THE DANCE.

As we drew near the dance-house I could hear the monotonous yet rythmic beat of the drum, and get glimpses through the door-way of the feathered heads moving in time to the music.  Outside there was a crowd of women, girls, and young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens.  This is the way a Titon “makes love.”  As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing before one only its poetry, and that which may be perhaps really beautiful, it does not seem shocking or revolting in the least; but the reality is simply dreadful.  Not so much in itself, perhaps, though that is bad enough, as in its influence, its consequences, all that it means and all that it leads to.

THE CONTRAST.

Just beyond the dance house is the mission station where Clarence Ward and his wife are; a civilized Christian family in the midst of this heathenism.

Sunday was to be the eventful day, and as early as half past nine the congregation began to arrive.  When the bell rang for service, the school-room was filled almost immediately.  Everything possible was utilized for seats; trunks, boxes, wagon-seats, kegs, and those who could not be provided with seats sat on the floor.  There were probably a hundred in all.  The weight of so many people on the floor was too much for the sleepers.  Some of them gave way, and the floor settled somewhat, but the audience was not “nervous” and was only amused.  As I sat at the organ, a group outside the door attracted my attention; several bright faced girls, their shawls drawn over their heads with a grace a white girl might envy, but could not hope to attain, and beyond them a face that would pass on the most perfectly appointed stage for one of Macbeth’s witches, without being “made-up.”  The faces of some of the men were as wooden and expressionless as the figures in front of a tobacco shop, but these are they into whose lives the power of the Gospel of the Son of God has not come.  After this service came the church meeting, and a Cheyenne River branch church was established which still has connection with the mother church at Oahe.

The school-room being too small for the afternoon communion service, this was held out of doors.  There must have been a hundred and fifty present, perhaps more.  First came a marriage ceremony, then the admission of four new members, and the baptism of two children.  Probably four-fifths of the congregation had been drawn thither merely from curiosity, and on the faces of many of these were the traces of yesterday’s paint.  The simple service, which the new communion set made perfect, could not fail to impress them that there is something better than they have known.  At its close, Edwin Phelps’s scholars stood and sang “Whiter than Snow,” in Dakota.  Have not those girls gained a great moral victory, when in native dress, with their shawls worn after the native fashion, they stand up among their own people and proclaim themselves on the side of right?  It was a day full of new experiences and new impressions for me.  The contrast between this scene and the one of the day before, presented itself to me over and over again.