tery
and their Association, their scores of churches and their many Sabbath
Schools, their Y.M.C.A. and their Y.P.S.C.E. associations, their
missionary societies and other beneficent organizations, their farms
and homes, their present pure, happy condition, and contrasted it with
their former superstition, nakedness and filthy teepee life, we sang
joyfully;

Behold! What wondrous works
Have, by the Lord, been wrought;
Behold! What precious souls
Have, by His blood, been bought.

As the shades of evening drew on, the different bands held their
farewell meetings in their teepees. There were sounds of sweet
music--joyous ones--echoing and re-echoing over the prairies--"He
leadeth me, Oh precious thought," "Nearer, my God to thee," "Blessed
Assurance, Jesus hath given"--until the whole was blended in one grand
refrain:--

"Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of Christian minds
Is like to that above."

The Council Tent was in darkness! The lights were out in the teepees.
The whole camp was wrapped in solid slumber. And as we sunk to rest in
our bed of new-mown hay, we breathed a prayer for the slumbering Sioux
around us; May the Cloud, by day, and the Pillar of Fire, by night,
guide the Sioux Nation through the Red Sea of Savagery, superstition
and sin to the Promised Land of Christian Civilization.

The Native Missionary Society.

It is well worth a journey to the land of the Dakotas to witness an
anniversary gathering of their Woman's Missionary Society. You enter
the great Council Tent. It is thronged with these nut-brown women of
the plains. A matronly woman welcomes you, and presides with grace and
dignity. A bright and beautiful young maiden--a graduate of Santee or
Good Will--controls the organ and sweetly leads the service of song.
And oh how they do sing! You cannot understand the words, but the airs
are familiar. Now it is Bishop Coxe's "Latter Day" sung with vim in the
Indian tongue;

"We are living, we are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time;
In an age on ages telling,
To be living is sublime."

And now some sedate matron rises and reads a carefully written paper,
contrasting their past, vile teepee life of ignoble servitude to Satan,
with their present, pure life of glorious liberty in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then they sing, so earnestly for they are thinking of their
pagan sisters of the wild tribes