Chapter IV: Part 4

The Mendians are a numerous people, occupying a belt of territory of some hundred miles upon the sea, and reaching far back into the interior, all of which region is drained by the Sherbro river, near the mouth of which is located our Good Hope station. Our mission was established among them many years before those of other societies, and its work is far ahead of that of the Wesleyans and Church of England, and if these should greatly increase their efforts there would still be room for us.

By the assiduous labor of Mr. Claflin, the language of the Mendi people has been reduced to writing, an elementary grammar and small vocabulary have been published, and portions of the New Testament translated, so that the acquisition of the native tongue is comparatively easy.

The land and buildings of the mission constitute a valuable property; the Good Hope station, with its regular steamboat communication with Freetown, furnishes a needed base of operations, and the sawmill at Avery will provide lumber for future buildings.

The fact that this mission is right in the heart of the old slave grounds, ought to furnish inspiration for its support. Between it and Freetown on the Bomana Islands were the old slave pens of the infamous and afterward illustrious John Newton. Kaw Mendi is supposed to be the centre of the region from which the Amistad captives were dragged from their homes to be sold into slavery, and is the point at which they settled after their return from these Connecticut shores, through what might be called a series of special providences. At Kaw Mendi it was my privilege to see and converse with two surviving members of that slave cargo. Special interest in such a field as this is something more than mere sentiment. It is the breath of the God of Love sweeping across the chords of the soul.

Then too, in addition to the name and history of the mission, its valuable property, its large field, its written language, and its providential beginning, it has living material that can be utilized in its future extension. The station at Debia, where the lamented Barnabas Root labored for a time, is well carried on by a native educated at the mission; and another efficient helper of the same training is employed at Good Hope. And there are several traders and carpenters, mission-educated, who could render good service in penetrating the interior.

The great call at present is for two or three men of ability and culture, of broad views, of practical sense, of considerable business experience, and of deep consecration, who are ready to enlist for a long term of service, and take the lead in this enterprise.

The foundations have been laid, the material for the structure is at hand and the work is waiting for a wise master-builder.

Let a disciple of the Lord see those people there in their degradation, superstition, and poverty, and then let him visit some of our communities in the South, and see those of the same color, features, and form, living in comfortable houses, clad in decent garments, cultivating large fields of their own, and supporting the school and the church, and let him realize that these pictures present the same race and perhaps the same tribe of people, and that he can be instrumental under Providence, even in an ordinary life-time, in bringing about a repetition of this wonderful transformation, and he ought to need no stronger inspiration.

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THE CALL TO THE ASSOCIATION.

REV. H. M. LADD, WALTON, N. Y.

One need not be a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, to be able to predict that the world’s great enterprises of the next century will take hold upon Africa. Already the earnest gaze of the civilized world is fixed upon that opening continent. The spirit of discovery and of commerce have pushed their way into the very heart of its mysterious jungles. Its borders are all alive with the enterprise of nations. Vast preparations are making to open up its wonderful resources, and to find a mart for the products of civilized industry. Truly, as the great French poet has said, “In the nineteenth century the white has made a man out of the black. In the twentieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa.”

The great question is, Shall Christianity keep abreast of this advancing host? Shall the seeds of the Gospel of light be sown broadcast through this dark continent, before the tramping feet of commerce have trodden down its soil into the hardened footpaths of sin? The call of God is emphatic. He has opened a door which no man can shut. That call rests in a peculiar manner upon this Association. It has not been optional with you whether you should enter Africa. The hand of God, manifested in the peculiar circumstances attending the Amistad capture, sent you to Africa. That hand has kept you there; and to-day you are not seeking for yourselves a way up the Nile and into the heart of Central Africa; you are invited there, you are urged there, you are sent there. It will be a great undertaking to go, but it will be a greater mistake not to go. The generous offer of Mr. Arthington, the importance of the field, its unoccupied condition, its easy accessibility, the pledge of needed funds, the fact that it lies right in the very heart of that region cursed by the slave-trade not yet abolished, make it obligatory upon this Association to accept the responsibility and speed forward the work.

But this is not all. Not only do we hear the call of God resting in a peculiar manner upon this Association, heard especially in its earlier and later history, but this Association is peculiarly fitted for the work. It holds in its hands, as the gift of God, a peculiar power. We in this country are just beginning to spell out the true lessons, the real meaning of slavery on our soil. This Association, more than any other under God, has been our teacher. It has shown us what the educated black man, with even his limited facilities, can do; and now it has grasped, and proposes to carry out, a distinctive idea—negroes for negro land. Mr. President, is it too much to say, that, in this distinctive idea, so satisfactorily demonstrated already in the history of African missions, we recognize the star of hope for Africa? Is it not the solution of many a difficulty? We need not refer here to the stimulating reflex influence of this new policy upon the Christian colored people of the South. That it will be great, no one can doubt. But what is to be the future of Africa, as it is dotted over here and there where no white man can live, with these abiding centres of a Christian civilization? What is to prevent the establishment of these points of light throughout that benighted region, until, like the stars of Heaven, they shall flood the dark continent with a galaxy of light, growing brighter and brighter until the day dawn and the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings?

To this end we are called of God to sacrifice, to labor and to pray. The wise plans which this Association have devised give every assurance of success. Not at once, perhaps. We must not expect too much at once, but in the fullness of time. To say that there are not great obstacles in the way, would be to close our eyes to the truth. There are obstacles; but what are obstacles when God is with us? He has not forgotten Africa. That continent, which holds nearly one-sixth of the human race and is equal in area to all Europe and North America combined, was surely included in that great command, “Go ye into all the world and disciple all nations.” The promises—are they not ours? Will He not be with us alway, yes, even unto the end of the world? Is not the final victory assured, even that victory that overcometh the world—our faith? Are we not taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come”? Surely God’s will is yet to be done on earth as it is in Heaven, and these nations are yet to become the nations whose God is the Lord. The day shall come. It may be ages from this time—but to the thought of God, and to the life of humanity, ages are but days—when Ethiopia shall not stretch out her hands in vain.

Let us, then, go confidently forward in the line which God has marked out for us. Let us help the Freedman of the South to fulfil his destiny. His bondage over, having safely passed through the Red Sea of blood, and been brought forward by the pillars of cloud and of fire, let us now open to him the land of his fathers, and bid him enter it to drive out the strange gods, and to proclaim the unsearchable love of our God.

Oh, then, speak unto this children of Israel that they go forward, and songs of thanksgiving shall arise from the groaning heart of Africa.

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THE INDIANS.

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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

Your Committee, to whom has been referred that part of the Report of the Executive Committee which concerns the American Indians, beg leave to report as follows:

We recognize with gratitude the work which has been accomplished by the American Missionary Association, in behalf of the Indians, in its missionary and educational departments.

We especially recognize and commend the success of the experiment of bringing youth from the tribes, and educating them at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and at Carlisle Barracks; and, at the same time, we record our decided opinion that the schools on the reservations, while the reservations are continued, must be relied upon as among the most efficient agencies for improving the condition of the Indians.

We believe that the possibility of civilizing the Indians is no longer an open question, as is proven by what has already been realized at the Fort Berthold, Lake Superior, S’Kokomish, and all the agencies.

But your Committee desire emphatically to express the opinion that all attempts to civilize and Christianize the Indians must be slow and unsatisfactory until there is a radical change in the relation between the Indians and the United States Government. The Committee, therefore, desire to reaffirm two resolutions adopted at the last Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association, as follows:

Res. 1. That the aim of this Association shall be, as far as possible, and as rapidly as possible, to secure for the Indians—

(1.) A legalized standing in the courts of the United States.

(2.) Ownership of land in severalty.

(3.) The full rights of American citizenship.

These three things, we believe, are essential, if the Indian is to be either civilized or made a Christian.

Res. 2. That to this end the members of this Association will do all in their power to make the Indian question a pressing question, until the attention of Congress is so secured, and held to it, that the legislative enactment necessary to bring about these changes be completely accomplished.

AMORY H. BRADFORD, _Chairman_.

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CAUSES OF THE MISMANAGEMENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

REV. A. H. BRADFORD, MONTCLAIR, N. J.

In the management of Indian affairs there has been little, if any, progress since colonial days.

I. The New World was supposed to belong to its discoverers, and the Indians also, because they belonged to the land. When England transferred her colonies to the new Republic, it was without any mention of the aboriginal inhabitants, or their rights. Trees and stones could not have been more completely ignored. With the single exception of the Treaty of 1803, by which Louisiana was obtained, all the Indian population was unconditionally transferred with the land. “In our first treaty of peace with Great Britain, by which the latter yielded all claims to the country as far as the Mississippi River, not a single stipulation appears in regard to the aboriginal inhabitants, and when they were received they were considered to be in the same situation,—as far as their legal status was concerned,—as the nation by which they were surrendered had placed them.” (The Indian Question, Otis, p. 51.) What was that status? The Indians were many; the colonists were weak. The stronger compelled the weaker to treat with them as sovereign tribes. The weaker became stronger. The same method was pursued then because of jealousy of the French. Treaties were made, and what the colonists could not compel by force they accomplished by intrigue. In the wars between England, Spain and France, the aborigines held the balance of power, and thus compelled their own recognition. When the war for independence came, the same was true. Both British and colonists sought their friendship, and paid for it. Thus, in a word, grew up the recognition of the sovereignty of the tribal and national organizations. Thus commenced the atrocious policy of quietly, by treaty and gifts, removing the Indians westward, as lands were required for settlement. Since the revolution, until 1871, when the treaty system was abolished, the same general plan has been followed.

In everything else, there has been progress. In the management of our Indian affairs, we are hardly a step in advance of those who, in 1753, in forming a unity of action against the savages, organized the germ of our Union of States.

II. The Reservation system seems to have had its birth in the administration of Jefferson. The object was to make conflict impossible until the natives could be civilized by isolating them. Education was to be provided, missionaries sent, protection guaranteed until they should become new men. Did the plan succeed? It had hardly been commenced before its failure was recognized. It has been continued, and the longer it has lasted the worse it has failed.

The removal to reservations was commenced in earnest under President Jackson, who advised Congress to set apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any state or territory, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they should occupy it; each tribe having the management of its own portion of the district, and being “subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier, and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may teach, and an interesting commonwealth may be raised up, destined to perpetuate the race and attest the humanity and justice of this Government.” (Otis, p. 96.) President Van Buren was not less sanguine than President Jackson. Never were golden dreams more ruthlessly shattered. As well might our representatives have attempted to tame a herd of buffaloes by corraling them at the base of Mt. Hood, as to attempt to civilize the Indians by separating them from all civilizing influences. As well might you plant a keg of nails and expect it to come up a piano, as to seclude such wild natures on the prairies, or between mountains, and expect peace and harmony to result. The policy of removal did not benefit the Indian, and has brought but temporary relief to the country, by “the elimination of a troublesome element in society.” It has not been pursued to any great extent during the last twenty-five years, but still the massing of the Indians in two or three great reservations seems to be the ideal of our legislators, an ideal which has not a single support either in reason or experience.

Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha, writing in the _Advance_, says, “The commonly accepted report is, that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe, Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more to do with such a forked tongue.”

The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a stupendous fraud and failure.

III. I turn now to the Indian treaty system of the United States, one of the most fearfully and wonderfully concocted systems that human stupidity ever devised. It was in operation until 1871. More than three hundred and sixty-six treaties with native tribes are recorded in the statute books since the adoption of the Constitution. If it is remembered that in many of these covenants several tribes were united, the actual number of treaties is multiplied to nearly one thousand. It would puzzle a philosopher to get at the true inwardness of this system. The fact is, that in colonial days, and almost ever since, the Indians have been treated with as if they were independent and sovereign States. As such, they were distinct from United States subjects, and could only be reached under the forms of international law. In the language of Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, “The President and Senate, except under the treaty-making power, cannot enter into compacts with the Indians or with foreign nations.” That is plain; and if the Indians had always been treated according to that decision, there would have been less trouble. But Congress has claimed jurisdiction over them, and while the President and Senate were making treaties, has held each member of the tribes individually amenable to such laws as it might choose to enact. The Court decides that they are to be treated with as independent tribes, and Congress proceeds to manage them as a portion of our dependent population.

Two illustrations. The Wyandotte Treaty of 1855 declared the Indians of that band to be citizens of the United States. The treaty with the Pottawatomies in 1862 placed it in the power of the President to confer citizenship upon the members of that tribe. Now, if the Indians were foreigners, they could become citizens only by naturalization, according to rules prescribed by Congress. The treaties with them imply that they are foreigners; but the courts have decided that naturalization laws do not apply to them; therefore it is evident that it is competent for Congress, and no other power, to confer upon them political rights. Yet, in the instances cited, the treaty-making power assumed these rights. The Executive and Senate abandoned, at length, the process of making citizens by simple declaration. In 1866, they compelled the Delawares who wished to become citizens, to appear in the United States District Court, and take out naturalization papers the same as aliens. They first made them foreigners in order to make them citizens. But that was of doubtful legal validity. Then, to crown this wonderful achievement, it was decided that the children of those thus naturalized were still foreigners, and must choose for themselves whether they would enter the tribal relation, or seek citizenship by naturalization. A white man who could unravel this snarl would be a genius; to an Indian, it must have been transparent as the waters of the Missouri. I give this instance to illustrate the utter confusion which has characterized the administration of our Indian affairs, and the absolute impossibility for any one to be elevated by such stupidity.

My second illustration is the Indian Territory itself. A civil government exists there, subject to Congressional dictation. Yet Congress never had anything to do with it, and never authorized it. Its powers have never been defined or controlled by statute. It was a scheme of the treaty-making power of government alone. It is an organization devised between tribes, recognized as independent, and is to take cognizance of matters “relating to the intercourse and relations of the Indian tribes and nations resident in said territory and represented, but can pass no act inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, or existing treaties; or any act affecting the tribal organizations, laws, or usages.” Each tribe is independent of this so-called legislature in all its own affairs. Each tribe has its own laws; and its own courts, both civil and criminal, are the last resort; and by treaty, Congress is denied the right to interfere with, or annul, their present tribal organizations, rights, laws, privileges and customs. Thus, if an Indian commits murder in his own tribe, he can be brought to justice only by his own tribe. “The non-treaty Indians can freely rob, murder, trade with each other, without incurring responsibility to United States authority.” (Otis, page 115.) If a white man joins an Indian tribe and commits murder, who tries him, the United States courts or the tribal? Exactly that issue has arisen. A United States marshal was condemned because he attempted to take forcible possession of a United States citizen, who was also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, and who was accused of the murder of a Cherokee squaw. Other inconsistencies might be enumerated. Treaties have guaranteed privileges that only Congress had the right to grant. When the United States court comes in conflict with the treaty, then confusion and bloodshed follow, and the absurd clumsiness of official action is hidden beneath the cry of shocking cruelties by Indians, when they are only defending rights guaranteed by solemn covenant.

Two other facts may be barely mentioned. Treaties have been repeatedly solemnized which both parties knew perfectly well could not be kept; as in the case of the covenant with the Mississippi and other bands of Chippewas in 1855, when the treaty included a thousand little details of moral conduct; or the treaties of 1855 and 1865 with the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, where all sacredly promised to take a temperance pledge.

The other fact is that, when Congress has ratified Indian treaties, the prerogative has been repeatedly asserted of changing the treaty without consultation with the Indians. In the Cheyenne Treaty of 1861, the Senate struck out article eleven, one of the most important articles, and then held the tribe to the treaty as it chose to amend it.

IV. Two changes must be wrought in our Government before these wrongs can be permanently righted.

1. The people must be aroused. In 1862, Secretary Stanton said to a committee who went to him demanding justice for the Indians: “If you come to Washington to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, and a disgrace to the nation, we all know it. This Government never reforms an evil until the people demand it. When the hearts of the people are touched, these evils will be reformed, and the Indians will be saved.” When the people demand justice to the Indian, and officers know that swift retribution will be meted to those who longer trifle with his interests, Indian Commissioners will no longer dare to condone corruption, and Interior Secretaries will cease to stand in the way of righteousness.

2. There must be a reform in our system of civil service. In British Columbia, for the last hundred years, there has been spent not one dollar for Indian wars, and not one life has been lost. In the United States, thousands of lives have been lost, and more than $500,000,000 expended. What do these facts signify? That in British Columbia they have had able and honest men in the civil service; and in this Republic, imbecile and corrupt men. Contrast parts of the two systems. With us the Indians are under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, and the Indian Department is but one of numerous important and complex departments under the supervision of that officer—each one enough to tax to the full the ability of a trained statesman. With us, the Indian Department must take its chances with others, and he who ought to give it his entire attention is “Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.” In British Columbia, the Minister of the Interior is the actual superintendent of Indian affairs, and directly responsible for them as the most important part of his official duties. With us, in our Indian, as in our civil, service, which is as vicious as any system can be, officers are continued only during party supremacy.

In the Dominion, officers are continued for life or good behavior, with the obvious benefit, in matters requiring special skill and experience, produced by a civil service well established, on a correct system of selection, which with us has only recently been attempted.

The trouble with us has been, we have not chosen our best men to do our most difficult work. We have had two vast problems to solve in our history—the problem of Reconstruction and this Indian problem. “In both cases, where France, England, Russia, would have used the flower of their educated youth, their most honored soldiers, their wisest lawyers and scientific men, we collected a large horde of broken-down men of all trades and callings, and men of none, the riff-raff of caucuses and nominating conventions, in fact, the very refuse of our busy and prosperous society,” and gave to them to solve, the most difficult and delicate questions of public policy which statesmen have ever faced on this continent. The failure was inevitable in the one case as in the other.

V. In the light of the experience of the last century, I think we may safely make the following affirmations.

All tribal distinctions ought, as soon as possible, to be abolished by the Government, and the Indian treated the same as any other man.

The Reservation system should be given up, and Indians be allowed to go and come whenever and wherever they may choose. Land should be allotted in severalty. If the Indian has a hard time, the discipline will probably educate him.

Education should be compulsory, and for a reasonable time, under patronage of the Government.

All the rights and penalties of citizenship should be accorded to the Indian, as to the Italian, Irishman, and Negro.

The Indian should understand that this is a final settlement of his case, and that now he must shift for himself as other citizens have to do. With justice, and the protection and penalties of law awarded to him, let the Indian take his chances in the struggle of life. The germ of civilization is obedience to law. Put him under state and national law. The fittest will probably survive, Darwin or no Darwin.

So much for the Government. Then let Christianity, through its voluntary agencies, do the rest, as it well knows how to do, and is so grandly doing through the American Missionary Association. There are difficulties attending the execution of these suggestions. This consideration would require time that I have not at my disposal. They are not insuperable to a wise statesmanship.

When Dr. Riggs was visiting and preaching in the Indian Territory, one day there sat before him an old chief, nearly a hundred years of age, listening attentively. It was the missionary’s last sermon before leaving. When the service was over, the old man went up to Dr. Riggs, and reaching out his scrawny hand to the missionary’s snow-white beard, grasped it firmly, and turning him to the full sun-light gazed intently into his face for a long time. “What do you do that for?” at length said the Doctor. “Because I want to know you in the resurrection,” the old chief slowly replied. His people had been scattered, his children killed, his horses stolen, he had been driven from the home of his childhood to a strange land. While he waited to die, this noble old apostle, in whom Christ dwelt, crossed his pathway. The speech and tenderness were so strange, coming from a white man, that he wanted to be sure of recognizing him after death. “I want to know you in the resurrection.” How many white men will the Indians want to meet in the resurrection? It is time these awful wrongs were righted. It is time we learned with the wise fool in _A Fool’s Errand_, “The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, righteousness.” It is time the people were roused. It is time a tide of public opinion, demanding justice for the Indian, was rolled in upon our rulers, too strong to be longer resisted. If the Government never reforms until the people demand it, let us be sure that we voice our part of that demand, loud and clear, at once and unmistakably.

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LETTER FROM GENERAL FISK.

[It was anticipated up to a late day by the committee of arrangements that General Fisk would be present at the meeting and would make an address upon the Indian Report. In his unexpected and compelled absence he kindly sent the following letter:]

It is almost two hundred and fifty years since Captain John Mason, at the head of ninety men, more than half of the fighting force of the Connecticut Colony, marched against Sassacus, and almost within bow-shot of where your Annual Meeting is to be held, fought the Pequods. It was the first Indian war in New England. Thomas Hooker, “the light of the Western Churches,” famed as “a son of thunder,” delivered to Mason the staff of command. The very learned and godly Stone spent nearly the whole night in importunate prayer for success to crown the expedition, which on the morrow sailed past the Thames, hoping by strategy to reach the Pequod fort unobserved. Under cover of night, the soldiers of Connecticut made the attack upon the Indians. “We must burn them,” shouted Mason, who himself cast a firebrand to the windward among the light mats of their cabins. The helpless natives climbed the palisades as their blazing encampment assisted the English marksmen in taking good aim. Six hundred Indians, men, women and children, perished, most of them in the hideous conflagration. Capt. Miles Standish had twenty years earlier slaughtered Witawamo and others of the Massachusetts tribe, the knowledge of which, as it reached the gentle spirited Robinson in Leyden, caused the pastor to write to Bradford, “concerning the killing of those poor Indians, of which we heard at first by report and since by more certain relation. Oh, how happy a thing had it been if you had converted some before you killed any.”

“The principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts,” wrote Charles II. at a time when he had Clarendon for his adviser, “was the freedom of liberty and conscience, not only for the Puritan but for the natives, whom the ministers might win to the Christian faith.” The instructions to Endicott as to the rights of the Indians on the far-away Atlantic coast, and their duty to them, were clear and emphatic. “If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, endeavor to purchase their title, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion. Particularly publish that no wrong or injury be offered to the natives.” The colony seal was a wandering Indian with arrows in his right hand, with the motto, “Come and help me.” For more than two hundred and fifty years, from our Indian tribes, as they have been steadily driven before the surging tide of civilization from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has there been the constant cry of the weaker to the stronger forces of the continent, “come and help me.” Many who will be in attendance upon your Annual Meeting have seen “Standing Bear” of the Poncas, who was wantonly and wickedly driven from his home on the banks of the Missouri by the Government, and heard him tell his simple story of wrong endured, and heard his appeal, “Come and help me.” With sublime faith that God intended all men to be free and equal, all men without restriction, without qualification, without limit, let us listen to their appeal, and respond with the best help in our power to contribute.

Never before in the history of this country has there been such an awakening in behalf of the Indian. Never before such healthy sentiment for justice and fair play for the original owners of the soil over which our fifty millions of prosperous people unfurl the flag of the free. The Indian question, like the Ghost of Banquo, is at every banquet. It will not down until “Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.” Hundreds of years of broken faith, during which ambuscades, massacres, fired Indian camps, blazing wigwams and smouldering embers of burned villages, have strewn the pathway of our march of empire, until now upon every lip is the interrogatory, What shall be done with the Indian? All the Indian asks, all his friends ask for him, is a _fair chance_.

It has been well said that in good faith and good feeling we must take up this work of Indian civilization, and at whatever cost do our whole duty in the premises. We owe them protection of the property they own, endowments of money, forbearance, patience, care, education, _citizenship_.

Let not another Indian be removed from his home, except as he removes himself by his own volition.

Let every acre of land now occupied under treaty, or by any other document by which the United States have “ceded and relinquished” the same, be held sacredly theirs forever, unless the citizen Indian chooses to sell it.

Let there be no more the policy of seclusion, but rather that of absorption.

Let all covenants between the Government and the Indian be executed as promptly and faithfully as with any other person.

Let the Indian citizen have his own home with all the protection of National and State Governments.

Let the Indian citizen have the same protection of law, and require from him the same obedience to law as governs in the case of the white man and the black man, and then the Indian will work out his own destiny.

Let us say with that quaint philosopher, Hosea Bigelow, that

“This is the one great American idee,
To make a man _a man_, and then to let him be.”

Trusting that the American Missionary Association will keep its standard on the Indian question “full high and advancing,” I remain,

With very great respect,
Your obedient servant,

CLINTON B. FISK.

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THE CHINESE.

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“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”

Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.

PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L.
Stone, D.D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon.
F. F. Low, Rev. J. E. Dwinell, D.D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S.
H. Willey, D.D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D.D.,
Jacob S. Tabor, Esq.

DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D.D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E.
P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John
Kimball.

SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.

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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

Your Committee, to whom was referred that part of the Report of the Executive Committee which concerns the Chinese, beg leave to report as follows:

1. That in estimating the success of their work, the difficulties under which it has been prosecuted must be borne in mind; the fact that it has been carried on in the face of an intense hostility to the presence of Chinese upon our shores, extending not only to the lower classes, but also, in not a few localities, including influential clergymen and laymen, and became so far a dominant sentiment, that both the great political parties have yielded to it by inserting anti-Chinese planks in their platforms.

2. That this work ought to be not only generously supported and vigorously maintained, but, so far as practicable, extended, especially by the establishment of schools and mission work among the Chinese in the mines.

3. That while your Committee recognize the difficulties in the way of establishing a mission in China, they also see that there would be great advantage, both direct and indirect, in thus connecting a foreign with the home work, and they recommend the Board to give serious consideration to the proposition, and to carry it into execution, if, on a more thorough inquiry, it shall be found practicable to do so without interfering with the other work of the society, or with the work of other Evangelical missions in China.

LYMAN ABBOTT, _Chairman_.

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THE TWO METHODS.

REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., NEW YORK.

* * * Let us recognize, then, that there is a possibility of danger to us, religious danger from the influx of a godless and atheistic people, political danger from the influx of a vast amount of cheap labor, danger from a deluge coming from an ocean almost unfathomable and immeasurable. How shall we meet that danger? Looking down the vista of the years, how shall we prepare ourselves for it and protect ourselves from it?

There are two methods; and I wish simply to set these two methods before you as clearly and as distinctly as I can.

The one method is that of self-protection by force; the method of building a Chinese wall and saying, “You shall not come upon our shores;” the method of the brick-bat; the method of the mob; the method which has been succinctly put in Dennis Kearney’s platform, “The Chinese must go,” and more genteelly and courteously put in the Democratic and Republican platforms, which mean the same thing; the method which declares, “We will not allow this people upon our shores to live among us, to work with us, to share our benefits;” the method of a prohibitory legislation.

In respect to that method, _first, we have no right to adopt it_. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Go through the first five books of the Bible and find how it is iterated and reiterated again and again, that the soil of this earth belongs to God. No people have a right to set themselves down upon a territory and say to their brother people, “You shall not come.” We have a right to say that if they come they shall come subordinate to the laws and the institutions that have been established here; that they shall behave themselves; that they shall obey the system of laws which we have found good for ourselves and for our children; but we have no right to build a wall of adamant around the land and say, “Keep out.” By what right do the children of the immigrants of 1620 say to the immigrants of 1880, “You shall not set foot upon this soil”? By what right do the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers say to the pilgrims of this generation, “You shall keep off”? When did that right come to us? Could we have said it in 1700, in 1750, in 1800? At what epoch in our national history accrued to us the right of drawing the line, building the wall, closing the gates, and saying, “Thou shalt come no more?”

I shall not enter in detail into the argument on this subject. I know what is the reply: “If I have a farm of a hundred acres, may I not keep tramps off?” No nation has found itself without difficulty and threatened danger, that has attempted to keep the laborer off of land which was not being worked. To-day Ireland is wrestling with the labor problem, and England is wrestling with the labor problem, because there are vast tracts of unoccupied, untilled, uncultivated land from which the laborer is excluded. So long as our mines lie undug; so long as our prairies lie uncultivated; so long as our streams run their course and no music of the mills sings along their lines, so long industry has a right to its home under our flag and within our borders.

And _we have not the power_ if we had the right. Congress does not make laws; Congress only declares and interprets them. There is but one law-giver—God Almighty; and all that judges and governors and law-makers and Congresses and Parliaments can do, is to ascertain what are God’s laws and interpret them. And God’s law is the law of liberty, and all His laws are to conserve liberty. Never in the history of the world has a nation succeeded in stopping one of these great migratory movements. Out of four hundred million people, in one year almost as many corpses lie upon the ground in China as were strewed on all our battle-fields, and over every one a grave-stone might be erected with the inscription, “Died of hunger!” Why, you might better expect to stop the charge of a herd of buffaloes rushing madly along with the prairie on fire behind them, by means of a Virginia rail fence, than to stop the immigration of a great nation, driven from its home by pursuing famine, with an act of Congress. You could easier dam up the waters of the Gulf Stream with bulrushes.

In the year 250 the Goths and Vandals won their first victory over Roman arms on the Roman boundary. The Roman empire adopted Dennis Kearney’s platform; it said, “We will not have the Goths and Vandals on our territory.” The Roman empire was clad in mail from its head to its foot; it was an army of soldiers; it put forth the greatest military power the world has seen to stop the great migration. For a hundred and fifty years the conflict went on, but year by year the valiant warrior was beaten back, and it was ended at last with the sack of Rome. But 250 years before these immigrants made their first appearance on the border line, a little decrepit Jew made his appearance in Rome as a prisoner. He lived there two years, bound, chained to the soldier that guarded him, and he brought there the story that God had shown himself in Jesus Christ, His Son, who had lived, suffered, died, risen, and ever lived for them. In those 250 years, Christianity under various persecutions, had grown little by little, until, when the Goths and Vandals made their appearance, it comprised one-twentieth of the population of Rome—fifty thousand out of a million. It sent Bishop Ulfilas with his Gothic Bible, to the north; it sent Augustine into England; it sent St. Patrick—Protestant before the time of Protestantism—to preach a pure gospel in Ireland. One and another and another went forth, bearing the cross; and when at last the Goths and Vandals had conquered the armed Romans, so thoroughly had that Christian church done its work, that, says Lecky, the Christian church conquered the barbarian world almost in the same hour in which the barbarian world conquered Rome.

We are told that we cannot convert the Chinese. Why, Christianity, while it was yet in its cradle, without churches, without schools, without a printing press, without literature, Christianity infantile vanquished the serpents that had strangled the military Hercules. If we cannot, with the Christianity that we possess to-day, vanquish the semi-civilized paganism of China, we had better get a new Christianity, for we sorely need it.

Let us look, then, at the other method of protecting our nation from the incursion of the Chinese. The one is the barbaric method, the method of military Rome; the other is the Christian method, the method of the successors and followers of the Apostles and of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is this method? What does it involve? It involves welcoming the Chinese to our shores; throwing open the gates; recognizing the truth that the earth is the Lord’s, and that all peoples are entitled to make their home here if they will; welcoming them to all the protection—I do not say to all the powers—of citizenship; holding over them the shield of the Declaration of Independence, and declaring for them the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It involves bringing them into our schools and into our churches; teaching them that which we teach ourselves and our children; teaching them those things upon which our own intelligence and prosperity and our own national life are based. Above all, it involves teaching them those great principles of Christianity which are the very conservation of national force and the saviours of the nation. It involves teaching them that there is one God; that we are all one family, brethren in the Lord Jesus Christ, doubly brethren—born of God and redeemed by Christ; it involves teaching them immortality, and all the glorious hopes and liberations that come from the faith of immortality; it involves all the assimilating and unifying force and power that come from teaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of the human race.

And, observe, you cannot carry on these two methods simultaneously. You cannot say, “We will exclude the Chinese, but if they do come here we will convert them.” You cannot ask the Chinaman to kneel down with you and say, “Our Father which art in Heaven,” and then, when he has finished, take him by the throat and toss him into the Pacific. You cannot say to a Chinaman, “You are my brother, get out of here!” You cannot be both Christian and Pagan; you must take your choice.

It is said that the Chinese cannot be converted, that they are impervious to Christian influences, and that they repudiate and reject all such. What have been the Christian influences that have been showered upon them? They have been impervious to the guns of England when they flamed out, “You shall take opium!” they have been impervious to the influence of Dennis Kearney’s brick-bats when they have been flung at them in the street. I do not wonder that they were impervious to that kind of Christianity. Cannot be converted? Men call this an age of scepticism; but the unbelief that doubts the first chapter of Genesis, that thinks the story of the Fall is a parable, that is uncertain whether the whale did really swallow Jonah or not, that doubts whether those three men went into the fiery furnace unconsumed, is as nothing compared with the unbelief that lurks sometimes in our pulpits and oftener in our pews, that doubts the declaration that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every man that believeth—not to every Anglo-Saxon man, not to every white man, not to every cultured man, but to every black man, and red-skinned man, and copper-colored man, and Indian man, and Chinaman,—to _humanity_. It is as nothing compared with the infidelity that puts under its foot the obligation: “I am debtor to the Jew, and to the Greek, to the bond and to the free, to the white, to the black, to the Indian, to _every_ man, because for every man my Christ died.”

We cannot convert the Chinese? Really it does not lie in us to say they are beyond hope. Let me read you the features of a portrait:

“Huge, white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes and reddish flaxen hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks; of a cold temperament, slow to love, home stayers, prone to drunkenness! * * pirates at first; * * sea-faring, war, and pillage, their only idea of a freeman’s work; * * of all barbarians the strongest of body and heart, the most formidable, the most cruelly ferocious; * * torture and carnage, greed of danger, fury of destruction, obstinate and frenzied bravery of an over-strong temperament, the unchaining of the butcherly instincts; * * with a great and coarse appetite.”—[Compiled from Taine’s English Literature, vol. I pp. 30–33.] Do you recognize it? It is the portrait of your ancestors and mine; and if Christianity can make out of that picture such an audience as I see before me to-night, what may it not make out of China?

To-night again we see in the heavens, brighter and clearer by far than ever Constantine saw in his fabled vision, that flaming cross, and under it the motto, “By this sign I will conquer.” That motto, enforced by the history of eighteen centuries of triumph, I set before you; the Roman spear on the one hand and the flaming cross on the other: choose you by which sign you will vanquish the Chinese.

* * * * *

OUR GROUNDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT.

REV. SAMUEL SCOVILLE, STAMFORD, CONN.

[Mr. Scoville compared the work of the Association to the river which went out of Eden and became into four heads, the Pishon, flowing to the land of gold and the Havilah of the East, representing its Chinese work. After forcibly depicting the importance of the work as involving the regeneration of China, the good name of the Christian Church, the honor of Christ, and the perpetuity of our political institutions, the address closed with a statement of the grounds for encouragement that this work can and shall be done. It is this latter part only for which we have room, as follows]:—

I turn now to the grounds we have for encouragement that this work can and shall be done.

1. The first is found in God’s word. We ask ourselves, Is it His purpose that this work shall be done, that those heathen on our Western coast and in China shall be converted, or must they be given over to destruction? And we read the promise of God to His dear Son: “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance,” and that means the people of California, a large part of them, “and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession,” and that means China.

Is there anything special about the Chinese nature that puts them outside the recuperating, renewing forces that exist in Jesus Christ? And I read: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” and again, “that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” And I know that in that humanity and in that provision the Chinese are included. I hear Him say, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” and I know that the wretched millions of China are meant.

But may it not be true that the Chinese are so lost to spirituality that this whole power of renewing forces will be lost upon them? I read: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” And I know there is a sweet attractiveness in the Saviour of men dying for them, that is able to break up the dull apathy of Chinamen as well as others.

But is there power enough to wake up the Christian churches as well as the Chinese from their apathy? And I read that prayer for us, “that ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when he raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the Heavenly places,” and I know that individuals and churches, even the whole Christian land, can be breathed upon and quickened by that resurrection life. And then the Divine Commission breaks in upon all our delay, saying, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” and I know that that means us, and that the time is now. I am confident that we have God’s word for it that this work can be done, and that we are to set about it without delay; and having this foundation I care for little else. But we have more if we require it.