The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 4, April, 1883Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 4, April, 1883
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
We have spoken of five mission stations as now passing under
the care of the A. M. A. But of these Standing Rock is hardly
opened, and Berthold and Sully stations are sadly in need of
reinforcements. And there are the large Indian Agencies of Spotted
Tail’s and Red Cloud’s tribes, numbering about 7,000 each, which
we ought to occupy. Then there is the Crow country in Montana,
next door to our Berthold Mission. We should have at once six
ordained missionaries and their wives, with as many more assistant
missionaries, all picked men. This would enable us to manage a yet
larger number of native missionary teachers working along with
them.
[Illustration: SISSETON GIRLS, WITH TEACHER.]
The tribes speaking the Dakota language are the most numerous of
any Indian people upon the continent. They are now universally
open to Christianity and Christian civilization. They now look to
Christian people for their future. Within the last ten or twelve
years the whole temper of their mind has changed. The noted chief,
Sitting Bull, is an illustration. Only a few years ago he hated the
very wind that blew from the direction of the white man’s country.
When the wind blew from the east he would send out the town crier
to say, “Get you all into your teepees. This is bad air from the
white man’s country.” But when it blew from the north his crier
would proclaim, “Come out and breathe the healthy air.” And once
when a woman of the tribe brought home a “rooster” from a distant
trading post to enliven the tedium of her labor, Sitting Bull heard
it crow and instantly dispatched his chief soldier to “soldier
kill” the woman, that is, cut up her tent and kill her horses, for
the crime of having that white man’s bird in the sacred precincts
of a Dakota camp. But now the same Sitting Bull is petitioning for
Christian teachers, and land, and domestic animals, and undoubtedly
would also welcome “the-bird-that-crows-in-the-morning.”
* * * * *
INDIAN INDUSTRIES AT HAMPTON.
BY GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG.
Every Indian boy who comes to Hampton is allowed his choice to
learn farming or a trade, and to select the trade he prefers, to
which he is expected to stick. They often wish to change after some
months, for they are a fickle people. While this is by no means
done as a matter of course, it has sometimes been found wise to do
so. A boy who could do nothing at blacksmithing made remarkable
progress in the wheelwright’s shop; one who is poor on the farm may
be good in the shoe-shop, and _vice versa_; but it does not do to
encourage shifting trades. The girls go through the same routine of
housework, cooking, cutting and making and mending clothes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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