Part 7

Why had they come? What were their real motives? Did they mean only good to the valley? It took many months of devoted service on the part of the women to answer these queries.

Did sickness ravage some home where many little ones were crowded into two or three rooms? Was some man crushed by the heavy logs while at work? There the nurse friend came with her comforts and her skill to fight for the life of the sufferers, to watch beside them during the long, chill nights of pain--to pray that the healing power of the Christ might be manifested.

The two friends found that the valley had no Sunday-school or regular preaching service to mark the Lord's day. Occasionally an itinerant preacher held meetings, but Sunday after Sunday came and went in the valley with no religious service whatever.

They found that the children received but poor schooling, and little or no training for life.

They found mothers who knew only the monotony of drudgery and were eager to share in the fuller life.

They found the wide use of corn whisky to be sapping the moral and physical strength of the men, and that everywhere among them lawlessness prevailed, even though some were anxious for better things.

Through the love-service of the two friends and those who followed them, and the co-operation of the people, the valley to-day is transformed even in its outward appearance.

Drinking has disappeared except in sporadic cases. Lawlessness is under ban. A great, throbbing, new life has come to stimulate and inspire not only the valley, but its environs.

Here the reclaiming power of Christian service meets with fullest response. A church and Sunday-school (also four outlying schools), men's Bible classes, several Endeavor Societies and King's Daughters' Circles, Boy Scouts, Girls' clubs--the ministry of a hospital, schools and dormitories, all are spreading the regenerating forces and bringing in a new day of hope, opportunity, and efficiency to this valley, and to hundreds of others throughout the Southland.

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All along the fine military road built by Spain in Porto Rico--and still more on the bridle paths that pass for roads in much of the island--may be seen little brown shacks, or huts, made of old boards and tin cans flattened out, and thatched with palm leaves. In these the people live.

"We had sixty names on the waiting list of the Missionary Home in Porto Rico, and money had come so we could take in a few more, and we--the superintendent and I--went to try to find the most needy. Our search took us into a dreadful, slimy patio, where we found a grandmother and three little girls. We could take but two of them. The oldest was thirteen--we knew she would soon be too old to be helped at all if we did not take her now. The second was under ten, and the youngest was three and a half. We could not bear to leave the dead mother's baby, so we took the oldest and the youngest, and promised the second girl that we would come for her as soon as possible. They lived in a room nine by twelve feet in size, in which twenty-two people slept under some old clothes. Do you wonder that she fell on her knees begging 'Oh, lady, take me, too!'"

"The next day the grandmother was taken ill and had to be sent to the hospital, and on Tuesday when I went to the patio again the girl had disappeared.

"Three months later we found her, beaten and bruised from head to foot, at the door of the Home. She had been in a place where care and shelter were expected, but when the poor, home-sick girl cried, they abused her and then put her out on the street, and somehow she found her way to our Home.

"You would enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came--a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ready herself, slipped across the room, whispered to Francesca, took off her shoes and stockings, pushed her--but very gently--down on her knees for the evening prayer, and then covered her up in bed as softly and lovingly as a mother." [Footnote: In Southern Seas--Alice M. Guernsey--Women's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

With soft, Insistent regularity came the beat of the tom-tom over the hills, calling the Indians to the Medicine Lodge dance. There was something weirdly fascinating in the reiterated turn, turn, that carried almost a hypnotic power as hour after hour it called through the stillness.

Wrapped in their bright blankets--men on horseback--whole families in wagons--the Indians passed round the curve of the road, to disappear in the big, open depression just beyond, where the Medicine Lodge was in camp. There was a group of rounded tents in which families and guests were prepared to live the four days and nights during which the rites of the dance lasted. It was an untidy and disorderly camp, with children and dogs tumbling about--women kneeling to arrange small strips of meat to cook over the bit of wood fire on the ground, or attending to other home-keeping matters. Dirt, flies, children, and dogs were everywhere.

A few feet away stretched the long tent where the ceremony of the dance was to take place. They had taken their places and were ready for the ceremony--mostly men, a few women, a little girl of nine years, a young mother of twenty whose baby two weeks old was held by an aged grandmother, who crouched at the end.

All were dressed in beaded finery. All wore moccasins--some men had long beaded stoles--others wonderful beaded waistcoats. The women wore long beaded hair ornaments reaching almost to the ground, as well as strings of beads and other ornaments.

The faces of nearly all were marked with spots of bright red or long streaks of yellow and red. The same color was used in the parting of the hair.

They sat on the ground in two long rows, facing each other; back of each, attached to the wood trellis of the tent, hung fur pouches of various shapes and sizes, ornamented with beads and containing the "medicine," which was some trifling article--a bit of bone, stone, seed, or whatever, through some special circumstance, had come to be accepted by them as their charm, or "medicine," to ward off sickness and evil--to bring them the good offices and protection of the good spirits.

The four or more medicine chiefs, wearing wonderfully ornamented, apron-like front pieces, stand together at one end for a few moments while one and then another addresses the audience. The medicine men then, with drum and rattle, keeping step, lead in the dance down the length of the tent and back. One by one the audience, from their crouching positions on the ground, as they are summoned or moved, join in the dance, swaying while they keep step back and forth for hours at a time, to the sound of drum and rattle. Those being initiated, as were the young mother and the little girl, were expected not to give up, if possible, until the end.

The dance is maintained for parts of four days and nights, almost incessantly, except for the interruption of the feast given by some members. The close is marked by the utter exhaustion of many of the dancers, and sad immorality accompanies its progress.

Can the Gospel of Christ lift such as these, with a thousand generations of savagery back of them?

Let another picture answer.

* * * * *

Almost half a mile from the Medicine Lodge camp, on a rise of ground, stands a little Christian church--plain but beautiful. From it seem to flow visibly those purifying and redeeming forces that are destined to transform the darkened lives of these Indian children of the great All-father.