of paper to help you. " 1 gave
her a big sheet of foolscap and a long pencil, and said : ** When you g«it
home begin and make six small marks | | | | | I • Those are your
days in which to hunt and fish. Attend to your matters with the tribe,
your duties as chieftainess on these six days, and then for the seventh day
make a big mark, , and leave the gun and the rifle quiet in the wig-
wam, no hunting or fishing on that day. Work hard on Saturday to get
enough food for the Sunday. On that day think about the Great
Spirit, and pray to your loving Father, who sees you wherever you are."
When she pleaded with me to come and preach to her tribe, I said,
*' When the eagle moon is filling out, listen for the ringing of tlie mis-
sionary's sledge- bells ; then I will go and see you."

My prograiTime of work was so great that six months passed away
before I could vi^.it her people. When the eagle moon came I harnessed
my dogs and took my guide and dog-drivers, and away we went. It
took us twelve or fourteen days to get there. We often had to travel
altogether by night on account of the dazzling rays of the sun on the snow,
which cause suow-blindncss, a very painful disease. We journeyed on
amid many dangers and adventures, but at last we reached our destina-
tion. The la.st six miles we had to cross a frozen lake. As we dashed
out of the forest, there, on the other shore, was her village. Sharp eyes
were on the lookout for us. We were not more than half-way across
before they detected our coming, and had dinner prepared when we
arrived. Ookeinasquasis, the chieftainess, had some frozen heads of
reindeer on the staging ready for us. These are one of the greatest deli-
cacies which the Indians can offer as food. She put some of these heads

488

LIFE AMONG THK RED MEN OF AMEBICA.

[July

of reindeer on the firo to singe the hair off, and then and there she went
at them with licr bij; axe and cliopped them in chunks and put thoiu in a

, big Indian kettle on the fire. So wlien our dog trains dashed into her
village our dinner was boiling. Soap out there is three dollars and a half
a bar, and thoy don't put much on their faces, and as they don't know
much about shaking hands, every man, woman, and child tried to see who
would be the first to kiss us !

I cut short this ordeal and liurried into the wigwam. You never saw
a woman so happy as was the chicftainess. She exclaimed, among many
other things, " Oh, to think the man with the Book has come to my
people !" A level place was prepared for the dinner. In the centre was
piled up these chunks of reindeer heads and in a circle around was placed
a number of tin cups full of black tea, of which I had given her a pack-
age. She put me on her left and her principal chief was on her right.
Some more of lier prominent people and my drivers and guides were also
there. There was not a plate or a fork or a knife visible. As soon as we
sat down, the men took out their hunting-knives and at once reached

' forward for a chunk of meat. " Wait," said I, "we are going to be
Christians ; Christians thank the Great Spirit for His gifts ; Christians
ask a blessing over their food. Shut your eyes and I will ask a blessing ;
we will thank the Great Spirit for what we are going to eat and drink."
They shut their eyes and I asked a blessing, and, being the first, I made
it like a little prayer, and said Amen, and opened my eyes. But every
eye was shut. I said, '* Open your eyes." So they opened their eyes.
" When I say amen at the end, although that is not all it means, it means
that we have come to the end. Now, eat your dinner." Every fellow
leaned forward and grabbed a chunk of meat and took it up in his dirty
hands, and cut it with his big hunting-knife with which they fought bears
and skinned their game. Some, more hungry than others, would take a
piece in their mouth and saw off a little piece at a time. I looked over
the pile and saw a piece that had a projecting bone on it. I took hold of
that bone as a handle, and, taking out my hunting-knife, began my dinner.
How happy my friend the chieftainess was ! She reached forward with
her great, dirty hands, and, grabbing a great juicy, splendid piece of
meat she went at it witli great vigor. Then she slapped it down on the
ground, and, after drinking a cup of tea, she grabbed it off of the ground
again and vigorously ate from it, all the time talking, with hi^.r mouth, full
or empty. Again she threw the piece of meat down, and reaching down
in the bosom of her dress she drew out a greasy, dirty paper, saying,
** Oh, missionary, I want you to see how I have tried to keep the record
of the praying day." It was a dirty, greasy paper now, and I hardly
recognized it as the clean one I had given her. With much interest I
looked it over, and found that during all those six months she had kept
the record faithfully. Here it was the right day for all those six months.
Of course I was very much delighted. She said, " Some days a boy

• •

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T^nrv^r-x^mfm

180S.]

LIFE AMONG TIIR HRD tlEN OF AMKIIICA.

I I

/.'I

would como in ami say, ' TIhto is a fine reindeer out in the valley, I am
sure you can shoot it.' JJut 1 said, ' No, no, it is tlio prayiiij; day, and
I cannot shoot on the prayinj; day.' But 1 think of the (Iroat Spirit, my,
Father, and try to pray and talk to Ilini and have Ilim talk to me." She
was so happy, as I said kind and encouraging words to lier. Soon sho
folded the paper up and jammed it down in the bosom of lier dress, and
then she grabbed up her chunk of meat and chewed some juooca of it,
while I was nil»!»ling daintily at my bit. Then sho looked at mine and
looked at hers, and said, " Your j)iece of meat is not a very tine one ;
mine is a splendid piece ;" and before I knew what she was going to do
sho swapped pieces. T ditl not practice any hypocrisy. I knew the
motive that had prompted licr giving me lier piece was that it was better
than mine, and so I took her piece and from it I Hnished my dinner, and
I thanked her for doing it, because in exchanging pieces sho had done
what is considered one of the greatest acts of kindness an Indian can do
— that is, if he sees he has something better than yours, to exchange with
you. We had a service in the afternoon that lasted until supper-time,
and another in the evening that lasted until midnight, and twenty. two of
us lay down in that wigwam, all with our feet to the fire and our heads to
the side of the wigwam, (iod has now given us that people for Christ.
Every one of them professes to lovo Ilim, and there is not a conjurer or a
medicine man among them.

I had occasional visits from Roman Catholic priests. I never quarrel
with them, but I keep my eyes open, and the fish that I have landed I try
to get into my basket and have stay there. The priests used to como and
visit the Indians, and I was courteous and friendly, but when they had
gone away I would say to my people, *' What did these long-coated gen-
tlemen say ?" " Oh, they said a lot of beautiful things to us about the
mother of our Lord, and how nice it would be to get her to intercede with
her Son for us." Hero was my argument to them : I would say, " Sup-
pose that the governor-general of our couatry should come out hero and
be in my house as a guest, and ho should send out word, * Now, Indians,
if you have any petition or favor to ask, come and see me, and I will
gladly listen to your prayer and do all I can for you. ' Suppose that John
Company (the name the Indians give the Hudson Bay Company) should
say, * Now if you Indians want to have any talk with the governor, tell
us, and we will go and speak for you.* What, would you say when the
governor himself had invited you to come right to his presence ? You
would say to John Company, ' Mind your own business, we are going to
the governor.' Now listen, in this book Jesus Christ says, * Ilim that
cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out ; whosoever will may come ;
and I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto Me.' I would not say a
word against the mother of our Lord, she was a glorious and blessed
woman, but when the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, says, ' Come unto Me,'
what is the use of having the mother as your mouthpiece when you can

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LIFK AMONO TUB RED MEN OK AMEKICA.

IJuiy

go yourself straight to tlio Son ?" So wlion those priests oaino nroiiiHl
again and tlioiijj^lit they wore going to f coop in u groat lot of my converts,
they found the Indians were oilish, aid they waiiti'd to know what was
the matter, and the Indians said, " Veil, it is just this, if you long-coated
gcntlunion wish to go and say your prayers through the intercession of tho
old lady go and do it, we arc going straight lo the Son every time."
The result was that I never lost an Indian convert in any of our missions.

These priests are very zealous and worthy of imitation, as to courage
and enterprise and push, and their determination to succeed. In one
Indian village was a French priest, an earnest worker in his way and very
zealous for the ceremonies of the church, especially as regards Friday.
The Indians were told never to cat meat ou Friday ; they were to cat fish
only. That was all right f(tr six months of the year, when they had any
quantity of fish, but the other six months, when the ice was often ten feet
thick, it was rather difliciilt to get tho required food. One Friday this
priest went into one of tho wigwams, and found one oi his best Indians,
as he had supposed, eating a great piece of venison. The priest, with all
the excitability of the Frenchman, fiew around and said, "Didn't I tell
you never to eat moat on Friday ?" Tho Indi;in carved off another piece
and said, *' Him no moat, him fish." The priest said, '* Can't I believe
my eyes ? You are eating venison." " Ilim no venison, him fish." The
priest was very much annoyed and said, * ' Are you crazy or am I crazy ?
I say that is venison." *' llim no venison, him fish." ** How do you
know it is ?" said tho priest. Tho Indian replied, " You came to me
awhile ago and said, * I want you to be one of my people.' I said,
* What do you want to do ? ' * Why, to baptize you. ' I said, ' What is
that you tell me ? What will you pay me ? ' We talked about it and
you decided to give me a new shirt if you would baptize me. I said, ' Go
ahead ;' so you took the water and went through your prayers and bap-
tized me, and you said, ' I change you, you not Ookoosketoos any more,
you Peter.' So I am Peter ever since. Friday come, and I have no fish,
and I feel pretty hungry, and I don't want to go all day without anytliing
to eat, so thinks I, I will fix him, and I get some water and take up that
nice piece of venison and I say, * you venison are you, I fix you ; ' and I put
water on him and baptize him, and make him fish, and I cat him." So
he went ou, and had a good time.

One of the saddest things in reference to our North American Indians
of this far north was the cruel way in which they treated women. The
men in their pagan state were naturally tyrants. They had such false
ideas. They thought if a man was kind to his mother, or his wife, or his
sister, or his daughter, there was something wei k about him, that he was
not a big Indian, a strong, great warrior, so they crushed out all kindly
feeling. They were fond of the little boys, but the poor little girls had a
hard time of it. A man could cuff his wife's ears because the little baby
a few hours old was a girl, and not a boy ; and all through life that feel-

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LIFE AMONO TIIIC KM) MKN OV AMERICA.

489

• »

i4l

ingof contempt for womanhood was mHnifcsUid. I Imvn soi'd a hij; Indian
with a ritlo on his shoulder como marching into the enranipmont. J It;
would look around until over yonder he would see liin wife, perhapH chop-
ping wood, an "i ho would say, " Get up, you dog of a wife, and go along
the trail and you will see where I have shot a deer, liring it in quick,
1 want my dinner." Then lie would send a club at her with such fury,
that if she had not dodged it her brains would have been dashed out.
Away she would go and stagger home with that groat deer on her back.
Then she would take her scalping-knife ai:d go to work and skin that deer,
and cut out a lot of venison and boil it and put it before her husband.
He would invito half a do/.cn <<f his men friends, and they would sit down
and get out their knives and go to work. The wifo would go and sit with
the girls, and after thos(! fellows had gorged themselves with venison,
they would take bony bits, and after they had eaten the best off the bones,
would laugh to see the dogs and women struggle for the bones which they
threw to them. That is paganism as we saw it first. Oh, how often I
had to sliut my lips tight and hold my tongue uud say, " Lord, give me
grace to be quiet now, and to speak the '•ight wonl when the time
comes !"

It was worse than that, for it was a sin, my sister, my mother, for a
womnn to grow old out there. I once went to a village where lives a great
chief named Mookoowoosoo. Tobacco among the Indians is like salt
among the Arabs, and I have often brought them to parley with me
becauKj I have given them a little tobacco and tea. I gave this old fellow
a plug of tobacco, and said, " Go with me for a walk." Just outside of
his village was a pile of blackened ashes, and I said, " What is that?"
" Ah," ho said, '* that is where I burned my mother to ashes." " Of
what disease did your mother die?" He said, " She died of a rope."
** What do you mean ?" " Why," he said, " she got so she could not
snare rabbits and catch fish, and I was not going to be bothered with the
old thing, and one day I put a roi)(3 annxnd her neck and then burned her
to death, so her ghost wouldn't come to haunt me." He boasted that he
killed his own mother i But look at the contrast. My wife and I went
among that people, and wo worked for several years. We preached the
blessed Gospel of the Son of (xod, and I went out a year ago last summer
to visit all these tribes, and travelled several thousand miles, holding evan-
gelistic services from tribe to tribe. Look into one of those Indian
churches. It is made of logs, a great big roomy Indian church, with one
•wide aisle down the middle. Let us stand in the desk on Sunday morning
R'i the congregation gather. Look at that man and his two brothers who
took their mother out in the woods and killed her because she was getting
old and feeble. Look at that old woman who murdered the two little
babies of the missionary who followed us. And then look at this other
woman. There is brightness on her face, but if you look deeper there is
a memory of some terrible crime which she cannot wipe out. That woman

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490

LIFE AMONG THE RED MEN OV AMERICA.

[July

has a history. When I first, went out there with my dofjs in the woods,
visiting them, her husband was an old conjurer, a very wicked man. JIo
would not let her come to the house of God, and in the summer time when
I went in my canoe lie kept her away. I thank God for a voice with
which I could send ringing out into the distance the story of God's love,
and so while I liad a company of a few hundred Indians there on the
ground, I knew that in that clump of balsams on the bank of the river,
pretending to be making a moccasin or dressing a deer-skin were the wives
or daughters or sisters of some of the intensely wicked people who would
not allow them in the company to which I was preaching, and so I would
preach for those yonder. One day this old fellow caught his wife out in
the outskirts listening, and I learned afterward that he took her and beat
her cruelly, and then made withes with whicli he tied her to a tree. The
hunters had gone away. They used to come to my meetings, but, the
instant I left, away they scattered to their hunting-grounds, and only a
few families were left in the village. These were all so afraid of this
terrible old conjurer that they dared not untie his wife. Yonder in the
wigwam was her little baby girl a few months old, in the hammock. By
and by it woke up and began to cry. It wanted mother's care and
mother's nursing. But she was tied there to the tree, and the child cried
louder and louder, until by and by its shrieks so affected the mother that
she struggled free at last, and she rushed for her child, not to nurse it,
but to run down to the river, and take it by the heels and dash its brains
out against a rock and throw the quivering body into the rushing river.
As the child was swept away some Indian women heard her wailing out,
" Oh, that my mother had done that to me when I was a poor little baby-
girl like you, to save me from the life I am living !" Her husband died
after awhile, and so tliere was no impediment in the way, and she came
to Christ ; but in her heart is the memory of that murder. Oh, if she
only knew that there was a river of oblivion into which she could plunge
and wipe out the memory of the past, she would go to the ends of the
earth to bathe in such a place !

But look, the chapel doors are thrown open. Ah ! tliere is a sight that
brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. Two great Indians,
men twenty-eight or thirty years of age, with their hands have made a
chair and over their two hands and shoulders there is a blanket thrown,
and seated on that chair, with her arms around their stalwart necks, the
poor old invalid mother is being carried to the house of God by her own
sons. Another brother goes ahead down the aisle. We have no backs
to our plain seats, so he folds up a blanket very nicely and puts it down
as a soft cushion, and the other sons come along and mother is seated
upon it, and one of the big fellowa sits down beside her and puts his
strong arm around her and she lays her head against his manly breast.
Ah ! there comes a dimness in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I see
that, and I thank God for the transformation. The mother burned to

i 1

ma^mmmmmmmmmm

death is paganism ; the mother carried by her own sons to the house of
God is Christianity.

Those are some of the things God has permitted us to see in our work
among the red men, and it is a joy to tell you ; we are glad to tell you
that even among the red men God has saved some hundreds of precious
souls. Devoted men and women there are toiling on. God is blessing
them in the work. Indian converts are being raised up, and now some of
our most successful workers are Indians.— JVorthJietd Echoes.