THE SOUTH.

NOTES IN THE SADDLE.

BY FIELD-SUPERINTENDENT C. J. RYDER.

I have no extended missionary trip to report this month, as the schools of the Association are closed, and the church work is somewhat quiet this season of the year.

A run into Ohio, to assist in the ordination of Rev. J. F. Cross, who goes as a missionary among the Sioux Indians, may, however, legitimately furnish a basis for “Notes in the Saddle.” A good New England friend recently asked, in all seriousness, if there really were a horse belonging to the A. M. A., or whether I hired one, from time to time, as the occasion demanded? What a wild Tam O’Shanter ride it would be from Washington to Texas in four or five days! But such a ride, taken once or twice a year, would only cover a small portion of the field of the Association. Here on the west is the work among the Indians, stretching from Santa Fé, New Mexico, away up to Dakota. The A. M. A. has schools and churches all along the line. This Council in Ohio gave its commission to a new harvester going out into this field.

Mr. Cross is a graduate of Adelbert College, Cleveland, and of Yale Theological Seminary. He has had somewhat peculiar preparation for the missionary work upon which he now enters, through experience gained in home missionary fields. He enters upon this new work with his eyes open, fully appreciating its hardships. He will be located at Park Street Station, among the Blanket Sioux. Three villages, containing some 8,000 Indians, will constitute his parish. His work will include school teaching and almost every form of religious service. His nearest missionary neighbor will be at Rosebud Agency, sixty-five miles away. In 1885 an old building was purchased from the natives, and in 1886 a new building was erected, the Park Street Church, Boston, contributing the funds. This building is not a modern parsonage, with hot and cold water, gas, furnace, and all the luxuries with which many churches delight to furnish their pastor’s home. This parsonage of the prairie is a log building, with shingle roof, containing two rooms; and yet it answers the purpose for which it was built well. A native missionary with Christian passion for his people, has gone into this field already. Brother Cross follows Jacob Good Dog, who was the Boniface in this pioneer missionary work. In a letter written by Francis Frazier, who is the son of Rev. Artemus Ehnamani, the Indian pastor, there is the following pleading petition for his people: “Thus God has blessed this people; and that God will give them understanding to go on to comprehend His laws, and that they may believe and have faith in Him, when you pray will you remember them?” This tender and passionate appeal for the Indians gains additional emphasis by the going out of a new missionary to this field.

The churches and pastors of Ohio I found were greatly stirred up by the proposed outrages against our missionaries and teachers in Georgia. Cordial words were spoken on every side in endorsement of the A. M. A., and in condemnation of the un-Christian and un-American attempts to violate personal liberty and freedom of conscience under the flimsy pretense of legal right. A tremendous Republican uprising will follow this attempt on the part of Georgia to introduce again the policy of suppression and inhumanity that had its culmination, years ago, in the cruelties of the prison stockade of Andersonville. The thumb screw and rack and chain-gang as instruments for the suppression of freedom of opinion, are things of the past, and no feeble attempt to legalize them can be permanently successful in this land to-day.

Sad news just reaches us from Texas of the defeat of the prohibitory amendment to the State constitution. Ignorant Mexicans were brought over the border to vote for rum, and so overcame the honest vote of the Christian and moral people of the State. Jefferson Davis, after permitting a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who was more enthusiastic than patriotic, to pin a silver badge of that society upon his coat in evidence of the esteem in which this prohibition society held him, wrote a letter to the people in Texas denouncing the prohibitory movement. Mr. Davis’ prohibition seems much like his patriotism, “conspicuous for its absence.”

CHARLESTON, S.C.

The past year has been a prosperous one for Plymouth church, notwithstanding the earthquake. The people are struggling manfully toward self-support, and will in the course of two or three years be able to relieve the Association of the greater part, if not the entire burden of the appropriation which is now granted to it.

The earthquake has proven of much benefit to Charleston in various ways—a real blessing in disguise. Many houses have been repaired which probably would have remained unimproved, and the city presents a more lively appearance than before the disturbance. Many persons were shaken into their senses from a spiritual standpoint, and the work of God’s servants has been greatly blessed. We have reaped a goodly harvest. During the past year and six months, 102 persons have united with the church, about 25 of whom were more or less impressed with the manifestation of God’s power in the earthquake. There are many careless, lethargic places which might be benefited by a similar experience. There has been more faithful preaching of the Gospel to sinners since than before. There is perhaps in the South, as well as in the North, too much of a tendency toward speculative and æsthetic discourse, rather than direct and comprehensive exposition of God’s word. Wherever the cross of Christ is preached with earnestness, good results are sure to follow, as is plainly shown in the sequel of the Charleston earthquake.

We are working hard to raise funds for the erection of a parsonage for our church, which will cost about $1,800; we have raised already $400, and have the lot. The parsonage completed and paid for will enable the church to become in a large measure self-supporting. We shall lay the foundation as soon as half of the amount needed is raised. We hope to begin this work the coming fall.

America is a wonderful mission field, and we who are laboring in that field can appreciate the American Missionary Association and its work. Withdraw the influence of this work from the South, and it would prove a calamity more serious in its results than a dozen earthquakes. The needs of the work grow greater year by year, and we rejoice that the hearts of a generous Christian people are expanding and enlarging to meet the demand.

GEO. C. ROWE.

SHOTGUN IN LOUISIANA.

[The outrage referred to in the following letter was perpetrated only a few weeks ago. We suppress names and dates for obvious reasons. We know the writer and can vouch for the truth of the statement. We have in our possession additional and corroborative evidence.—Ed.]

“My very last days at school were saddened by a most distressing outrage in which the father and elder brother of one of my own good, manly, big boys, were shot down in unjust, merciless and indiscriminating slaughter; the other two grown-up sons obliged to flee; the mother, grandmother and two younger children left desolate but not unfriended, and the large, rich and heavy crop, which would have sufficed to send all the children to school next year, of necessity abandoned. That was the trouble: the white men around were jealous of his business methods, his prosperity and his determination to educate his children—said they were ‘getting too smart for niggers’—so, when an alleged crime by another colored man or boy furnished a pretext, they improved the opportunity for wholesale massacre—six or seven in all were killed, some of them resisting and killing two white men. I was amazed at the Christian meekness shown by my boy, the elder of the two who escaped, a large, strong young man. He spoke with gratitude of the two white men who tried to save his father, and he seemed disposed to leave the murderers entirely in the hands of the great Judge of all, saying, ‘If the Lord saw fit to punish them He could meet up with them any time.’

“I said, with a view to learning how this severe tribulation had affected his trust in Christ—for he is but a young disciple—‘some people, when great trouble is permitted to come upon them, feel that the Lord has deserted them.’ He responded at once, ‘I don’t feel that way. I think the Lord must have been very near me when I was dodging through the young corn, neither high enough nor thick enough to hide me in the bright morning light, and they all shooting at me as if I had been a deer, or they would certainly have killed me.’

“In answer to some remarks of mine, he said: ‘You needn’t be afraid of my taking to any meanness on account of this. I never can find it in my heart to be mean to anybody. I feel too sorry for people.’ His only anxiety was to find work and make enough to get the rest of his people away from there.

“When I went into my school room after hearing of this heart-rending affair, a horror of great darkness came over me for an instant, and a sound was in my ears as of a knell; then the students’ plaintive song seemed to vibrate through the air—How long, Master, how long? These distressful experiences weigh heavily on the hearts and nerves of our missionaries, who are here so nearly all the year around and have such a care for everything that affects the school or its members.”

A Teacher.

DEATH OF REV. WILLIS POLK.

Died, at his home in Fayetteville, Ark., after a lingering illness, Rev. Willis Polk, pastor of the Colored Congregational Church of that place. He came to Fayetteville in the fall of 1884, and took charge of the public school for the colored people; and up until the time he was disabled by sickness, he labored in the school-room during the week, and preached in the little church, which he had organized, on the Sabbath. His education and his gifts as a preacher were above the average of his race. He met death calmly and peacefully, and died in the blessed hope of a home in heaven. He was kindly nursed and provided for by the members of his little flock and others, during his long sickness, and his mortal remains were reverently laid in the tomb by the same kind hands. He leaves a wife and four small children to mourn his loss, and the little flock to which he ministered without a shepherd.

J. N.