The American Missionary | Page 9

an individual to accumulate anything is a disgrace. As long as they feel so, of course squalor and suffering will be the natural consequences.
The young men are working hard to build up homes and to accumulate something for their families during the winter. One young man has cut logs and is building a house. I try to teach them that long prayers and loud singing is not all of Christianity--that however regularly a man attends to his church duties, if he fails to provide for his family, his religion is vain; and if he gives all his goods to his friends and lets his wife and children cry for bread, that their cries will reach the ears of God, and his prayers and hymns will be lost in this round of wailing of the hungry. All this is very different from their old Indian doctrine and hard to understand.
Elias, our native teacher, has formed a class of young men who meet every Tuesday night and talk and pray and sing together, and he directs their thought. I think it will prove very helpful. Then on Thursday night I have my Bible class, which now numbers about twenty. It is formed of the young men and women who wish to follow Christ's example, and band themselves together to learn of him. It has been the training school of the young Christians.
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What could be more encouraging than such facts as these? An Indian unattended by any white person, dissatisfied with the religion of his fathers, walks out of heathenism; out of sympathy and connection with his tribe; out of the religion and customs of his fathers and into the customs of civilized life, into the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ! In the words of that quaint old Negro hymn, let those who so earnestly desire the conversion of the Pagans in America exhort one another to "Pray on: Pray on."
C.J.R.
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THE RAMONA INDIAN SCHOOL.
BY DISTRICT SECRETARY JOS. E. ROY.
This is a department of the University of New Mexico at Santa F��, occupying separate buildings and a separate locality, and managed by the American Missionary Association. A recent visit to the school it may be worth while to report. It is for the Apache Indians and the youth who are gathered into it are of the Jiccarrilla band. Their reservation is about two hundred miles west, and is reached by railroad or by pony transportation. The teachers deem it better to have the school some distance from the people so as to make its impression the more positive, and yet near enough for the parents to visit their children occasionally while at school. This keeps up the interest and prevents the children from being educated away from their elders. Two good sized buildings are used. In one there are the school rooms, the accommodations for the teachers, and the lodgings for the boys. In the other, under a matron, there are lodgings for the girls, work rooms for the same, and the boarding department for all. The Indian girls do the cooking for the establishment. I saw them getting dinner and I saw many loaves of beautiful white bread made by them. In their work shop they make their own clothes. The boys, under the lead of the principal, Prof. Elmore Chase, work at cobbling, making ditches and cultivating the soil, and also do something with carpenter's tools. The Government pays over a hundred dollars a year for each student toward the expense of board, clothes, etc. The American Missionary Association appoints the teachers and directs the school. The scholars, thirty in all, have made very creditable progress in their studies, considering the short time the school has been in operation, from three to four years. Prof. Whipple, now of Wheaton College, who for a time was principal of the Ramona, testifies: "I never saw on an average such aptness, docility and faithfulness in school and industrial work." The religious influence of the school has not been interfered with by the Government. I heard the scholars recite with promptness and evident understanding the Twenty third Psalm, the Beatitudes, the Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and portions of a catechism introductory to the Westminster Shorter. Daily worship is maintained among them, the Sunday-school lesson is thoroughly taught, while the Bible is freely used in the school. The Professor thought that several of the youth gave such evidence of an experience of grace as would satisfy us concerning white children. I was permitted to see half a dozen letters written by the scholars to be sent to their parents and brothers and sisters, without the supervision of their teachers, in which were many expressions of love for the Saviour and the Bible, and of a desire that their