The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented, apron-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience, from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were expected not to give up, if possible, until the end. The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress. Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand generations of savagery back of them? Let another picture answer. * * * * * Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground, stands a little Christian church--plain but beautiful. From it seem to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great All-father. It is prayer-meeting night. The bell is rung and the audience begins to gather. A number of alert, intelligent-looking, English-speaking young men come in together. One of these, an earnest Christian, will interpret, sentence by sentence, the Scripture reading and the message of the speaker. Some older men and women come next, heavy of feature and step. One is blind and feels his way to his accustomed seat. Old women come wrapped in blankets, their faces seamed with toil and showing the hardness of heathen customs, when sickness and death, unrelieved by faith, wear the heart and waste the body. Mothers come with bright-eyed babies tucked in their blankets, or leading children of various sizes--also some young women, beautiful and intelligent--and a few white employees from the Agency--and the workers from the Mission--until the room is nearly filled. The meeting is opened with prayer, and a quiet fills the room as all are brought into the very presence of the loving Father. And then follows the singing, "My faith looks up to Thee," "Lovingly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me." Did ever the words seem so fraught with meaning, so filled with the yearning love of the Master? The message that follows is one of passionate earnestness, as the missionary seeks to make clear to them the meaning of purity of life--of faith in God, of His saving, keeping power. At its close an Indian elder, using his own soft, Indian language, pleads in prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead his people.