When a little baby comes into an Indian home, he is wrapped up in a blanket and it is tied all about him so that he cannot use his arms or legs, and he looks very much like a rag doll, but he cries and laughs just like a real flesh and blood and bones baby. But, little Golden Hair, let me whisper to you one secret of the Indian baby’s happy life: he never gets _spanked_! They leave that to the uncivilized white mother. So, after all, the white boy does not have all the good in life; does he? Only think of sliding down hill a whole morning without even a board between the smooth snow and the trousers, going home with wet and worn clothes and not getting whipped; not even sent to bed! Indian children are never punished; but, after all, they are not bad. The boys like to hunt the snowbirds with bows and arrows. They kill a great many too. The little girls play with corn-cob dolls and little tents and travois, or _toshoes_, as they call them, sometimes drawn by dogs. The Indian children have hard lives after all. They cannot live to grow up unless they are pretty strong. A great many little ones die for want of good, wholesome food, and many for want of fresh air and warm clothes. We want all the little boys and girls in Christian homes to remember the little Dakotas. There is much good in them; and if they had the advantages you have, perhaps they would be fully as well behaved, and as true and faithful to God, as are you. Will you help us to save the little Indians? MARY C. COLLINS. * * * * * LITTLE INDIAN CHILDREN IN THE BIRDS’ NEST AT SANTEE AGENCY, NEB. They are such happy little girls, and so easily entertained. Just now I saw two of them getting such a merry time out of dragging the bowl of a large pewter spoon over the ground for a wagon, putting a little stick in the way to represent water they had to cross—for our recent rains have flooded the bottom-lands in several places. There was a nail lying in the spoon, and I asked what that meant. “Oh,” Maggie said, “that is me, and I am going to the store to buy some beads.” A shorter nail was there to represent her younger playmate. No little girls to-day, pushing their red-cheeked wax dollies in their miniature baby carriages, are any happier than our little Indian girls, drawing their broken pewter spoon and representing themselves by old rusty nails. At our Missionary Society, which meets every Saturday for an hour, I generally read them a little story; sometimes from “The Pansy,” which was sent us last year, or from “Our Little Men and Women,” also a gift from an unknown friend. They enjoy it always and like to see the pictures; but the book that holds the charm, and of which they never tire, is “The Story of the Bible.”