The Choctaw mission embraces eleven families and three large boarding
schools. Five slaves, hired at their own desire, are in the employment
of the missionaries. A less number are employed in the Cherokee
mission. Gladly would the missionaries dispense with these, could the
necessary amount of free labor for domestic service be obtained. Those
who employ this slave labor, allege that it is to them a matter of
painful necessity. They are known to resort to it unwillingly, and are
not regarded as thereby giving their sanction to slavery. Some thus
employed have been brought to a saving knowledge of divine truth.
The sentiments of these two missions as to the moral character of
slavery, and the principles on which they should act with regard to
it, are frankly and unequivocally avowed. We are bound to believe
them honest in the expression of these sentiments. It is their
expectation that the principles thus acknowledged as their own will
be those on which the missions will be conducted. The adjudication of
particular cases must be left to the missionary. That it be so left,
is his right; it is also unavoidable. The position of the missionaries
is one of great difficulty, and should be appreciated. That there
is such a diversity of judgment among them as men of independent
thought and differing mental characteristics, who agree in essential
principles, everywhere evince; and that they have, through a use of
phraseology leading sometimes to a mutual misunderstanding of each
other's views, supposed themselves to differ more widely than, in our
conferences, they found themselves really to do, has been intimated.
That none of them have sympathy with slavery; that, on the other hand,
their influence is directly and strongly adverse to its continuance,
while they are doing much in mitigation of its evils and to bless
both master and slave, in the judgment of the Deputation, is beyond
a doubt. By many they are denounced as abolitionists. Some of their
slave-holding church members have left their churches for another
connection on this account. Others have disconnected themselves from
a system which they have learned to dislike and disapprove. Strong in
the confidence and affection of many for whose salvation they have
toiled and suffered, by the supporters of slavery, in and out of the
nations, they undoubtedly are looked upon with growing suspicion.
Surely we should not be willing needlessly to embarrass them in their
blessed work. They are worthy of the confidence and warmest sympathy
of every friend of the red man and of the black man. God is with them.
In the Cherokee mission, the dispensation of his grace is not, indeed,
now as in times past; and we have some seriousness of apprehension
in regard to the progress of the gospel among that people. Still the
divine presence is not wanting. Among the Choctaws rapid advance is
making. Converts are multiplying; the fruits of the gospel abound.
Both missions need reinforcement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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