nger, a very touching
story was told of a boy torturing himself for the recovery of
his sick mother. At the close of the Mohonk Conference, two years ago,
our committee went to President Cleveland to petition in regard to
methods. He said that he sympathized with all our methods and ideas.
"But," he said, "gentlemen, you may do all you can at Mohonk, I may do
all I can here in the White House, and Congress may do all that they
can over there, but," and he turned and picked up a Bible, "gentlemen,
after all, that book has got to settle the Indian problem."
(Applause.) And the President was right. Before you can do anything
for the preservation of the Indian you've got to give him a new hope,
a new salvation. I have studied many tribes, and have never found a
tribe or village of Indians or a single Indian civilized before he was
Christianized.

The speaker next considered the question whether the Christianization
of the Indians was possible. This he answered by the case of the 400
Indians taken captive in the Sioux war which followed the Minnesota
massacre of 1862. In the fall of that year, a missionary went to their
prison, and in the next six months taught 392 to read and established
a church with 295 members. Subsequently President Lincoln pardoned all
but 39 and the survivors went among the Sioux, and the speaker
considered the ten Christian churches and 2,000 Christians among the
40,000 Sioux to be owing to this church of prisoners. In Dakota, every
one of the 40,000 Indians was ready to receive the gospel.

On Mr. Moody's asking how much he wanted, he said that it took $400 to
start a station, and $300 a year to keep it up. He then related a very
pathetic story of an old Indian who traveled 150 miles across the
Territory seven times to get a missionary sent among his people. The
difficulty in getting one arose from the society sending the
missionaries, whose debt was so large that the executive board had
refused to send out any more. ("Board wants more faith," put in Mr.
Moody.) The old man finally went back to his people, saying sadly:
"They must die in their darkness; the Christian people of America
haven't interest enough in the poor dying Indian to try and help him."

Mr. Moody, who had been apparently deep in thought ever since the
speaker had mentioned the sum necessary to start a station, now broke
out, "Got a mission started where that old man wanted it?" in such an
earnest way that it brought down the ho