In the United States there are now three hundred and thirty-six
thousand Indians; nearly one third of these are unchurched. There are
many who have no opportunity to know the living God, yet they were
the first Americans. Their loyalty was proved when nine thousand young
braves entered the army and navy to fight for a world democracy, and
one third of those entered the service through enlistment. These wards
of the nation, though driven back from wide prairie to reservations,
have been taught trades and agriculture. Twenty million dollars
worth of Liberty Bonds were bought by Indians. The war has given the
Indian an opportunity to show his fine qualities of manhood, and to
demonstrate his fitness for those privileges of citizenship which have
been denied him. Hereafter, too, this native American will be a citizen
of the world. “They have learned to step to the drum-beat of democracy,”
says Hon. Cato Sells, “and they will come out of the conflict an
element of real and progressive strength in our National life.” Like
many others who have fought abroad, they will ask the churches and
schools to put into practise the principles that they defended “over
there.”
The teachers to succeed Brother Van, Mr. Hammer, and all of that host
of devoted workers who have given their whole lives for the building of
a Christian civilization in the west must come from the young people of
the church. Young men and young women of the new generation must have
a vision clear enough to see the beckoning hands that point the way
to great unfinished tasks. The high purpose of the boy from Gettysburg
must fill other lives that will take up the new tasks, as hard as the
old, perhaps harder, which the changing times have brought to Montana.
Leaving the Indians, we find ourselves on the railroad and bound
for the new frontier. The monotony of the prairie is only relieved
by homes and schoolhouses but these appear at intervals as we travel.
Occasionally we pass small towns clustering around grain elevators,
which show the new day of agriculture. We come at last to the end of
our journey to the new section and from the small station we drive to
a settler’s shack on a claim. Surely tales of frontier life have been
exaggerated, for here are warmth, blooming plants, books, and papers.
The homesteader is a retired preacher.
“We must get the surveyor while you are here, Brother Van, and mark up
that lot for the church,” says our host.
“A church out on this prairie!” we exclaim.
“Yes, do you see yonder that grain elevator and a few buildings?
That is a new town starting and we must have a church. A saloon and a
pool-room are there already. The storekeeper has given us a lot for the
church,” he explains.
This is a wise merchant who realized that the new town would not be fit
for his family unless the church was the central interest. With pick
and compass we go; Brother Van steps off the distance, and the faithful
pick finds the marker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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