Part 4 (1/2)

The faces of nearly all were marked with spots of bright red or long streaks of yellow and red. The same color was used in the parting of the hair.

They sat on the ground in two long rows, facing each other; back of each, attached to the wood trellis of the tent, hung fur pouches of various shapes and sizes, ornamented with beads and containing the ”medicine,” which was some trifling article--a bit of bone, stone, seed, or whatever, through some special circ.u.mstance, had come to be accepted by them as their charm, or ”medicine,” to ward off sickness and evil--to bring them the good offices and protection of the good spirits.

The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented, ap.r.o.n-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience, from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were expected not to give up, if possible, until the end.

The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress.

Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand generations of savagery back of them?

Let another picture answer.

Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground, stands a little Christian church--plain but beautiful. From it seem to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great All-father.

It is prayer-meeting night. The bell is rung and the audience begins to gather. A number of alert, intelligent-looking, English-speaking young men come in together.

One of these, an earnest Christian, will interpret, sentence by sentence, the Scripture reading and the message of the speaker.

Some older men and women come next, heavy of feature and step. One is blind and feels his way to his accustomed seat.

Old women come wrapped in blankets, their faces seamed with toil and showing the hardness of heathen customs, when sickness and death, unrelieved by faith, wear the heart and waste the body.

Mothers come with bright-eyed babies tucked in their blankets, or leading children of various sizes--also some young women, beautiful and intelligent--and a few white employees from the Agency--and the workers from the Mission--until the room is nearly filled.

The meeting is opened with prayer, and a quiet fills the room as all are brought into the very presence of the loving Father.

And then follows the singing, ”My faith looks up to Thee,”

”Lovingly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me.”

Did ever the words seem so fraught with meaning, so filled with the yearning love of the Master?

The message that follows is one of pa.s.sionate earnestness, as the missionary seeks to make clear to them the meaning of purity of life--of faith in G.o.d, of His saving, keeping power.

At its close an Indian elder, using his own soft, Indian language, pleads in prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead his people.

Another rises and says through the interpreter: ”When I was away at school I learned about Christianity, but when I came back to the reservation and the old Indian life called me, there was none to help, and I went back. I did not work; I gambled, I drank; liquor, I went to the medicine dance--I was very bad. Then came the Mission and it got hold of me. The missionary brought me to Christ. Now I cut off those bad ways. I am happy. I have a Christian home with my wife and my child.”

This testimony was true. All there knew him to be an industrious, upright, manly Indian, one of the two hundred members of this church, all of whom had, in a few years, been led from the old life of degradation to the pleasant, wholesome peace of the Jesus Road.

”Missionary work begins with evangelism. It does not end there.

The people must hear the good news of salvation. So we have spent much time 'to make the message plain.' It has taken years of labor to put the gist of the Gospel into several Indian languages having no literature, that the people might get the word of G.o.d. One had to work to get a clue to a word through a crude interpreter; or by making signs or motions where, as often, no interpreter was at hand, and then guessing between several possible meanings. In this way one would in time get a knowledge of the commonplace things in a language.

Then there must follow the task of finding equivalents for Christian terms in the speech of a people without Christian ideas.

”Difficult as all this work was, it is only a beginning, only elementary. The message must be applied to all phases of life. A constant educational process must be kept up to incorporate Christian ideals into the daily thinking of the people. This is to be done by the reiterated daily teachings of the schools, and the living example of the missionary, and of those he can educate to lead the people. A bare message unrelated to life is like seed scattered on the road or on a rock. After sowing one must harrow and cultivate and fight insect pests all the season to get a crop. So a constant process of education, moral, industrial, hygienic, must go on, or there will be no regenerated, fruitful characters.

”The old Indian linked his hunting and corn planting and simple arts to religion. He lived by the help of his G.o.ds. We are trying not to destroy this faith, but to transfer it to the living G.o.d, and to make it 'work by love,' instead of by selfishness. Our little girls in the Home are learning to keep house and sew and cook, because it is the work of a child of G.o.d to do these things well. We are trying to teach our neighbors by word and example to farm and build and make homes in a way that will be becoming to a redeemed man. They must understand that the Gospel means diligence in business, honesty, carefulness, co-operation, skill, cleanness of heart and body, health and prosperity, and any other virtue that makes life worth living now and always. We think our example in raising seventy bushels of oats or two hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, garden vegetables, improved cattle and hogs, well-kept horses, small fruits and sheltering trees and pretty shrubs, in what is cla.s.sed as a semi-arid land, is a part of the Gospel of Christ, who came to make all 'deserts blossom as the rose.'

”When our former Mission school boys are found taking hold of agricultural work according to present-day methods and earning a support for their growing families, building their meeting-place, and making some contributions to the church work abroad, we feel that the foundation of a Christian community is being laid.