Besides these, it is reported by traders, that the Sioux (Soos), a powerful tribe numbering about 25,000 souls, living North of the Puncaws, and other tribes to the North are also anxious to have missionaries among them. What a wide field for missionary labor! And still we must hear the remark so often made by christians in the East, so painful to our ears: “There is no use in having missionaries among the _Indians_-no good can be effected among the _Indians_—better send the missionaries who are laboring among the _Indians_, and appropriate the funds spent for missions and schools among _them_, to some _other_ heathen field.” From what we have witnessed on our excursion to Council Bluffs, and our subsequent visit to the Pawnees, we confidently express the opinion that we can nowhere expect heathen nations, with the contracted ideas that these people have of the nature of the gospel, to be more anxious to have missionaries among them. And we cannot otherwise than denounce expressions like the above, as not breathing the spirit of our Lord and Savior, who has enjoined the command upon his followers to “go and preach his gospel to _every creature_.” Furthermore, from what we have seen and heard, we firmly believe that the Lord is preparing a wide door for the preaching of his gospel among the Western and North Western prairie tribes, and the Macedonian cry is ringing in the land: “Come over and help us!” We solemnly put the question to such objectors to our Indian missions: Where lies the fault that so little has been done in latter years by the Brethren among the Indians? that our missions among the Indians have been stagnant—yes, we may truly say, retrograding for so many years? Shall it be attributed to the Indians, who, as we have seen, are truly anxious to receive the gospel? Or shall we admit, that the blessed gospel of our Savior has not that power over the Indians that it has over other nations? that there is a deficiency in the gospel in not being able to subdue the obdurate heart of the red man? Shall we doubt for a moment the incapacity of the Lord in blessing the faithful preaching of his word with the outpourings of his Spirit? Or is there a deficiency in the plan of salvation that Indians should be excluded from the glorious privileges of the same? Or have we forgotten the history of our first missions among them, the piety and consistent christian lives of our first Indian converts, their persecutions from their heathen brethren, and their sufferings even unto death for the sake of the gospel? If we wish to find where the fault lies we must look for it in _our own hearts_. _There_ it is. _There_ is a lack of that missionary spirit which actuated our forefathers! _There_ is a lack of that Spirit of our Savior, who in his missionary capacity to a _world_ of sinners has set us a pattern to follow. We have sadly degenerated, and the spirit of the world has taken a powerful hold upon our minds;