III. The Evangelical Missionary Fields

1. America: The objects of missionary activity in America are (1) the aborigines; (2) the Africans who have been brought there as slaves and their descendants; (3) Asiatic immigrants. The aborigines fall into two main groups: the Eskimos in the northern arctic regions, and the Indians, who, from Alaska and Canada, are spread in numerous tribes over this quarter of the globe. The imported population consists partly of Negroes, who have settled principally in the United States and the West Indies, but are also found in Central America and in Guiana; and partly of Hindu and Chinese coolies who have been introduced as laborers into the West Indies and the colonial possessions in the northern part of South America. The other Asiatics, Chinese and Japanese, are found almost exclusively in the United States and in the western part of Canada. See Home Missions.

The population of Greenland, consisting of about 10,500 Eskimos, is entirely Christianized; this occurred as well through the Danish mission begun in 1721 by Hans Egede (q.v.) as through 1. The that of the United Brethren, begun by

Arctic Mattbseus Stach in 1733. Since the spe- Regions. cific mission work bas been completed the United Brethren ceded in 1900 its six stations to the Danish Church and withdrew from this, its second oldest missionary field. In the neighboring Labrador, also inhabited by about 1,500 Eskimos, the United Brethren have worked exclusively since 1771. In six stations they have, with unspeakable patience, collected 1,300 Christians. The third compact Eskimo population, numbering about 1,500-already much intermixed with the Indians, who number about 19,000-is found in Alaska. The mission here was begun only in 1877 by the Presbyterian Church in the United States under the leadership of Sheldon Jackson (q.v.). There are now ten American missions in operation, including that of the United Brethren, reporting in thirty-one stations about 8,500 Eskimos and Indians under their care. One of the most noteworthy is that of the independent lay missionary, William Duncan; b. at Beverley, Yorkshire, England, April, 1832; determined to by a foreign missionary in Dec., 1853; went to Highbury College for two years, and in 1856 to British Columbia for his life-work among the Tsimsbian Indians, living at Metlakahtla (17 m. s.e. of Fort Simpson, of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the border of Alaska). He reduced their language to writing, preached religion in it, and so was the means of Christianizing and civilizing the tribe. The zeal of Bishop William Ridley, who made Metlakahtla the seat of his diocese in 1879, was unfortunately in the direction of vestments and ritual to the amazement and misunderstanding of the simple-minded Indians, and as the bishop and

Duncan could not agree, he sought from Congress " the Annette Islands, in Alexander Archipelago, Southeastern Alaska, as a reservation for the use of the Metlakahtla Indians and such other of the Alaska nations as may join them," and on Aug. 7, 1887, he transferred his converts to New Metlar kahtla. The official name of the church is " The Christian Church of Metlakahtla." It belongs to no denomination. No part of the Bible has been translated into their language, though the preaching is done in it. There is, however, a translation of the Book of Common Prayer by Bishop Ridley.

British North America has a population of about 120,000 Eskimos and Indians, almost a third of whom are Evangelical Christians, a twelfth part being incorporated in the colonial churches. Although the English, through the Hudson Bay Com- pany, controlled the northeastern part !d. British of the land from 1669, and in 1763

North conquered the southern part or French America. Canada, it was only in 1820 that John

West, a pious chaplain of the Hudson Bay Company, succeeded in starting a mission among the Indians. This mission, taken up by the Church Missionary Society, spread in the course of eighty years from Lake Superior, on the southwest, to the Herschel Islands at the boundary of Alaska, on the northwest, and has now, in forty-one principal stations, divided into ten episcopal dioceses, 15,000 Christian Indians and Eskimos, many of them living in well-ordered and flourishing communities. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Canadian Methodists and Presbyterians, with their forty stations, are also engaged in this work. In the near future the Christianization of the Indians will have been accomplished in the entire Dominion of Canada. Mission work is also carried on, but with little success, among the Chinese in British Columbia.

The remnant of the aboriginal Indian population, now reduced to about 237,224 (census of 1900) and scattered over a great part of the Union, are a living reproach to the Christian white settlers, who by their shameful conduct have 8. United been the essential cause of the ever

States. recurring failure of Indian missions so hopefully begun by John Eliot (q.v.) in 1646, and continued with great fidelity by the Mayhew family for five generations (see Mayhew, Jonathan;