Good men are sending the Bible to all parts of the world.  Sermons are preached in behalf of fellow-creatures who are perishing in regions known only to us in name.  And here, within reach of comparatively the slightest exertion; here, not many miles from churches and schools, and all the moral influences abounding in Christian society; here, in a country endowed with every advantage that God can bestow, are perishing, body and soul, our own countrymen:  perishing too from disease, starvation and intemperance, and all the evils incident to their unhappy condition.  White men, Christian men, are driving them back; rooting out their very names from the face of the earth.  Ah! these men can seek the country of the Sioux when money is to be gained:  but how few care for the sufferings of the Dahcotahs! how few would give a piece of money, a prayer, or even a thought, towards their present and eternal good.

Yet are they not altogether neglected.  Doctor Williamson, one of the missionaries among the Sioux, lives near Fort Snelling.  He is exerting himself to the utmost to promote the moral welfare of the unhappy people among whom he expects to pass his life.  He has a school for the Indian children, and many of them read well.  On the Sabbath, divine service is regularly held, and he has labored to promote the cause of temperance among the Sioux.  Christian exertion is unhappily too much influenced by the apprehension that little can be done for the savage.  How is it with the man on his fire-water mission to the Indian?  Does he doubt?  Does he fail?

As a great motive to improve the moral character of the Indians, I present the condition of the women in their tribes.  A degraded state of woman is universally characteristic of savage life, as her elevated influence in civilized society is the conspicuous standard of moral and social virtue.  The peculiar sorrows of the Sioux woman commence at her birth.  Even as a child she is despised, in comparison with the brother beside her, who is one day to be a great warrior.  As a maiden, she is valued while the young man, who wants her for a wife, may have a doubt of his success.  But when she is a wife, there is little sympathy for her condition.  How soon do the oppressive storms and contentions of life root out all that is kind or gentle in her heart.  She must bear the burdens of the family.  Should her husband wish it, she must travel all day with a heavy weight on her back; and at night when they stop, her hands must prepare the food for her family before she retires to rest.

Her work is never done.  She makes the summer and the winter house.  For the former she peels the bark from the trees in the spring; for the latter she sews the deer-skin together.  She tans the skins of which coats, mocassins, and leggins are to be made for the family; she has to scrape it and prepare it while other cares are pressing upon her.  When her child is born, she has no opportunities for rest