The out-station work among the Indians is a feature almost peculiar to the Indian Missions of the A.M.A.  These stations are the picket-lines pushed forward into the Reservations beyond the line of established schools and missions.  Each one consists of a cheap home connected sometimes with a cheap school-house, and these are occupied by one or two native Indian missionaries who teach and preach, and thus accomplish an immediate good and lay the foundation for the more permanent church and school.  The Association has about twenty such stations on the Cheyenne and other rivers in Dakota.  One of the teachers from Oahe gives a racy sketch of a trip among some of the out-stations.  We make room for a large extract, regretting that we have not space for more.

THE JOURNEY.

We started Thursday morning, going about seven miles above the Mission to cross the river.  We took dinner at the house of a white man who has an Indian wife, and then started out on the long drive.  Our direction was almost due west, a little south toward the Cheyenne River.  We reached an out-station on the Cheyenne about dark, where James Brown, a Santee Indian, is stationed.  Two of our Santee school-girls are here, and it was encouraging to see their neat dress, and hear them use their English, though they so seldom see any one with whom they have occasion to use it that it is not easy for them.  The next morning, the girls had classes in reading and writing.  Some of the children were ragged and dirty, with faces unwashed, and hair uncombed, one little boy with both knees coming through his trousers, but their faces were, almost without exception, bright and intelligent, with the intelligence of childhood, which would inevitably change to the stolid indifference of ignorance, were it not for the influence which this Christian household among them may exert.  To be sure, the girls are young and inexperienced, but that they do their best means a great deal.  Two young men were learning to read the Dakota Bible.  Soon after eleven, we were on our way again, keeping the Cheyenne River in sight.  We stopped at one of the villages on the Cheyenne, where a Frenchman with an Indian wife has built up quite a little colony, all related to one another.  Several of our pupils come from here, and the mode of life at their home has been modified by their influence.

We reached Plum Creek, where Edwin Phelps is stationed, about dark, and after two long days’ ride I was glad when bed time came.  Ellen Kitto and Elizabeth Winyan had come up from the Cheyenne, and I felt sure that Elizabeth had given up her bed for me.  The next morning I asked Ellen if we could go out to some of the houses, but she said the people were all on the other side of the river, that there was a dance there.  This was a disappointment to me, as I wanted to see the homes of the people, but after dinner Edwin offered to take Elizabeth, Ellen and me across the river to Cherry Creek, so that I gained rather than lost.