On last New Year’s day, the same young man, “Huntington Wolcott,” came to me and said—­“Last night I arose in the dance and told them that I had given the old customs and the old Indians a fair trial, and that they did not satisfy, now I should leave them forever and give myself to God, and if any others were ready to follow to arise and so make it known.  The other two leaders arose, stood silently a moment, and walked out.”  From that time they have given themselves up to singing, praying and studying the Bible.  They had, for two years, been halting between two opinions, attending the school, church, etc., and the Indian feasts and dances, too.  These three having come out so boldly on God’s side, has made a great change in our work here.

Poor old Running-Antelope feels very sad.  It is his desire to keep the young men from learning Christianity and civilization as long as he can.  He wants them to have everything in common, and to feel that for 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.