forming a church at Standing Rock, for which a building is now
completed.

This record is certainly gratifying and shows that the Association
appreciates the emergency, and is striving to meet it, so far as the
means put in its hands allow. But your committee feel also that never
before was there so great an opportunity as now brought before the
Christians of this land, and especially our own denomination, for work
among the Indians.

The relations of the Government and of the churches in Indian work are
now unusually harmonious and kindly. The present Administration is
thoroughly in sympathy with missionary operations, and will do nothing
to impair their efficiency. We believe it to be sincerely actuated by a
desire to promote the best welfare of the Indians, and ready to
co-operate with all good people in efforts in this direction. It aims to
educate every Indian child. We desire to see this done, and believe that
when the Government assumes, as it should, the primary education of all
Indians of school age, we shall be called on to turn our efforts to a
much larger work for direct evangelization.

Our opportunity is enlarging further by the breaking down of the old
pagan prejudices of the Indians. The testimony of all the workers on the
field is to this effect. The Indians are desirous of living as white
men. They are rapidly losing their distinctive Indian ideas and are
imbibing the notions of their white neighbors. This is seen in their
burials, which now are not uniformly, as of old, on scaffolds, but are
more and more interments. It is shown in their feeling and behavior when
death comes into their households. They no longer fill their houses with
hideous outcries, but instead seek the missionaries to inquire about the