468 TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI [eth. ANN. 46 



employment. The principles of the Christian religion would of 

 course at the same time be taught, but the principal feature of these 

 establishments, as soon as the boys and girls were able to work, should 

 be industry, principally in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. The 

 great errors into which missionaries have fallen are that they make 

 the observance of religious duties the sole object and neglect the 

 others. 13 Also their zeal in this induces them to interfere with the 

 present government, domestic arrangements, and superstitions of the 

 grown Indians, thereby incurring their enmity, disgust, or revenge. 

 The present grown-up generation should be left entirely alone, not 

 interfered with, no attempt made to convert them, or even induce 

 them to work. It is useless, inexpedient, and subverts the general 

 ends. The first thing a missionary does is to abuse the Indian for 

 having a plurality of wives. 



Would the good missionary be so charitable as to clothe, feed, 

 and shelter the supernumerary woman ; should all the Indians follow 

 his advice and have but one wife ? Will the Indian consent to sepa- 

 rate his children from their mothers, or to turn both adrift to please 

 the whim of any man? This advice is uncharitable, unjust, and can 

 only be excused on the plea of ignorance of their customs and feel- 

 ing. The next difference that arises is that the priests take away 

 all their charms, medicines, and idols, and present them their cross 

 instead. Now as far as any of these old Indian reprobates can 

 conceive the idea of the cross, it is nothing more than a different 

 kind of idol in exchange for theirs. AVhat in the name of common 

 sense could induce old priests, in every other respect sane and well 

 informed, to think that by administering baptism and giving an 

 Indian the symbol of the cross they have thus converted them, we 

 can not imagine. If the Indians believe anything thereby, it is that 

 the image or medal possesses some intrinsic supernatural power to pre- 

 vent them from personal harm or give them success in war, known 

 to be efficacious by the whites, and is to them in fact nothing more 

 than a different kind of medicine bird or medicine ball. Can they 

 (the priests) suppose that an Indian, only a grade above the level 

 of the brute in intelligence, could without education form a correct 

 idea of the ordinance of Baptism, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the 

 Crucifixion and Atonement and other abstruse points in which even 

 whites, with all their education, can not agree? 



These grown Indians are too ignorant and obstinate to think, too 

 lazy to work, too proud to be instructed, and their formed habits 

 too savage and firmly rooted to give way before the meek truths of 

 the gospel. All such attempts must prove abortive; it is anticipat- 



13 Here Denig mildly protests against the unreasonable emphasis placed on the ob- 

 servance of religious rites by the missionaries to the exclusion of other duties. 



