air always, and subsisted on flesh almost exclusively, consumption was almost unknown among them. Many reasons for its prevalence now might be given, but one undoubtedly is the spitting over everything by the sick, while closely packed in one small room. The sputa dry, rise as dust, are inhaled by the others, and in that way the sick give this dread disease to the well. Many middle-aged and old persons, who do not have consumption, cough for a great many years; apparently from the irritating effects on the air-passages of the lungs occasioned by drawing such quantities of smoke into them. Yet many such live to a good old age. The mortality in any Indian settlement is many times that in a white community of equal numbers.

The pure-blood Indians are slowly decreasing in number; the mixed-bloods are rapidly increasing. Owing to the great preponderance of men on the frontier, many white men marry Indian and mixed-blood women. As the latter also have each eighty acres of land, and if they remove to White Earth they and all the children will be rationed for years, while the man in addition will get oxen, cows, plows, wagons, sleds, a house, in right of his wife, etc., these things have their influ

ence.

DESTRUCTIVENESS OF INTEMPERANCE.

As is well known, liquor has an attractiveness for the Indians and does destructive work among them; but white men also suffer in that way. Like all races of wild men, the Indians first rapidly and greedily learn the vices of the superior race; and only later, slowly and with extreme difficulty, they acquire their virtues. Thus the excessive use of liquor, the excessive use of tobacco, all such things, they eagerly seize; and therefore necessarily, unless Christianity be taught to counteract such things, unless there be a Christian mission to protect them, the contact with the superior race, and with what is called civilization, is death to the Indian, death physical and moral.

One illustration only I may give. Before the town of Grand Rapids was founded, there lived near its site an unusually progressive band of Indians, called the Rabbit band from a patriarch of that name. They numbered perhaps sixty to

eighty. They had houses, stoves, good gardens and fields, and a great deal of stock, horses and cattle. They made much hay and sold it to the lumbermen, and, for heathen Indians, made great progress and were very comfortable. There came a white man from down the river and planted a saloon about two miles from them. He was the first settler in Grand Rapids, I think. In about two years half of that Rabbit band were dead, and the survivors were wretched shivering vagabonds, while the white man had all their former wealth. frozen to death when drunk; some were drowned by the upsetting of their canoes, when they were drunk; some lay down in the snow and took pneumonia; some were burned to death. The saloon-keeper had all their cattle, horses, stoves, and household goods; and those who remained alive had only an old blanket each.

Some were

When the white men reached Leech lake, the town they reared on its banks had one drug store, one hardware store, two dry goods and provision stores, and seven saloons, one of which was capacious enough to contain whisky sufficient to poison all the 1,100 Indians of Leech lake. It was on a high bluff overlooking their lake, accessible from every part of it by their canoes. It was a deadly trap set for the simple natives, right in their midst, by their strong white brother. The civilization of the white man, without the Gospel, is death to the simple Indian.

THE OJIBWAY LANGUAGE.

The children who have been brought up in the schools speak English; but those who have not been so taught, find our language excessively difficult and never learn it. Taking the people generally, Ojibway is almost exclusively their language; but among the mixed-bloods French also is very extensively used.

The Ojibway language is a most beautiful, copious, and expressive one. It is most euphonious; there is not a harsh or guttural sound in it. All its sounds are perfectly familiar to us, but many of those in our language the Ojibways cannot utter at all. Strange to say, their language is very highly inflected. The Ojibway verb, for instance, is much more highly inflected than the Greek verb; it has whole conjugations of

which we in our English language know nothing. Nearly all parts of speech are turned into verbs and conjugated. Any idea which is expressed in our language can be perfectly well expressed in theirs. Being so highly inflected, and with many particles variously dovetailed in, it is, though so beautiful, and really a work of art, a most difficult language to acquire. A learned ecclesiastic, who told me he spoke nine languages, including a little of this, told me he would rather learn the other eight than the single Ojibway. The greatest authority on Indian languages in our country some time ago made the statement that any verb in the Algonquin tongue is habitually used in a million different forms. The wonder is how such a rude people ever constructed or ever handed down such a highly inflected language. To one who studies it, it is as great a surprise, to use the words of another, "as it would be to come on a beautifully sculptured Corinthian temple out on one of our prairies."

In this paper I have left out altogether everything about the mission to the Ojibways, the ten congregations, and the eleven Indian clergy; though the history of Christianity among these people would be the more interesting narrative of the two.

CIVILIZATION AND CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE

OJIBWAYS IN MINNESOTA.*

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND HENRY B. WHIPPLE, D. D., LL. D.,
BISHOP OF MINNESOTA.

Gentlemen of the Historical Society: It is a great pleasure to tell you the story of our missions to the Ojibways, whom I have learned to love as the brown children of our Heavenly Father. The North American Indian is the noblest type of a wild man in the world. He recognizes a Great Spirit; has an unwavering faith in a future life, a passionate love for his children, and will lay down his life unflinchingly for his people. I have never known an Indian to tell me a lie,—a characteristic of the Indian character to which the officers of the United States Army will bear testimony.

The Ojibways belong to the Algonquin division of the aboriginal American people, which included all the Indians from the Atlantic to the forests of Minnesota, north of the Cherokees, except the Six Nations of New York. Their language is both beautiful and interesting, and exhibits the nicest shades of meaning. The verbs have more inflections than in the Greek language. Perhaps the Epistles of St. Paul are the crux to test a language, but in that respect the richness of the Ojibway tongue cannot be exceeded. Polygamy has existed with them to a much less degree than among other Indians.

At the time of my consecration, Bishop Kemper, honored by all men, said to me, "Dear brother, do not forget the poor Indians who are committed to your care and whom you may gather into the fold of Christ." Three weeks after coming to Minnesota, in 1860, I visited the Indian country. The Indians had fallen to a depth of degradation unknown to their heathen fathers. Our Indian affairs were at their worst.

An address given before the Minnesota Historical Society, May 2, 1898.

The Indians were regarded by politicians as a key to unlock the public treasury, and even Christian folk said, in the language of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Much as I had heard of their sorrow and wretchedness, I was appalled by the revelation of my first visit. As we entered the forest, we found a dead Indian by the wayside, who had been killed in a drunken fight. A few miles farther on we came to a wigwam where the mother was stripping the outer bark from a pine tree that she might give the pitch to her children to satisfy the gnawings of hunger. Almost at every step we were met by some sign of the existing degradation.

At Gull lake, James Lloyd Breck, of blessed memory, had gathered a little band of Christian Indians. He had left them to establish another mission at Leech lake. The Indians while maddened with drink had driven him and his family from the country. They afterward told me that white men had assured them that their grand medicine was as good as any religion, and that if they did not want the missionary they might drive him away. I held services in the log church, and I remember how deeply my heart was touched by the devotion of a few Christian Indians as I heard for the first time the services of the Church in their musical language.

That same night the deadly fire-water made a pandemonium, and I could only say, "How long, O Lord?" But I then settled the question that, whatever success or failure might attend my efforts, I would never turn my back upon the heathen at any door. Friends within and without my diocese advised me to have nothing to do with Indian missions, saying that a young bishop could not afford to make a failure in his work. I carried it where I have learned to carry all troubles, and I promised my Saviour that, God helping me, I would never cease my efforts for this wronged race. The Rev. E. S. Peake was a missionary residing at Crow Wing, and the Rev. John Johnson Enmegahbowh, ordained a deacon by Bishop Kemper, was living at Gull lake. I spent the following summer visiting all the scattered bands of the Ojibways, and holding services. After one of them, a chief asked me if the Jesus of whom I spoke was the same Jesus that my white brother talked to when he was angry or drunk. The head chief of Sandy lake said to me: "You have spoken