Christian Indians

“ We commend the whole report to the thoughtful consideration of those who yet doubt the capacity of either the negro or Indian for Christian civilization:
“The Indian problem which the people of the United States have so long been trying to solve may be briefly stated thus: Shall we be able to teach the Indians to surrender their lands and their houses to us, when we want them, without fighting? It is a singular fact that the American people require more Christian charity from the Indians than they themselves are ready to give.” ”

“ There are 260,000 Indians in this country. Compared with our great fields in the South, this is small. But there is an emphasis on this work which is not made by figures. Those who were native to this land have been made foreigners. Those who were the first to receive missionary work here, and who responded as readily as any heathen people ever did, are still largely pagans. While one Christian has been telling the Indians the story of the gospel, another calling himself a Christian has been shooting them. They have not yet had a full chance to learn what Christianity is. ”

“ I charge you to remember that your mission gives repeated emphasis to the faith of the Christian church in the redeemability of the Indian. Lack of faith in this truth has been the cause of much of the cruel indifference on the part of many good people—even Christian people—to the wrongs that Indians have suffered, and has occasioned lack of enthusiasm in the prosecution of Indian missions. It has paralyzed endeavor, and [203] prepared the way for the indulgence of enmity. But notice this: No body of Christians have ever put themselves on record as not believing in the Indian’s redeemability. ”

“ It is now generally conceded, by those best acquainted with the peculiarities of the Indian character, that however powerful the gospel may be, in itself, to melt and subdue the savage heart, it is indispensable, if we would secure the fruits of our missionary labours, to connect the blessings of civilization with all our Christian efforts. And we rejoice to learn, that among many of the Indian tribes the civilizing process is going on, and keeping pace with their spiritual advancement. They are turning their attention more and more to agriculture, and the various arts of civilized life. ”

“ In spite of the change of agents four times in less than four years, and in spite of all endeavors to break down Christian influences here, these Indians have steadily progressed. They are cultivating more land and doing it more thoroughly, showing more interest in schools, and a stronger desire to adopt civilized habits, one young man going so far as to come to me with the request, “Father, they say you are skilful; can you not make my shoes squeak for me? They don’t squeak like white people’s shoes.” ”

“ The history of the North American Indians is a sad story of wrongs. You may begin far back in the days of our Puritan fathers, when Christian men marched to the music of a fife and drum, with the head of King Philip on a pole, and then after prayer, decided that the sins of the father ought to be visited on the children, and therefore sold his son as a slave to Bermuda ”

“ The Indians are heathen folk and will often come to the Christian life fettered by old heathen ideas, and some may stumble and fall; they did in St. Paul's time; but I can say that some of the noblest instances of the power of religion I have ever known have been among these poor red men. I can recall death-beds where an Indian looked up in my face and said, "The Great Spirit has called me to go on the last journey. ”

“ Indians have been reached by the gospel, and that, too, in a very remarkable degree. The “five civilized tribes,” as they are called, of the Indian Territory, are practically a Christian people; 81,621 Indians wear citizens’ dress wholly, and 59,695 wear citizens’ dress in part; 43,423 Indians labor in civilized pursuits, and of this number 9,612 are farmers; 21,232 houses are occupied by 40,000 Indians as dwellings ”

“ Is it strange that these Indians do not accept more readily our Christian theories, when they come into constant contact with our most unchristian practice? The Indian language is used in saloons and gambling hells and brothels to lead these poor, heathen people to physical and moral perdition, but is forbidden by Government to be used in mission schools to lead them to the Lord Jesus {7} Christ! We ought to plant a mission for the Indians and the colored people at Fort Smith this year. ”

“ Much significancy is added to this question by the recent tables of Major Clark, showing that the Indians are not decreasing in number. They are here, and mean to stay. We cannot exterminate them, and we ought, as a Christian people, to face manfully the other and grander alternative of making them good citizens and sharers in the blessings of the Gospel. ”

“ Nor have the Christian Missionaries acted towards the unfortunate red men as became their professions of peace and philanthropy. This is evident from the letter written by Red Jacket, an Indian chief, who was well acquainted with the conduct of the missionaries, and whose evidence is more worthy of credit than the ex parte [64] statements of these propagators of the gospel. The conduct of the whites towards the Indians, the rapacity with which they have treated them, and the manner in which they have broken all their promises, presents a powerful barrier to the progress of Indian civilization. ”

“ The Indians clung to the Fathers like little children to their parents, and from the vices of paganism, under a healthy and kind rule drawn for them by the wise Fathers, christian virtues took a deep root in at least a great many of these poor "children of the soil" and so great was the care exercised by the Fathers that nightly they would make a round of the rooms allotted to every christian and neophyte Indian family to see that order and decency reigned in each group ”

“ Of course the mere fact of the Indians being brought into contact with white people would lead them into temptations from which, in their wild wandering state, they had been comparatively free. It has been said even by white travellers that they have found the pagan Indiana of the North more honest and trustworthy than those in a semi-civilized and nominally Christian state. ”

“ Their religious traditions have become confused; the instruction spread by the Canadian Jesuits has mixed foreign ideas with the inborn ideas of the natives: through their rude fables, one sees the Christian beliefs disfigured; the majority of the savages wear crosses by way of ornaments, and the Protestant traders sell them what the Catholic missionaries give them. Let us say at once, to the honour of our country and to the glory of our religion, that the Indians had become greatly attached to us; that they never cease to regret us ”

“ As in many cases the nature of the Indian was too elementary to be moved at first by the lessons and exhortations of suffering and self-denial of Our Saviour, and the bridling of the human passions; in many instances the Fathers would first win the Indians' confidence by giving them blankets, beads and such things as attracted them, then by degrees unfolded the tenets of religion and mysteries of faith, to which in most cases these erstwhile savages clung with firmness and gave many edifying signs of true and sincere christianity. ”

“ But, while the Mormons have certainly been successful in maintaining good terms with the natives of the plains, it is not so certain that their influence upon the Indians has been advantageous to the government, or to the white settlers not of the church. It clearly has been for their interest to attach the natives to themselves rather than to the government ”

“ Much of the change of opinion which has supervened, within the last century, may be fairly attributable to the intercourse of the Indians with white men, and in some situations, to the gradual and almost imperceptible influence of Christianity on their external manners and customs. ”

“ Another charge of great magnitude is brought against our friends in the west of "keeping up a constant communication with the Indian tribes on our frontier, with declaring, even from the pulpit, that the Indians are a part of God's chosen people, and are destined, by heaven, to inherit this land, in common with themselves." ”

“ And though they are still amongst us, picturesque figures which we value chiefly as relics of a gaily-coloured past, the Indians are the mystery of our continent. They speak to us, they smile at us, they sit within our churches and use our tongue, but for all that they remain forever strangers. What pagan beliefs vibrating through the chain of unrecorded ancestry, what hates, loves, aspirations and bitter griefs, separate from our comprehension as the poles, thrill out of the darkness of yesterday and die unspoken, unformed, beneath those calm, bronze brows? ”

“ They will be made to work at these white men’s tasks; give up their own wild, free life in the open country; give up their old customs; give up their own god, even, to pray to the God of their masters. And thus will it be for many years, until the Indians disappear forever ”

“ The powerful missionary organizations, comprising as they do, hundreds of earnest workers, will accomplish much more for “Indian uplift” if they devote their energies to “pagan Whites” as well as to the pagan Indians. The worst people I have met had white, and not red skins. These men swarm about all Indian communities. ”

“ But the characteristics of the North American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the contradictory traits of Indian character—cruelty and kindness, shyness and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, and suffering oppression without complaint; delighting as much as their northern brethren in tawdry exhibitions, in traditions of the marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of their race. ”

“ What good end can be answered by teaching the North American Indians a religion which has ever been followed by destruction, pillage, rapacity and bloodshed, persecution for opinion, and a long catalogue of evils? and which, however good it may be in some of its precepts, is nevertheless utterly unable to restrain the avarice and cruelty of its followers. ”

“ The Indians are as bigotted to their religion as the Mahometans are to their Koran, the Hindoos to their Shaster, the Chinese to Confucius, the Romans to their Saints and Angels, or the Jews to Moses and the Prophets. It is a principle of religion, at bottom, which inspires the Indians with such an invincible aversion both to civilization and Christianity. The same principle has excited their perpetual hostilities against the colonists and the independent Americans. ”

“ Shortly afterwards he went to some of the inhabitants, and said to them. When white man’s child die—Indian man be sorry—he help bury him—when my child die—no one speak to me—I make his grave alone—I can’t no live here.—He gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. ”

“ I fear that a preference of this nature will cause our friends--the Indians--to be neglected, if not forgotten. As Providence seems, in so many ways, to be against the Indians, I often fear that no considerable portion of them are ever to enjoy the blessings of civilization and Christianity. ”

“ Perhaps nothing has more effectually defeated the endeavors for Christianizing the Indians. It seems to have done more, — to have sunk their spirits, led them to intemperance, and extirpated the whole race.”
Wilson, the pastor of the Boston Church, writing to the Missionary Society in England, refers to the visit to the town, in 1651, of “Humanequim, a grave and solemn man,” ordained by Mayhew as pastor of an Indian church in Martha's Vineyard. ”

“ The great difficulty of converting the Indians to christianity does not arise from their attachment to their own religion, where they have any, so much as from certain habits which they seem to have imbibed with the very milk of their mothers. ”

“ Everything seems to be coming to a focus in regard to our work for the Indians. Never has the time been so auspicious as it is to-day. Never have there been so many things combining to show to us that if we are to improve the opportunity God gives us to care for the Indian—this man who held this land before we came to it and from whom we have taken our possession—we must do [384] it to-day. ”

“ There is a question which has been raised by almost every traveller in America, and that is—from whom are the American Indians descended? and I think, from the many works I have consulted, that the general opinion is, that they are descended from the lost tribes of Israel. We have never discovered any other nation of savages, if we may apply such a term to the American Indians, who have not been idolators; the American Indian is the only one who worships the one living God. ”

“ Stories of massacre and one-sided testimony, when the Indian could not have a hearing, have led many Christians by their opposition to Indian missions, unwittingly to array themselves against the gospel. They did not think, in taking up the cry, “There is no good Indian but a dead Indian,” “The Indian cannot be civilized,” “The Indian should be exterminated,” and other such falsehoods, that they were denying the Christian faith and practically proclaiming that there was no salvation for themselves nor for anyone else ”