It has been said that these heathen tribes are a vanishing people, destined to decline and finally to disappear.  Certainly their condition for two hundred years has tended to decrease them, and yet, when Columbus discovered America there were not double the number that there are now.  In happier conditions than formerly, there is a decided increase in the Indian population, as there is betterment in their customs and modes of life.  Their missionary teachers find them with the ancient characteristics unchanged—­rude in thought, though with a marked intellectual power.  The open book of nature, the Indian knows well.  He will tell you the habits of bird and beast and tree and plant.  He will tell you the time of day by looking at a leaf.  But the life of civilization comes hard to him.  He does not know the value of time, nor the value of money.  It is hard for him to measure his days or to provide for the future, or to care for to-morrow.  He has not the heredity of civilization and Christianity, hence missionary work sometimes seems slow in progress, but it is surely gaining upon this almost dead past of half a century.  Thirteen Missionary Boards are now pressing forward to teach them the way and the truth and the life.

The doors are wide open as never before.  The hearts of the Indians are friendly as never for two hundred years.  If the majority of them show as yet no deep desire for that which Christianity brings, they are not, in this, dissimilar from other heathen.  But this desire is growing.  The Government at last is seeking to redeem the past.  It has appropriated for the Indian tribes reservations larger, in square miles, than the whole German Empire.  The Republic of France must re-annex considerable of its ancient possessions before it will own as much land as is now the property of the Indians in the United States.  Under these conditions, the hopefulness of the past argues for a more hopeful future of missionary work.

Our mission is to raise up teachers, preachers, interpreters and a native agency that shall work for the regeneration of their own people.  It is a mission that is hopeful.

It means a good deal to teach those who come to us in moccasins and blankets, arithmetic, algebra, the elements of geometry, physical geography, natural philosophy and mental science.  It means much to give them an industrial training that shall show them how to live rightly, and enable them to do it.  But above all, in all and through all, is the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God to their salvation.  Perhaps no missions to the heathen have been more blessed than many of these to the wild, painted savages.  Thousands who were barbarian in heart and in deed are now true disciples of Christ.  Where heathenism held its revels, now the church-bell calls the red man to prayer, and the war-whoop is being exchanged for songs of Christian praise.  Wigwams are being transformed into houses, and coarse and cruel people