cts, and as truly heathen as were their fathers centuries
before them, were then supposed to be living east of the Mississippi
River. The first mission was among the Creeks and Cherokees. Three
missionaries and their wives began the work. In character it was a
compound of mission boarding school and agricultural college. In
eighteen months, the Indian boys could read the Bible, and nearly a
score of them could write; five converted heathen were members of the
church.

Next, in 1818, missions were begun among the Chickasaws and the
Choctaws. Here, also, the first work was that of the school. So eager
were the Choctaws for instruction, that eight children were brought
160 miles across the country before the missionaries were ready for
them, and in one year from that date the Choctaw Nation voted to
devote to the schools their entire annuity of _six thousand dollars_,
from the sale of their lands to the United States.

The missionaries were subject to unceasing hindrances from renegade
whites, who are always on the borders of civilization, and have
usually been the enemies of missionaries.

But among the Cherokees no year passed without conversions. Those who
appeared to the missionaries so wild and forbidding that they were
received with fear, came under the gospel power and were clothed and
in their right mind. In six years the Church had largely increased.
Indians traveled a score of miles to attend the services. As yet,
there was no Cherokee written language. This mission was eight years
old when the four gospels were translated into the Cherokee tongue,
and in three or four years more, one-half the nation could read.
There were now among the Cherokees and the Choctaws, eighteen
missionary stations.

In 1826, the Board began work among eight other tribes in different
parts of the country.

It next took charge of the Stockbridge tribe, whose ancestors had
enjoyed the ministry of the celebrated Dr. Jonathan Edwards. They
were originally in Massachusetts. They were pushed back hundreds of
miles to Central New York, then pushed further back hundreds of miles
to Indiana; then pushed still further back hundreds of miles to
Michigan, and finally pushed back once more and allowed to rest in
the remote West--in Minnesota. During all these cruel removals, they
had themselves kept alive a school, and had among them exemplary
Christians. Now, after one hundred years of such history, the
American Board put a mission among th