Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile literature; Children's poetry; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile literature
You see the different tribes of Indians have different mouth or spoken
languages, as do white people. To understand each other’s speech they
must have an interpreter to give its meaning; but they all seem to have
about the same sign speech; by using this the different tribes can
understand each other when they meet.
[Illustration: MR. LEWIS F. HADLEY.]
You know the deaf and dumb talk with their hands. So with the Indians
of different tribes when they can’t understand each other’s speech.
Here is a specimen of the sign language:
[Illustration: Country west I sit writing.
Morning come I give it firewagon;
go fast; pretty soon you catch it.
Day you catch it you show it
man, woman, all Maybe so give it
money print book many. Printing
done, I show it Indian The same
see it, know it good. Done.
Lightning Afraid Not.]
Well, Mr. Hadley has been mastering these signs, and now, after many
years’ hard study, you see he can write it.
“What for?”
To spread knowledge among the Indians. To give them the Gospel—the
blessed good news about the Lord who came and died for them.
“But has not the Bible been put into Indian for them to read, and don’t
the missionaries preach to them in their own language?”
Yes, indeed; but don’t you see that for each one of the many tribes it
may be necessary to have just the Bible and missionary that each can
understand? But if all the tribes now know this one Sign Talk, then all
can read the Lord’s Prayer, and any other part of the Bible, if put in
this sign talk. And all the more so because every one can understand a
thing better if he can see the language as well as hear it.
Now to do this good work Mr. H—— lived among the Indians. He is a
missionary unlike any other. He has suffered much living as the Indians
do to learn this language. Read what Mrs. Degen says: “Would you like
to go out to dine where all the family kneel on an earth floor around
the tin dish-pan in which the dinner has been cooked, and grab for ‘a
little white meat,’ or ‘a little dark meat,’ or a ‘little of both, if
you please’? Would you like to see your fellow diners throw the bones
they have picked back into the pan? Or would you like to have your food
brought to you in a wash-basin?”
Now you can see something of what Mr. Hadley bears. He is a hero. You
can help him. So write to Mrs. Degen.
L.
HIS GIFT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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