Why, then, after 300 years of the presence of Christianity on this continent, have not the Indians been civilized? does any one ask. Rather, when we think of the way that the Indians have been treated, our surprise shall be that any of them have accepted the gospel. And yet despite all of the difficulties, Dr. Jas. E. Rhoades affirmed that there is no field of mission enterprise which has yielded larger returns than that of our native tribes. Indians have been reached by the gospel, and that, too, in a very remarkable degree. The “five civilized tribes,” as they are called, of the Indian Territory, are practically a Christian people; 81,621 Indians wear citizens’ dress wholly, and 59,695 wear citizens’ dress in part; 43,423 Indians labor in civilized pursuits, and of this number 9,612 are farmers; 21,232 houses are occupied by 40,000 Indians as dwellings; and the significant thing about all this is that this most promising state of things has chiefly come about since the inauguration of the Government’s Peace Policy during the Presidency of General Grant, when Christian missions and Christian schools were multiplied, and the Government, in co-operation, made an honest effort to keep faith with the Indian, and to give him, at least, a show of justice. When the Indian was given the chance, he was found ready to accept it. The facts are most encouraging. Wonderful has been the progress the gospel has made among these people during the last fifteen years. But the field is vast, and, in comparison with the needs, only a beginning has been made. There are 40,000 wild Indian children in the country. Of this number, all told, there are but 12,000 gathered in the Government and mission schools, leaving 28,000 children to whom no school opens its door, and to whom no Christian missionary comes. There are at least sixty whole tribes upon whose darkness no ray of gospel light has ever fallen, as pagan and as savage as were their ancestors when the first white man landed upon these shores!