The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which began its existence in 1812, adopted measures in 1815 for carrying the gospel to the Indians. One hundred thousand of these people, as untamed as when the Pilgrims met them at Plymouth, as ignorant in most respects, and as truly heathen as were their fathers centuries before them, were then supposed to be living east of the Mississippi River. The first mission was among the Creeks and Cherokees. Three missionaries and their wives began the work. In character it was a compound of mission boarding school and agricultural college. In eighteen months, the Indian boys could read the Bible, and nearly a score of them could write; five converted heathen were members of the church. Next, in 1818, missions were begun among the Chickasaws and the Choctaws. Here, also, the first work was that of the school. So eager were the Choctaws for instruction, that eight children were brought 160 miles across the country before the missionaries were ready for them, and in one year from that date the Choctaw Nation voted to devote to the schools their entire annuity of _six thousand dollars_, from the sale of their lands to the United States. The missionaries were subject to unceasing hindrances from renegade whites, who are always on the borders of civilization, and have usually been the enemies of missionaries. But among the Cherokees no year passed without conversions. Those who appeared to the missionaries so wild and forbidding that they were received with fear, came under the gospel power and were clothed and in their right mind. In six years the Church had largely increased. Indians traveled a score of miles to attend the services. As yet, there was no Cherokee written language. This mission was eight years old when the four gospels were translated into the Cherokee tongue, and in three or four years more, one-half the nation could read. There were now among the Cherokees and the Choctaws, eighteen missionary stations. In 1826, the Board began work among eight other tribes in different parts of the country.