188 THE METLAKATLA MISSION IN DANGER 



teaching and the work of conversion. The teachers often lack 

 in practicality what they make up in devotion to the ideal. 

 Nevertheless it would be folty to deny that these missions have 

 done much good in their way, and will continue to do so. Of 

 them the scoffer says : " The missionaries live at their ease and 

 do nothing for it but teach dogmas which the Indian cannot 

 understand, and train girls to be good housewives, who, when 

 their education is completed, will be sold by their heathen rel- 

 atives to some miner or trader. When the mission is closed for 

 want of funds or otherwise, the converts relapse into evil ways, 

 and in a little while their last state is worse than their first." 

 That there have been instances justifying to some degree this 

 harsh view, every one familiar with Indian missions will admit. 



The other method is to fit the Indians to provide for them- 

 selves and for the mission by industrial training, self-denial, and 

 hard work, shielding them in the early stages as we shield our 

 own children from contact with evil men and things until, stim- 

 ulated both by their own material interests and by the truths 

 of the gospel, in the course of time and growth they shall be able 

 to stand alone, men among men, to fight the battles of life. This 

 is the method of Hampton and Carlisle, whose most conspic- 

 uous exponent on the uncivilized frontier is the Rev. William 

 Duncan, of Metlakatla. Annette island, Alaska. This gentleman 

 has given forty years of his life to the work among the Tsimsian 

 Indians, first at Metlakatla, on the British Columbia side of the 

 line. Through a most injudicious exercise of religious narrow- 

 mindedness, well known, but of which there is insufficient space 

 to speak here, the Indians were obliged to abandon their homes, 

 church, and school and much other property and move over into 

 American territory at Annette island to obtain freedom of re- 

 ligious worship. Here, several years later, Congress granted 

 them the use of the island, and, in confidence that they were at 

 last safe from interference, under Duncan's direction they went 

 heartily to work. His plan was, in brief, to keep the colony 

 together and free from undesirable elements, liquor and vice ; to 

 teach them to utilize the resources of the region to support 

 themselves and their families by work ; to build good houses 

 and maintain family life as known to civilization, and to teach 

 the English branches and manual training to the young people. 



In pursuance of this ideal, Mr Duncan put his own means and 

 contributions of friends into the outfit of a salmon cannery which 

 has been worked by the Indians, as well as a saw -mill and other 



