When the Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association “decided to offer these mountain people the aid of our system,” probably even this far-seeing committee did not fully realize the magnitude of the work, nor the grand possibilities of the field. The few feeble churches that then existed are scarcely recognized now in the larger work that has grown up independently of them and miles away. Indeed, in entering this region in 1882 we were only putting the plow into the field, which had been already turned by pioneer laborers of the American Missionary Association. Before the war a brave man had pushed his way back into these mountain fastnesses in Christ’s name. He went under commission from this Association. He opened a school; his work was successful. Into his school he put a library for the use of his pupils. In this library there was a volume of Wesley’s sermons and, among these, one against the sin of slavery. This book got into the hands of a pro-slavery family. It was told that the preacher was teaching anti-slavery doctrine. Excitement in this back mountain region was intense. A mob was organized. They seized this missionary, bound him, beat him, and took him some two miles over the mountains and threw him into a cabin, and left two men as guards at the doors, while they, with their habitual delay, went to their homes for their dinner. They intended to return and inflict sorer punishment and perhaps hang him. Two mountain lads, brothers, heard of this outrage. They were pupils of this godly school-master and loved him. Each one, unknown to the other, went by a different path to the cabin with his rifle on his shoulder. They took out their teacher, cut the cords that bound him, and while he and his terrified wife at his side climbed the mountain, pushing their way to the Ohio river, these stalwart mountain lads kept back the mob with the threatening use of their unerring rifles. This missionary and his heroic wife finally reached the river and escaped. Now for the wonderful climax to that history. We have recently organized a Congregational Church where these thrilling scenes occurred. Among the original members who united in the bonds of freedom-loving Congregationalism were these two men who when boys defended this teacher at the risk of their own lives. A neat little church stands near this prison cabin of the past, and the bell that hangs in its belfry, whose tones fall now upon no slave’s ear, was contributed by the wife of this first missionary to this mountain region. Such was the heroic beginning of the Association’s work among these mountains. God had not forgotten during the years that passed, the tears and blood and prayers of these brave sufferers for Christ’s sake.
This mountain work now is divided into two well-defined fields, both important. The field in Kentucky has for its base the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which has been built since our present missionary force began their work in this region. The central point of this work is Williamsburg. Here we have a large and prosperous academy and church. Eleven whole counties are easily reached from this center and only one of these has as yet been occupied. In addition to the work at Williamsburg, there are two primary schools and five organized churches and constantly increasing numbers of missionary stations in this field. Chapels have been erected in S. Williamsburg and Woodbine and are used for public service. A pastor has been settled over the church at Williamsburg and has taken up the work with great efficiency. The General Missionary has been relieved from the pastoral duties which he has borne before, and has larger opportunity for outside work which is pressing upon him. “Can we not have at least one pastor for each county?” is the painfully urgent plea of one of the faithful workers in this field.
The other field of mountain work lies along the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. Its base is the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, and the work extends far back into the mountains. Twenty-two counties are here accessible to our pastors and teachers. We have in this field two flourishing schools, one at Grand View and the other away up on the Cumberland plateau, at Pleasant Hill. Besides these schools, there are also churches at Grand View, Pleasant Hill, Pomona, Robbins, Slick Rock and Helenwood. Last year a new school was taken under the care of the Association at Sherwood, Tenn. We have thus surrounded this vast mountain region with our missionary forces. A General Missionary has been put into this field during the past year and the work opens upon him with constantly increasing magnitude. These people are Americans in every sense of the word, ninety-eight per cent of the population of some counties having been born where they still live. Those who come into the region from other parts of the same State they call foreigners. A missionary in writing recently from this field says: “I asked how many of them in the meeting had Bibles in their homes, and out of fifteen or eighteen families represented only two of them had Bibles.” Another missionary asked a girl seventeen years old if they had a book in her house. “A book, what is a book?” was the astonishing question. A book was described to her. “Oh! yes,” she said, “I believe there was one in the cabin before grandmam died, but it was lost so long ago I plumb forgot how it looked.”
This is our work. Only the edges of this great field have been gleaned. Will you not let us send our harvesters right into the heart of this ripening grain to gather in the name of our God?
The Indian work is chiefly in Nebraska and Dakota. The following is the summary for the year:
| Churches | 5 |
| Church members | 370 |
| Added during the year | 43 |
| Schools | 18 |
| Pupils in Schools | 608 |
| Missionaries and Teachers | 61 |
The report shows an encouraging increase in church membership. This means the redemption of souls from heathenism.
The three principal stations in the North are Santee, Oahe, and Fort Berthold. The work has been strengthened in each of these stations during the year. The Santee Normal School celebrated its seventeenth birthday during the past year. It was the first school of its kind established among this nation and its fruitful history abundantly proves the wisdom of its planting. Superior normal training is given the students in this school. The enrollment this year was 195. Twenty-six students were gathered in the theological department, many of whom will doubtless become missionaries to their own people. Pilgrim Church at Santee has enjoyed a year of prosperity. Eighteen have been added to the membership, eleven on the confession of their faith.
At Rosebud Agency three villages, including about 8,000 Indians, are open to missionary influence, and the work is being pushed with increased vigor. Jacob Good Dog, a converted Indian, was the Boniface in this field.
Among the Ponca Indians, in Nebraska, the work had been carried on with about the usual results.
Oahe.—This mission includes a training school and eleven out-stations on the Cheyenne and Grand rivers. Nineteen have been added to the Oahe church, on confession of their faith, during the year. A young man has been ordained as missionary to the Indians, and enters this field on Grand river for his life work. He has caught the spirit of Edwards, and Eliot and Brainard.
Fort Berthold has passed a year of prosperity. New work is opening in this field. I quote from a recent letter: “Since my last letter we have had very interesting and serious developments. The Gros Ventres and Mandan tribes, situated 20 and 40 miles from us, have little or no religious instruction, only as they come to us. These two tribes we are hoping some of our young men who are away at school will be ready soon to work with.”
S’kokomish Agency lies 1,000 miles to the west of Fort Berthold, in Washington Territory. The church here has also been blessed during the year with revival influences and four have united with it on confession of faith.
These Indian missions have been visited personally during the year by two of the Secretaries of the Association, and the work has been carefully inspected.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, still receives a fixed appropriation from the Association for the Indian department of its University, the Principal and teachers being appointed by the Association. Fourteen Apache girls have been among the pupils during the year—the first Apaches that have ever been gathered in our schools. They prove to be bright and docile pupils.
| Missions | 17 |
| Missionaries | 28 |
| Pupils enrolled | 1,044 |
| Hopeful conversions | 150 |
| Given up idolatry | 211 |
The report of the Superintendent is both joyful and sad. The numbers of those who have given up idol worship and those hopefully converted are the largest it has ever been our privilege to report; but the work has labored under great embarrassment in the serious diminution of funds. The resources for the current work were necessarily reduced by more than $3,000. New doors are opening in this Chinese work. The Japanese are now ripe for schools and churches, and a small beginning has been made in this direction. This work is open to us, and the command to enter is written in the imperative.
Only four years have passed since the Woman’s Bureau became a recognized department of our work, although it existed in reality for many years before. These years have abundantly proven its efficiency. It is useful especially along three lines: First, in assisting the women who are engaged as teachers to understand and grasp their work; again, in reaching the mothers and sisters of the pupils with purifying Christian influences, as they could not be reached in any other way; and also, in bringing information to the benevolent women of the North in regard to the special needs of their degraded and helpless sisters in the South. The shocking story of their degradation can be told only by women to women. Along all these lines of service the Woman’s Bureau has been especially successful during the past year. Its usefulness is greatly increased because it is an organic part of a larger Association, and thus gains a wider field of vision. The range of its operations is constantly enlarging.
| From Churches, Sabbath-schools, Missionary Societies and individuals | $189,483.39 |
| From Estates and Legacies | 52,266.73 |
| From Income, Sundry Funds | 10,561.07 |
| From Tuition and Public Funds | 28,964.81 |
| From Rents | 478.10 |
| From United States Government for Education of Indians | 17,357.21 |
| From Slater Fund, paid to Institutions | 7,650.00 |
| ——————— | |
| $306,761.31 |
The total disbursements for the year have been $298,783.80, a decrease in the expenditures of last year of $13,467. We entered this year with a debt of $5,783. The problem that taxed our skill and energies was this: How can we do the work which the Lord has put upon us, and at the same time not increase this debt? It looked, at times, as if it would prove impossible. For the month of February the receipts were $9,000 less than last year for the same month, and even so late as July there was a falling off of $17,000 for the month. The magnificent rally in September brought into the treasury a splendid sum, and the problem was solved.
Through carefully studied economy in the expenditures, by persistent efforts in the collecting field, and by the large and generous benevolences of the churches, all under God’s good providence, this has been accomplished.
The current expenses of the year are all paid; the debt with which we began the year is all cancelled, and we enter this new year with the good sum of $2,193.80 on the credit side of the ledger. But this will provide for the current expenses of the Association only about two days.
This has been a perilous experiment. The work has suffered, although none of it has been given up. The total number of missionaries has been reduced. Teachers and pastors have been overworked. New fields, “white to the harvest,” have been ungathered and left to possible blight. We praise God for this deliverance, but earnestly pray that we may not again need the chastening discipline of a like experience.
Such is the record of another year in the life of the A. M. A., as we read it from our human standpoint. The full significance of these simple facts as they stand related to the Divine plan for the redemption of the world, we cannot trace, nor need we. “What is written, is written.”
The fiscal year of “The California Chinese Mission”—the representative and agent of the A. M. A. in its work among the Chinese—closed August 31st. I devote the space accorded me, this month, in the Missionary, to a brief review of the year’s service. Statistics ought not to be dry when they set forth succinctly a gospel work and a record of souls saved. Each unit in each number stands for a story that angels stop to read—a gift, a labor, or a turning of the heart of God, that has to do with the eternal life.
Our missions have numbered 17; of these, 11 have been sustained during the entire year, and two others for eleven months. We have no vacation in our schools, unless forced to it by lack of funds, or by other causes which we cannot control.
The number of workers has varied from 23 to 28; the aggregate number of months of service being 309. Of these 91 are to be credited to our Chinese missionary helpers, and 218 to Americans. The total number of pupils enrolled is 1,044. The average enrollment month by month has been 461; the average attendance, 247. These numbers are smaller than those of last year, or of any preceding year for a great while; which comes of a serious diminution in another quarter which it has been out of our power to avert. Our resources for current work have been less than in previous years by more than $3,000—last year, $12,341.80; this year, $8,989.30. This statement is to date; I trust the amount will be increased somewhat before the books are finally closed. It was impossible to maintain the larger work with the smaller sum. I think that we can truly say: We have done what we could. The most serious loss is in the employment of Chinese missionary helpers; we ought to have had twice as many in the field as we were able to employ.
The expenditures on account of current work have been as follows: For salaries of superintendent, teachers and helpers, $6,222.80; for rents of mission houses, $2,103; for incidentals, $634.15; total, $8,959.95. The contributions made directly to the treasury of this Auxiliary amount, at this writing, to $2,989.30, of which about $250 were given expressly for permanent property.
While we note with sadness these diminutions, we record with gladness an increase at the point of largest interest, the point towards which all our endeavors tend. We find in our statistical columns, under the head of “Profess to have ceased from idol worship,” an aggregate of 211; under that of “Giving evidence of Christian character,” 150. These are larger numbers than we have ever before been privileged to place at the foot of these columns; and among those who give evidence of Christian character are many who a year ago either walked in utter darkness, or were refusing to let in on their hearts the dawning light of Christ. I cannot as yet state exactly the number who seem during this year to have accepted Christ, but I think it cannot be much less than fifty. If so, then the total number of whom this hope has been cherished since our work began, cannot be much less than 650.
These encouragements are due, under God, very largely to some tentative evangelistic work which we have undertaken. The results are such as lead us to pray for the privilege of enlarging this branch of our service and prosecuting it with greater vigor. We are praying—and I think with faith and unity—that God would raise up among us some one on whom we can bestow this special gift. I look for an answer. I expect that during this new fiscal year, upon which we have entered, the providence of God will open the way, and the Spirit of God will beckon us on to a system of evangelization which will reach to all our missions and will pass beyond them, making the wilderness to blossom as the rose.
Among the “new departures” of the year is the beginning of work among the Japanese. The first attempt to Christianize the Japanese in California was made in connection with the First Cong. Church in this city. The first Japanese baptized were received to that church; but the work was suffered to lapse, and other denominations have supplied our mortifying lack of service. A beginning has again been made, this time in Oakland. Mr. N. Kusaki, a young Japanese who was graduated last summer from the Pacific Theological Seminary, led off in the undertaking. He still assists in it, though it has now been placed in the hands of an American lady as the principal teacher. It is an experiment at present, but gives good promise of success.
Another interesting development, which, however, dates back a little more than a year, is the Foreign Missionary Society organized by our Chinese brethren. This movement was spontaneous; no urgency or even suggestion from me occasioned it. It was put into almost complete working order before I was made aware of it. Its primary object is to sustain missionary operations in South China, the provinces from which our brethren came. But its watchword is nothing less than “China for Christ.” They have already gathered nearly $250, contributed not from an abundance, but out of deep poverty.
Another point of interest is the marked change in the spiritual atmosphere of some of our missions—notably those at Stockton, Petaluma and Oroville. It seems to foretoken a “wide and effectual door” soon to open before us, which God grant that we may have the men and the means to enter for a campaign aggressive and victorious.
WM. C. POND.