Chapter 4

Still, the work done by the Society and by all other agencies--State and denominational--has not kept pace with the growth of population, and official statistics in some portions of the South show that the percentage of illiteracy is steadily increasing. In Louisiana, for instance, in the last eight years--_i.e._, from 1880 to 1888--the number of illiterate voters increased from 102,933 to 126,938, changing the relative percentage from 52.3 per cent. who could read and write, and 47.7 per cent. who could not read and write--in 1880--to 49.2 per cent. who can read and write and 50.8 per cent. who cannot read and write in 1888. During that period, of the new white voters a majority were illiterate (7.502 : 7.609); of the new negro voters ten out of eleven were illiterate (1.588 : 16.387). Facts such as these call for great enlargement in the direction of common school education, and the number of teachers; make imperative demands upon State Governments; and lead many to appeal to the National Government for relief. They certainly justify the efforts of this Association and necessitate a great increase of the yearly contributions from churches and individuals. Measures should be taken to supplant the notion that by moderate annual contributions to ordinary schools for a few years the great task can be accomplished of lifting up a race that had been held in bondage for centuries, that started in its career of freedom in absolute destitution and that pursues its course here under many disabilities; and preparing liberators, missionaries, guides and saviours for the Dark Continent.

At the same time, it is the belief of your committee that the pressing need of the hour is the fuller development of the leading institutions already established and larger equipment for the arduous work set before the American people in our Southern States. For this end, steps should be taken towards securing their permanent endowment. While in every way the general work of reaching the masses and saving them from their illiteracy is to be pressed, the time has come to place these leading schools upon a firmer foundation and to make them more conspicuous as centres. For this they need to be amply endowed and maintained with steadily advancing educational courses, suited to giving those who are to become the leaders of a great people a broad and comprehensive education, abreast with the best in the times in which they are to do their work.

It is time to take comprehensive views and to plan for years to come. Neither this generation nor the next is to see the end of the special work to be done to fit the freedmen successfully to meet the conditions of their freedom. It has required centuries to qualify the Anglo-Saxon people for freedom; and we must expect that generation after generation will pass, even with the benefits of our experiments, experience and methods, before this people, upon whom the duties of free men have been thrust, can successfully discharge them. There is call for great patience, for far-reaching plans, for large beneficence. This question of the training of these eight millions of people is one of the most difficult set before the American people, and is worthy of the best thought of statesmen, patriots, philanthropists and Christians.

For our encouragement is the ardor of the people themselves; their readiness to receive an education; their position in a republic now far advanced; the progress already made; the growing interest in the States where they are most numerous to provide for them the means of a common school education; the army of teachers already in the field.

Believing in a wise Providence over-ruling the present and the future, we regard the problems before us, though great, not insoluble to faithful, wise and patient Christian effort along the lines upon which this Association has wrought.

We commend the wisdom and the foresight of this Association in the planting of these institutions of learning in favorable positions, its judicious economy in their management and its great skill in steadily advancing their scope and capability with insufficient resources and equipment. Upon these foundations the work should be carried on, and large and permanent universities should be reared; and we commend these to the Christian people for increased annual gifts and larger permanent endowments that the great undertaking fail not.

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REPORT ON CHURCH WORK.

BY REV. DAVID GREGG, D.D., CHAIRMAN.

The report of your Executive Committee on church work submitted for our review is very brief. There is a statement or two and a few figures. It puts things in the very best light, and uses figures in the most telling way. Its very brevity should act as a call to the churches for more means, and more men, and more prayer, and more enterprise. If the churches had done more there would have been more to tabulate.

The report reads: Four new churches organized; 972 added to Christian fellowship; 2 church edifices built; 1 church edifice enlarged; 2 parsonages built; a one-year-old church the centre of four Sunday-schools filled with scholars who never before attended religious instruction, and ten churches blessed with a revival of religion.

Four new churches organized! Only four? And yet the territory awaiting churches holds twelve States, and each State is an empire. Only four? And yet the darkest spot in the republic is crying for the light of the Gospel. Only four? And yet three-fourths of the illiteracy of the whole nation must be grappled with. Four new churches versus ten millions of immortal souls! What are these among so many? This is the question which the report of the American Missionary Association for 1888 sends through the length and breadth of American Congregationalism.

To keep us in cheer the Executive Committee puts these facts by the side of the four new churches:

First--"In each school" (and there are seventy-six schools) "we have an incipient church." This predicts a golden future. "Each school is a torch of Christ in a dark place." This means advancing illumination.

Second--There are one hundred and thirty-two old churches fully organized and completely vitalized. All of these are centred at strategic points.

Third--There is a living army of 8,452 adults, and of 17,114 children carrying the banner of the Lord. These give themselves, and give their substance, to the cause of Christ, and to the good of their fellowmen, in a way worthy of emulation.

Fourth--These churches and this army are under, and are led by pastors who are for the most part the children of this Association. This means thorough equipment, and discipline, and effectiveness, and aggressive work.

When we look at what has been done in the line of church work in our vast field, and compare it with our limited resources, we are satisfied and speak the praises of the noble men and women in the field and in the office. We have garnered fruit grandly proportionated to the planting. But when we look at the work which has been done and contrast it with what remains to be done, we are far from being satisfied. Instinctively we are impelled to repeat the call of the prophet in the hearing of the Church of Christ: "Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." Proportioning the means used to the products reaped, we look forward with hope, expecting a future that shall correspond with the promises of God. The statistics in this department of the Association's labors may look like "Holy Trifles;" and comparatively they are "Holy Trifles;" but so is the "handful of corn" in the Messianic psalm, which depicts the future growth of Christendom. The things tabulated in these statistics are the "handful of corn" in our Southland, but as we contemplate them, we may use the old, old song of the church and sing ourselves into an ecstasy: "There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like the cedars on Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth. His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him and all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen."

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REPORT ON MOUNTAIN WORK.

BY REV. G.S. BURROUGHS, CHAIRMAN.

Your committee, to whom those portions of the General Survey relating to the work of the Association among the mountain whites has been referred, are strongly convinced that this work is one of great and growing importance. We rejoice in the evidence that such is also the conviction of the management of the Association.

The territory occupied by these mountain people, consisting of between three and four hundred counties, covers an area twice the size of New England. Its population is equal to that of New England, excepting Massachusetts. Its resources, in mineral deposits and in valuable timber, are varied and rich. It is being rapidly opened up to trade, and thus indirectly to civilization. Its inhabitants are ready to welcome outside influences, and they are in large degree susceptible of those that are good. These facts, we believe, cannot receive too careful attention.

We are deeply impressed with the great destitution of these people as regards intellectual, moral and spiritual things. Poor in the extreme as far as their physical wants are concerned, they are still poorer in reference to the wants of their minds and souls. So great is their poverty in these particulars, that, in large measure, they do not, until approached in Christian kindness, realize it. They are without education, and without true religion; without schools and without churches. Practically, they do not know the Sabbath; they are in utter want and ignorance of those ordinary means of grace which are as familiar to us as the sunshine and the rain. The violence and social confusion which are to be expected under these circumstances are prevalent.

Your committee rejoice that the day of small things, in our work in this field, is already becoming the day of larger things, with a wide outlook into a permanent and brighter future. In two normal schools, two academies, five common schools and twenty churches the few loaves and fishes seem to be at hand. "But what are they among so many?" We are grateful for the enlargement which the past year has disclosed, for the new church and school building, find the rapidly advancing dormitory and boarding hall at Pleasant Hill, Tenn., and for the slightly increased accommodations in the Grand View Normal Institute, but we see clearly that enlargement only necessitates greater enlargement. The meagreness of the supply renders the destitution more manifest. The little which has been done, and well done, only gives louder voice to the demand _to do_.

One of the most encouraging features of the work, and one which we believe should be particularly emphasized, is the possibility of its comparatively speedy self-support, if it be pushed forward rapidly. It is a work which must be done to-day, and it can be done because these people, even in their poverty, will do their part. This is abundantly shown, not only by their disposition regarding it, but also by their deeds in its behalf.

The influence of the work among the mountain whites upon the general Southern work of the Association should be carefully recognized. Here is a vantage point which can be carried, and which must be carried for the success of our great campaign in the South. To neglect this present duty is to be culpable regarding the future of the Association's activity. Problems of caste and questions bound up with them, can, at least in part, be settled in this field. Those needed concrete illustrations, which will tend most powerfully toward their general settlement, can here be furnished. We do not believe that the conquest of the West is of more importance to our Home Mission work than is the conquest of these Southern highlands to that of the A.M.A. It is our opinion, therefore, that there should be in this department steady and rapid advance, and that it should no longer be tided along.

We fear that the facts regarding the peculiar character of this mountain work are not sufficiently known, and that its bearing upon the general work of the Association is not adequately realized.

We feel that a special examination of this field may wisely be commended to those who would devise liberal things with a view to special gifts for institutions of learning. The church and the school, the missionary and the teacher must go together into this territory. Who will place a Christian college among the mountain whites?

We give thanks for the spared life of a trusty and consecrated worker in this field. With the earnest prayer for means to send and employ them, let there be joined the petition for many workers possessed of a like spirit of earnestness and fidelity.

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REPORT ON INDIAN WORK.

BY S.B. CAPEN, ESQ., CHAIRMAN.

It is not the intention of your committee to spend more than a moment of the time allotted to it in speaking of the details of the work of this Association among the Indian tribes.

It is a pleasure to note in the Executive Committee's report that it is in the fullest sympathy with the increased and increasing interest in the solution of our Indian problem. It has more scholars under its care than ever before, and is steadily increasing its buildings and its facilities for doing its work. The four new stations provided for at the Northfield gathering call especially for our gratitude. But why enlarge upon these particulars?

The work of this Association has been spread before the Christian world in so many reports that all know of its great success. Its preachers and teachers, who have given their lives to this work with such courage and devotion, are also known, and it only needs to be said in a word, that the year that has closed and whose review is now being taken, has been one of great blessing and power. We approve of what it has done and we commend it for the future without reserve.

We would rather occupy our time, if we may, in looking at this whole Indian question, hoping that we may arouse a more universal interest, and cause, thereby, to flow into the treasury of this Society the funds which shall enable it to enlarge and broaden its work and hasten the complete Christianizing of our Indian tribes.

For let it be said while I have your freshest attention, that it is the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not education or civilization, that is to solve this problem; and all I have to say is to lead up to this thought. Wherever modern civilization without religion has touched the barbarian it has been to curse him.

The blood of every American ought to tingle at the thought of the foul stain upon our national honor because of the treatment the Indian has received.

General Sherman has told us that we have made more than one thousand treaties with him, but the United States Government has never kept one of these treaties, if there was anything to be made by breaking it; and the Indian has never broken one, unless he has first had an excuse in some cruel wrong from the white man. No wonder that the Sioux have hesitated to sign their treaty. Do you not blush at one of the reasons for this hesitation? Because they doubt whether we can be trusted. This boasted American Republic is to them a nation of liars.

I am glad to speak for these men who have been, so cruelly wronged. Here before we had any rights, they have been steadily driven back before our civilization as it has advanced from the Atlantic and Pacific shores. While our ears have ever been open to the cry of distress the world over, the silent Indian moan has passed, too often unheeded. We have made him a prisoner upon the reservation, and when we have wanted his land we have taken it and put him on some we did not want just then. His appeal, when in suffering and distress, has been stifled by those who can make the most money out of him as he is; and if hungry and in desperation he leaves his reservation, we shoot him. We have put him in the control of an agent, whose authority is as absolute as the Czar's. We have kept from him the motive to be different and he has been literally a man without a country and without a hope. Multitudes of people say, "Oh, yes, the Indian has been wronged," but it makes very little impression upon them. It is much the same feeling that the worldly man has who acknowledges, in a general way, that he is a sinner, but it does not touch him sufficiently to lead him to act. Will you bear with me in giving some facts, with the hope that all may feel that this is not a merely sentimental, indefinite sort of a subject for philanthropists and "cranks," and a few women, but one in which each of us has some personal responsibility. He is your brother and mine, in need, and we owe him a duty. Some years ago Bishop Whipple went to Washington pleading in vain for the Indians in Minnesota. After some days' delay the Secretary of War said to a friend, "What does the Bishop want? If he comes to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, tell him we all know it. Tell him also--and this is why I recall this fact, more true than when it was first spoken--tell him also that the United States never cures a wrong until the people demand it; and when the hearts of the people are reached the Indian will be saved." Then let us try to arouse the people to demand it.

And I beg you to notice, that the wrongs are not of the past, but of the present. Those who say otherwise have either not examined the facts or else they are deceived. While there has been much progress made since General Grant's administration, the machinery of our Indian affairs in its last analysis seems to be largely yet a scheme to plunder the Indian at every point. Its mechanism is so complicated that there are comparatively few who understand the wrong, and these seem almost powerless. While there are many men in the Government employ of the best intentions, there is always a "wicked partner" who contrives, somehow, to rob the Indian.

He is wronged: (1) In his person. Let me illustrate. Go with me to Nebraska. An Indian, upon one of our reservations, injured his knee slightly. There was a physician who was paid a good salary by the Government, but when asked to visit this man he refused to go. The poor sufferer grew worse and worse, till the limb became rotten and decayed: his cries could be heard far and near in the still air, yet the physician heeded not. A friend was asked to take a hatchet and chop off the limb. In agony he died, the physician never having once visited him. That was a brother of yours in America. A short time ago, in Southern California, lived an Indian in comfort, upon a lot of ten acres upon which he had paid taxes for years. The land about him was sold, but no mention was made of his lot, as his lawyers told him it was not necessary and the purchasers promised he should never be disturbed. Within a few months, however, a suit was brought for his ejectment, and in the midst of the rainy season, this old man of 80, his wife and another woman of nearly the same age, were put out of their home. They were thrust with great cruelty into a wagon, left by the roadside without shelter and without any food, except parched corn, for eight days. The wife died of pneumonia, and the old man is a homeless wanderer. Why this cruelty? Because there was a spring of water on his land which the white man wanted. This was in America.

2. In his property. Let me illustrate again. In North Dakota one of the tribes asked that they might have some barns. The request was granted: the lumber, valued at $3,000, was bought in Minneapolis, and the freight charges, which ought to be about $1,500, were $23,000. A little clerk in Washington that belongs to the "ring" "fixed it" in this way.

In the Indian Territory an Indian worked hard all summer, and in the fall carried his grain to market, delivered it to an elevator, and than the owner turned around and refused to pay him, and the poor man had to go home without one cent. It was the worst kind of robbery. If that man had been a German, or Swede, or a howling Anarchist of any nation under the heavens, we would have protected him, but an Indian has no rights in America.

A man who has been the private clerk of one of our highest Government officials was appointed an Indian Agent. The Indians on that reservation were having their lumber taken from them at a price much less than its value, and notwithstanding their protests, it went on, the Agent refusing to listen. They complained then at Washington, and the Government appointed one of the most corrupt of men as an inspector. When he visited the reservation he asked for the witnesses at once. They asked for a reasonable time to get them together. This was refused and they asked for two days, and when this was denied they asked for one. In their dilemma and haste they got one Indian near-by to testify. The Agent himself broke down this man's testimony, because he had been at fault two or three years before, in a way which did not affect, in the slightest degree, his statement now, and the inspector at once returned to Washington and decided against the Indians! It was a fraud and a farce.

3. In the helpless condition in which we have left him, he has a new wrong now, because when he votes he is of political importance. If you will read "Lend A Hand," you will find an illustration where the Indians in North Carolina had become citizens and had votes, and because those votes were cast against the powers that be, they were willing to go all lengths, even to closing the schools, in order to accomplish their purposes.

And this is to be more and more a vital question, as more and more they are becoming citizens. We talk about "dirty politics!" Is it not a proper name, when, in order to get votes, schools are to be closed and children left in ignorance?

4. There is no earnestness of purpose in a majority of the Government officials to protect him from wrong. To show exactly what I mean; recently, in Southern California a lot of land grabbers took from the Indians their land. When private individuals ascertained the facts, complaint was made and an order was issued for their removal. The time fixed was March 1st. On July 1st inquiry was made, and the agent said the order had been carried out. But individual examination showed the settlers to be there still, and five saloons open in defiance of law.

In a similar way recently, the representative of one of our philanthropic societies had arrested an agent who had committed a crime. It was so clear a case that he was found guilty at once. Let us hear this travesty of justice. The law required a fine and imprisonment both. The fine was placed by the Judge at twenty-five cents, which the Judge paid himself. The term of the imprisonment he made one day, and told the Sheriff to allow the jail, in this case, to be the agent's own comfortable home. Shall we be obliged to constitute Law and Order Leagues to see that the laws of the United States are executed?

This is the awful background as the starting point for this discussion. Some people question whether or not there is a personal devil. If any man would study the Indian question he would be convinced there was not one only, but a whole legion of them.