Since the last annual meeting of this Association, the Dawes Bill, which has been called the emancipation proclamation of the Indian, has passed both houses of Congress, and is now the law of the land. Public attention, as never before, has been turned to the wrongs and the needs of the Indian. The new conditions have developed new necessities, new opportunities, and new dangers. Numerous societies, in thirty-two different States, have been organized to assist them. All this gives new importance to the work of the A. M. A. among the Indians. The summary for the year is encouraging. The conversions and additions to church membership tell a story of faithful, unselfish work for the Master, in one of the hardest possible fields of missionary labor, with little of the romance or pleasure of travel sometimes afforded by missions in foreign lands; among a people whom a Judge of the Supreme Court called “a despised and rejected class of persons;” handicapped and hindered in all their efforts by the suspicions and hatreds developed by centuries of injustice, robbery and cruelty from a Government that claimed to be civilized and Christian, and also by the Reservation System, which puts the missionary and the teacher under the absolute control of the Indian Agent, who may be a mere political tool and a man of no character, yet has despotic authority on the reservation, with power to expel or imprison the missionary, or break up his school or congregation. Yet in spite of all obstacles, through love of Him who was also “despised and rejected of men,” they remained faithful amid dangers and difficulties, till, through their labor and that of their companions and predecessors, there are now nearly 29,000 Indian church members.