Part 2

That the needs of the churches represented in this Conference call for the appointment of a man of wisdom and experience to be a Missionary Superintendent, whose labors should be first directed toward establishing, upon a firm basis, the churches already organized; and next toward selecting promising and needy fields for planting new churches and directing our young ministers in opening such fields.

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IS THE NEGRO DYING OUT?

—In the lull of political agitation over the colored people, the question is being discussed as to their continuance. Are they dying out? What are the ascertained facts?

—A correspondent of the Cincinnati _Gazette_, in Jackson, Miss., has taken the pains to collate the deaths of the white and colored people in the various Southern cities. In Washington, during the year 1875, 19.22 died out of every thousand whites and 47.60 out of every thousand blacks. In the succeeding year, the proportion was 26.53 whites and 49.29 blacks. In Baltimore, the rate for 1875 was 19.80 whites to 34.42 blacks. In Knoxville, during 1876, the mortality per thousand whites was 18; per thousand blacks 31.2. In Richmond, for the same year, the rate was 17.36 whites, and 28.13 blacks. In Mobile, during the previous year, the proportion was 12.1 to 23.1. In New Orleans, the rate for the same year was 25.45 whites to 39.69 blacks. In Charleston, during the ten months of the present year, 17.4 out of every thousand whites have died, and 38.7 out of every thousand blacks. In Memphis in 1876, there were 652 deaths among the white population, and 601 among the negroes: in other words, considering the proportion of white and colored inhabitants, the death-rate among the negroes was nearly four times as great as among the whites.

—It has been suggested that these death-rates may not hold throughout the country places in the South, and that the cities whither the freedmen flocked after the close of the war have become peculiarly fatal to the race. In answer, the Charleston _News and Courier_ states that the negroes of the rural parts of South Carolina are dying out even more rapidly than those in Charleston.

—The _Scientific American_ deduces the following results, from the Surgeon-General’s report, as to comparative health and mortality in the army. For the year ending June 30, 1877, the army consisted of 23,284 white men and 2,075 colored men. Total cases of sickness of all kinds, 40,171; deaths, 260. Among colored troops, total sicknesses, 4,348; deaths, 32. The colored men’s sicknesses were 20 per cent. more than those of the whites; while in deaths, we find the proportion reversed, for only 7 per thousand of colored men died of disease, as against 8 per thousand of white men. In cases caused by wounds, accidents, or injuries, 8 per thousand negroes died, against 3 per thousand of white men. It thus appears that the negroes become diseased more easily than white men, and also recover more readily; but when actual bodily injury occurs, the death-rate is more than twice that of white men.

—The United States Census of 1860 showed the increase among the blacks in ten years to have been 25 per cent.; from 1860 to 1870 a little over 10 per cent., though these were years of war and want.

—In view of these statements, General Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., writes in the _Southern Workman_:

“Many close observers believe that the decrease is general, but equally good authorities assert the contrary. No conclusion is satisfactory; but we incline to the belief that the colored race will at least hold its own, because in the corresponding class of whites in all cities there is great mortality. It would be interesting to know the death-rate among the poor whites of Washington, Richmond and Charleston, whose dying out has never been hinted at. The negro is prolific. The phenomena of a dying race, such as one sees among the decaying Polynesian tribes are not seen among them. Children are abundant and healthy in city and country. The pickaninnies do not seem destined to die young. They are a numerous, frisky, healthy class, of unfailing humor and appetite, as unlike as anything can be the sore-spotted, scarce Hawaiian child, whose race is doomed.”

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AFRICAN EMIGRATION.

—It appears that the “information from Liberia,” said to have been received by “the Department of State,” already widely circulated, was not in any sense an official publication, nor is the name or standing of the author given.

—Rev. Dr. George W. Samson, for forty years a resident of Washington, for twelve years President of Columbian College, and for sixteen years a member of the Executive Committee of the American Colonization Society, has written a weighty reply to these statements in the Boston _Traveller_. In it he shows the economical planting, the rapid progress, the fertility of the soil, the intelligence and educational facilities of the colony, by the testimony of U. S. naval officers and other distinguished witnesses.

—Fifty-two colored emigrants sailed for Liberia recently in the bark Liberia. They were forwarded by the American Colonization Society. Three clergymen were among the cabin passengers, one of whom goes to the Boporo Mission in the interior. The majority of those emigrating are mechanics and farmers. Many of them are members of Christian churches. They are comfortably quartered on board, and have more conveniences than is usual on emigrant vessels. The American Colonization Society has made a contract with the agents of the vessel, who agree to carry adults for $50 and children for $25. This amount includes everything required during the voyage, and the Liberian Government insures their support for at least six months after their arrival. Each single immigrant receives ten acres of land, and the head of a family twenty-five acres. Ex-President Warner, recently elected Vice-President of the Republic, is the Society’s agent to receive the emigrants, and under his charge they will be kept until they can support themselves. The Society has sent many parties before this and reports the applications as so numerous that space cannot be found to accommodate them.

—A very different enterprise, apparently, is the Liberia Exodus Association, which failed to provide the steamship which was to be ready December 15th. Says Mr. Scarborough, an intelligent colored man connected with Wilberforce University:

I regard the Liberia Exodus Association as another Credit Mobilier affair on a small scale. We judge of an undertaking by the character of the men engaged in it. Now, it does not require a profundity of knowledge to tell who and what these men are; what has been their past history, what it is now, and what it will probably be in the future. All these we can pretty well determine. It is stated on good authority that a petition will be sent to Congress praying for aid; the exact amount is not stated. However, I am confident that I express the feelings of hundreds of the better-thinking colored citizens when I say that Congress should make no appropriation for any such pell-mell movement. If Congress wishes to make an appropriation for the negro, let it make it with the restrictions that it shall be used to pay off the deficit caused by the sinking of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, or for the purchasing of lands and outfits in the great West, that the negro may wend his way thither, build up and utilize the hitherto barren country. In South Carolina, it is said, thousands are selling or letting their little farms and homes by way of preparation for leaving America; men, women and children all have the African mania. My advice to these people now is this: To pay no attention to these fair promises; if they have sold their homes, buy them back if possible; if they have leased their farms, rent others till the lease expires and then return to their own; or, if this is not desirable, seek homes in the great West, in the country that gave us birth, forgetting color, race or condition, only to rise above it.

—As bearing on the question of a general or large transportation of ignorant and untrained men to Liberia, were it possible, we quote from Prof. Blyden in a late number of the _Methodist Quarterly Review_. He, in speaking of unskilled labor, says:

In Liberia, there is no lack of the lower kinds of unskilled labor supplied by the numerous aborigines who throng the settlements. The immigrant who comes from America is at once made a proprietor. He has land given him by law, but having no capital to employ labor, he must enter, single-handed, upon the work of subduing the forest, and with all the efforts he may put forth, it is with the utmost difficulty that he ever rises above a hand-to-mouth existence. Hence, very often men owning their twenty-five acres of land, pressed by their necessities, prefer to leave it a wilderness and go to the arduous and, for new comers, perilous labor of shingle and lumber getting, or enter the employ of men who may be able to keep them from starving, but hardly able to give them a start toward self-support on their own lands.

When it is remembered that Prof. Blyden is a citizen of Liberia and knows whereof he speaks, there will be no reason to doubt the truth of the above statement.

—One of the workers in the Liberia movement met a wise, old colored man in Shreveport, La. He was describing the great benefits the negro would enjoy by emigrating, and told him that there the negro did not have to work; bread and sugar trees covered the forests, and bananas, cocoanuts, pine-apples, lemons, and all the tropical fruits, grew everywhere. “Dat’s ’nough of dat story,” said the old man; “dat ain’t so, kase if it was, de white man would a went dar long ago, and the niggers neber would hah known nuffin ’bout it.”

—We notice now, as the most recent movement, that a State convention of the Mississippi Colonization Society, held a few weeks since, to consider the project of emigrating from the South, was attended by some 4,000 persons, including 300 delegates from other States than Mississippi. The proposition to emigrate to Africa was not looked upon with favor, but the proposition to emigrate to Arizona, New Mexico or Texas was approved. The following resolution was adopted:

_Resolved_, By the people of color of the State of Mississippi, in convention assembled, that we earnestly entreat our countrymen throughout the Union to form a national colonization association, with branches in every county and State in the Union, for the purpose of effecting a peaceable separation of the blacks from the whites, and concentrating our numbers as a body in certain States or Territories within this Union, as may be hereafter agreed upon in national convention assembled.

A national convention is to be held in February next, at Corinth, Miss., in furtherance of this project.

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INDIAN NOTES.

—Are the Indians dying out? Major S. N. Clark, of the Bureau of Education, has compiled these various estimates of their population as follows:

1789—Estimate of Secretary of War 76,000 1790-91—Estimate of Gilbert Imlay 60,000 1820—Report of Morse on Indian Affairs 471,036 1825—Report of the Secretary of War 129,366 1829—Report of the Secretary of War 312,930 1834—Report of the Secretary of War 312,610 1836—Report of Superintendent Indian Affairs 253,464 1837—Report of Superintendent Indian Affairs 302,498 1850—Report of H. R. Schoolcraft 388,229 1853—Report of United States Census of 1850 400,764 1855—Report of Indian Office 314,622 1857—Report of H. R. Schoolcraft 379,264 1860—Report of Indian Office 254,300 1865—Report of Indian Office 294,574 1870—Report of United States Census 313,712 1870—Report of Indian Office 313,371 1875—Report of Indian Office 305,068 1876—Report of Indian Office 291,882

These figures are, however, in part conjectural, and all based upon varying data, and limited by varying boundaries. They do not show any constant movement of increase or decrease.

In regard to particular tribes, the Cherokees, since 1809, notwithstanding the depressing influences of removal, and loss by civil war, have increased from 12,395 to 21,072. The Seminoles have, since 1870, increased from 2,638 to 3,000. The Iroquois, 100 years ago numbering about 11,500, are now 13,668. Within forty years the Sioux are computed to have increased from 25,000 to 40,000.

A comparison of births and deaths for the last three years has been made, but it is too incomplete to be the basis of any conclusions.

Major Clark says, in summing up, that several years of study have convinced him that the usual theory that the Indian population is destined to decline and finally disappear, as a result of contact with white civilization, must be greatly modified—probably abandoned altogether.

—Missionaries Riggs and Williamson substantially agree that (1) the Indians, in their wild state, increase quite rapidly, unless disturbed by some violent agent, as war, famine, or pestilence; (2) the first effect of a change to civilized life is to diminish their numbers; (3) the final effect, however, is to a recovery and more rapid growth, even, than in their former state.

—From the best official estimates, there are in the country about 275,000 Indians. Of this number, 56,630, or only about one-fifth, receive subsistence from the government. Perhaps a majority of the whole number are self-sustaining. The tribes in the Indian Territory are said to compare favorably in moral, social and material condition with many of the white communities in the neighboring States. Schools, courts, church organizations and local legislatures are among their cherished institutions.

—The only Congregational Church in Indian Territory was dedicated Sunday, December 2d. Its site is in the town of Caddo, on the line of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad. Having been begun in the year 1876, it is known as the “Centennial Church.”

—Official statistics lately published show that, for the past forty years, the military operations against the Indians by the United States have cost $12,000,000, on an average, each year. The wild Apaches, 10,000 in number, cost the government nearly $2,000,000 annually for the pay of the army that takes care of them; while the 60,000 Cherokees, who are civilized and quiet, cost us almost nothing.

—The governor and delegates of the Chickasaw nation, and the delegates of the Choctaw nation, have united in a memorial to the Senate, remonstrating against the passage of the bill to enable Indians to become citizens. They say:

We have no objection to the measure in so far as it permits citizens of our nations to become citizens of the United States, if upon such change of citizenship they leave our jurisdiction, and surrender all rights growing out of and depending upon the tribal relation, retaining, however, all their separate property. But this bill expressly provides that, after one of our citizens becomes a citizen of the United States, he shall retain all his rights and interests in the lands, claims, annuities, funds, and other property of our nations or tribes. The result of these provisions is that after he ceases to be a citizen of the Choctaw or Chickasaw nation, he retains every right which he had while a citizen. The proposed statute will violate the treaty, and confer on citizens of the United States, who are not citizens of the Chickasaw nation, a part of a large fund which the United States have covenanted shall be the property of the Chickasaw nation. Certainly we could not be expected to consent that a treaty stipulation of such great importance to us should be annulled by an act of Congress.

—A bill to allow the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory to elect a delegate to Congress has been introduced in the House, and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. A sub-committee has been appointed to consider and report upon the bill. Their report is favorable, and will be made to the committee on the re-assembling of Congress. It will no doubt be adopted. It provides that a delegate, who shall be a member of some one of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, or Chickasaw tribes, shall be chosen at a general election, to be held under the supervision and direction of the Secretary of the Interior, and shall have all the rights, privileges and emoluments of a delegate from any of the regularly organized Territories. The report shows that it costs the natives upward of $60,000 yearly to send delegates here. Under the present system each tribe now sends from two to five or six delegates, at an expense of about six dollars a day each. One delegate for all, who shall have the privilege of the floor of Congress, would give the tribes much more influence with the government.

—The new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Hayt, took the oath of office Dec. 18th, and received his commission.

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CHINESE NOTES.

—No one seems to fear lest the Chinaman will die out. To allay apprehensions as to their over-swarming, Prof. S. Wells Williams, LL.D., for forty years an honored resident in the Flowery Kingdom, says:

Some fear that this country will be swamped altogether by this flood of aliens, but the 125,000 or so of Chinese now in this land, with few exceptions, all came from a small portion, two prefectures, of Kwangtung province. There is no probability of other parts of the empire joining in this emigration, for several reasons, one of which is the great differences in their dialects.

—Congressman Shelley, of Alabama, has introduced into the House a bill providing that, after January, 1879, all Chinamen coming here (except officially) _from any country_ shall be taxed $250 per capita, or serve five years in the penitentiary!

—Over 300 Chinese have been received as members of the Protestant churches of California, and in addition there are 700 Chinamen in Christian associations for learning Christian doctrine; 750 Chinese attend the mission schools of San Francisco, and over 1,000 go to the Sunday-schools.

—Representative Page, in a letter to the President of the United States, writes:

I desire still further to state, that in California there is no division of opinion as to the evils of Chinese immigration, and I, therefore, on behalf of the people of that State, very respectfully suggest that you make this matter the subject of a special message to Congress when it convenes in January next.

—On the other hand, Mr. D. O. Miles, formerly of the Bank of California, says:

There are about 60,000 Chinese in California, and I do not know what we could do without them. They are industrious and peaceable, generally speaking, and it would be impossible readily to supply our manufactories with labor, but for the Chinese. Their wages—the wages of the laborers, I mean—average $1 a day. In Virginia City white labor costs as much as $2.50 a day. We need whatever Chinese labor we have in California. It might be well for Congress to check temporarily the flow of Chinese immigration by levying a tax upon each immigrant. But those who are now on our shores are needed, and they should be treated with humanity, and protected from the persecution of the rougher element of society. The Chinese, generally speaking, are temperate, exceedingly industrious and economical.

—The Attorney-General, by direction of the President, has given considerable attention to the question of protecting the Chinese in California. The Attorney-General finds that there is no authority for the United States to interfere unless the State should ask for aid, and is of opinion that this matter should be referred to Congress, and a special message from the President on the subject has been talked of. The President, and all members of his Cabinet, are anxious to use every means which they can constitutionally command to prevent the threatened outbreak. The class of people engaged in the attempt to create disorder is chiefly confined to the foreign laboring element, aided by roughs and the lower classes of San Francisco population. The fact that the Chinese have completely armed themselves has held the roughs in check; but matters are believed to be in a much worse condition than has been reported, and news at any time of horrible scenes in San Francisco would not create surprise in Washington.

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NEW APPOINTMENTS.

1877-1878.

The following list presents the names and post-office addresses of those who are under appointment in the Churches, Institutions and Schools, aided by the American Missionary Association, among the Freedmen in the South, the Chinese on the Pacific Coast, the Indians, and the Negroes in Western Africa. The Theological Department of Howard University is supported jointly by the Presbytery of Washington and the A. M. A. The Berea College and Hampton Institute are under the care of their own Boards of Trustees, but being either founded or fostered in the past by this Association, and representing the general work in which it is engaged, their teachers are included in this list.

THE SOUTHERN FIELD.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

HOWARD UNIVERSITY. _Theological Department._ Rev. W. W. Patton, D.D., Washington, D. C. Rev. Lorenzo Westcott, Washington, D. C. Rev. Alexander Pitzer, D.D., Washington, D. C. Rev. John G. Butler, D.D., Washington, D. C.

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VIRGINIA.

HAMPTON. _Minister._ Rev. Richard Tolman, Hampton, Va. NORMAL AND AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE. _Instructors and Managers._ Gen. S. C. Armstrong, Hampton, Va. Gen. J. F. B. Marshall, Hampton, Va. Mr. Albert Howe, Hampton, Va. Mr. M. B. Crowell, Hampton, Va. Mr. J. B. H. Goff, Hampton, Va. Lt. S. R. Jones, Hampton, Va. Miss Ann M. Hobbs, Hampton, Va. Miss Charlotte L. Mackie, Newburgh, N. Y. Miss Susan B. Harrold, Franklin, Mass. Miss Mary F. Mackie, Newburgh, N. Y. Miss Nathalie Lord, Portland, Me. Miss Isabel B. Eustis, Springfield, Mass. Miss Helen W. Ludlow, New York City. Mrs. Sophia Buck, Orange, N. J. Miss Eleanor W. Collingwood, Hampton, Va. Miss Eunice C. Dixon, Hampton, Va. Miss Mary A. Coe, Boston, Mass. Miss Elizabeth P. Hyde, Brooklyn, N. Y. Miss Margaret W. Buck, Hampton, Va. Miss Jeannie I. Hincks, Hampton, Va Miss Carrie Watson, Hampton, Va Miss Emily Kimball, Hampton, Va Mr. Albert H. Tolman, Hampton, Va Mr. Charles G. Buck, Hampton, Va Mr. Thomas T. Brice, Hampton, Va Mr. James C. Robbins, Hampton, Va Mr. Frank D. Banks, Hampton, Va Mr. John E. Fuller, Hampton, Va

CARRSVILLE. _Teacher._ Miss M. A. Andrus, Riceville, Pa.