The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888Various
History
The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
NEB.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. F.H. Leavitt, 1216 H St., Lincoln, Neb.
DAKOTA.--Woman's Home Miss. Union, President,
Mrs. T.M. Hills, Sioux Falls; Secretary, Mrs.
W.R. Dawes, Redfield; Treasurer, Mrs. S.E.
Fifield, Lake Preston.
* * * * *
REPORT OF SECRETARY.
It is fitting that woman should have a part in a work that finds its
centre of operations in Christian schools and homes for the training
of the exceptional classes reached by the American Missionary
Association.
Let us not forget that the Indians for whom we work have been
excluded from our civilized communities, until it is difficult to win
them to our customs, our language and our religion; that until only
about twenty-five years ago, generation after generation of our
colored people had been born to bondage, and had groaned its hopeless
life away in far greater misery than the same conditions brought in
uncivilized Africa--misery made deeper and keener by contrasts in
civilized America. Is it a wonder that the women of a slave race lost
their womanly instincts; that the moral nature was blunted and
marred; that the mind became impoverished, the heart a waste place
for poisonous weeds to grow?
Let us not forget that the mountain people have been passed by, until
shrinking farther and farther into the seclusion of their hills and
ravines, and living unto themselves, they have lost the sturdy
qualities of their ancestors.
What kind of homes do we find among these people, where the children
with their impressible minds are receiving their first instruction?
Our teacher is invited to visit the home of a Kentucky girl, one
somewhat above the average. Beautiful for situation, up a winding
road, past cascades and mountain waterfalls, upon a high plateau the
home is found--a box house, one room, no windows, two beds, four
chairs, a table, a few dishes, father, mother, seven children, dogs,
cats, and chickens. At retiring hour the teacher is pointed to the
corner and is told she is to sleep there. A pile of dirty, ragged
quilts are pulled out from under the beds, some bags and rags rolled
for pillows, and the family dispose of themselves for the night, with
no change of clothing, scarcely the removal of shoes. Change the box
house to a tent, put the fire in the centre, and with less furniture,
but no more smoke or dirt, you have the tepee home of the Indian.
Match the dilapidation and the dirt, the narrow quarters and the
large family, and you have the cabin home in the Georgia swamps and
the lowlands of Louisiana. The conditions in the main are the
same--an untutored father and mother, no books, no pictures, no
newspapers, no clean clothes, no Sunday, no God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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