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1831.]

UNITED KINGDOM. even with the utmost care to carry them into effect?

[Sir James Mackintosh, M. P.-at the Same. Instance of High Talent and Character in a Negro Slave.

In the Island of St. Thomas was a Negro, a Slave, who had very early in life shewed considerable ability: he was educated, and became eminent for his knowledge of architecture and engineering; and, on this account, he was engaged in the construction of some of the most important public works: he was also skilled in five different languages: he was, however, still a Slave, and so were all his family. By his skill, industry, and perseverance, he amassed some money; and purchased-his own freedom? No; but that of her who was much Idearer to him-his Wife. He again proceeded with his industry and economy, until he was enabled to purchase his own freedom, which, as he was so valuable a Slave on the estates of the King (of Denmark), was rated at a very high price. After this, one after anther, he purchased the freedom of his six children; and continuing the exercise of his talents, he died at the very advanced age of nearly 100 years, leaving his family in independent circumstances; and affording, in his own career, a splendid instance of the advantages of early instruction. [James Montgomery, Esq.—at Brit. and For. Sch.An.

NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS.

Kahkewaquonaby's Account of the Chip

pewas.

It will have been seen by our report of the Anniversaries in the last Number, that this Young Chief addressed several of the Public Meetings. We subjoin his First Address, which was delivered at the Wesleyan Anniversary; and parts of his Speeches at other Meetings: these Speeches, though, of course, in the strain of his First Address, were varied by such appropriate matter as to shew much intelligence of mind.

My Christian Brothers and Sisters, I shake hands with you all this day in my heart. I feel, my Christian Friends, that your God, whom you have been worshipping and talking about this day, is my God also. I feel that the same Religion, which warms your hearts and makes you glad, warms my heart, and makes me glad also. I am come a great way, my

White Brothers and Sisters: I am come from over the great waters, from the wil derness of America. I come at the request of my Brothers and Sisters in that land who love the Great Spirit, to shake hands with you, and to see what God is doing among you. I feel very glad in my heart that God has preserved me, and brought me here to see your faces. You are all strangers to me, that is, I mean, personally; but you are not strangers to me in the Religion of Christ. I have the same hope that you have; the same hope that, when my body falls to the ground, I shall go to the Lord Jesus Christ: and I hope I shall see all my brothers and sisters in the Kingdom of God.

Suffer me to tell you, that the Lord hath done great things for poor Indians in the wilds of Upper Canada, in America. The poor Indians have been long time sitting in darkness, and praying to the sun and moon, and many other things that are no gods; not seeing the good things that you see; not enjoying the good things that you enjoy, and that have done you so much good. But through the labours of good men, good Methodist People, who came to us at Credit River, and pointed out to us the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, these poor Indian People, who are the remnant of a once powerful Nation, were made to rejoice in good tidings, and brought to tread in the ways of God. Before this time we knew nothing of the Great Spirit: we knew that there was a Great Spirit, but we did not know him aright: we did not pray to the Great Spirit aright: we did not know how to Worship Him aright: we did not come to Him by Jesus Christ. But, about eight years ago, some Missionary People, with the Word of God in their hands and with the Holy Spirit in their hearts, came to us, and sat down by our wigwams, and told us what Jesus Christ had done for us, and how He died for poor Indians as well as for White People; and that if we would go to Him, He would have mercy upon us. These things that they told us about our sins, made us at first very sorry; but many went to the Great Spirit, and He had mercy on them, and took the sickness away from their hearts, and made them to rejoice very much, and gave them a good hope of going to heaven above.

Since I have been hearing these good Brethren talk about Missionary Efforts, and what God has done for men, and for

the places where the Black People live, I have said in my heart, "God bless you, and bless all you do, for the poor Heathen, and in the Cause of Missions!" I have no doubt you feel glad in your hearts that you have been the means in the hands of God of saving some poor people from destruction. And now you see before your eyes the effects of the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. In my early days, I was brought up a Heathen: I was taught to run in the woods, to handle the bow, and to hunt the game: I was taught to worship the Heathen Gods. But, about eight years ago, I was led to attend a Methodist Meeting: I understood a little English; and when I heard the Minister, I thought he was speaking to me all the time, and telling me all my sins that I had committed. Then I began to be very sorry in my heart: I was made to fall down on my knees: I prayed to God almost all the night; and, just as daylight came, God spoke peace to my heart. Oh what joy came into me then! Then I remembered my poor relations and my poor countrymen; and with tears in my eyes, I went and told them what God had done for my soul. And then they began to weep also, and to call on the GreatSpirit; and we worshipped Him together. And soon the whole tribe of my people all fell down and worshipped the Great Spirit in the Name of Jesus Christ. And this good work is going on hundreds of miles back in the wilderness: where no White Man is, the voice of prayer and of praise is heard from poor Indians, made to rejoice in the knowledge of Jesus Christ by His Gospel.

I thank you, Christian Friends, that you have sent Missionaries; and I thank God that He has blessed you in this great Cause. I have a great deal to say; but I have travelled all the night, and have not slept any on the way, so I do not feel as if I could say a great deal now. But let me tell you, Brothers and Sisters, we were in a miserable state before we found Jesus. We roved about from place to place; we had no village, no good houses, no sheep, no oxen, none of these good things: but when we got Jesus Christ, we began to desire these good things; and as soon as the Lord visited our souls, we got Societies, and we built log-houses, and we formed villages, and we got sheep and oxen, and we began to enjoy the comforts of life. And let me tell you, Christian Friends, that, in order to do good to poor Indians, you

must take them Religion. Some men tried to convert them by making them farmers, and giving them oxen and ploughs, without the Religion of Christ: this has never succeeded among Indians. But when their hearts are made sensible that they are sinners, and when they find that Jesus Christ the Son of God died for Indians as well as for White Men, THEN they are prepared to be civilized, and to have all the comforts of life. Before this, they will not; but, like the deer in the woods, they wish to rove about: they must get Christ first, and then they will wish for all these things.

My Christian Friends, I find that the Religion of Christ is the same all over the world: the same love, the same happy feelings I have felt here this afternoon, I have also felt in the wilderness of América: I have the same love in my heart here and there. Some people in Canada tell us we are deceived: they say, “How can we know that God is ours? How can we have him in our hearts ? How can we feel happy in Religion? It must be all delusion and fancy." But I say, “If this be a delusion, it is a happy delusion let me be deluded this way, if I may be happy here and then go to heaven !"

I shake hands with you, my Brethren and Sisters in Christ Jesus. This is all I have to say to you at present.

-Before we heard from the good Missionaries the Words of Jesus, we were very little, poor, and needy. Our eyes were blind, and we could not see. There appeared to be a great wall between us; so that, while you had the light shining upon you on one side, we were all in darkness at the other: and, while in this darkness, we worshipped things which did us no good - sometimes the sun, sometimes the moon, and sometimes the Great Spirit that is thought to live in the Great Falls: for we believed that every particular thing was in the charge of particular spirits-as, that there was a spirit for the deer, and another for the fish; and we offered up prayers and sacrifices to them, as our necessities required. But, in all this crooked way of living, we had no peace to cheer us on our way.

-The Indians all believe there is a heaven made by the Great Spirit, and that the Great Spirit is the Father of all the children of men. We all believe that the Great Spirit made both the White Man and the Red Man, i. e. the Indian; but there is a wide difference

from yours in our mode of worshipping the Great Spirit. You worship the Great Spirit through the Lord Jesus Christ: but we worship Him in dark. ness or superstition; sometimes through the sun, or the moon, or other gods. We have an idea that the Great Spirit will not hurt us; but that there is a Wicked Spirit-very bad indeed—who does every thing to injure us. We make sacrifices to this Wicked Spirit, in order to keep in friendship with it. We have no idea, like yours, of Heaven or Hell, but we believe in a future state. We think that when the sun goes down in the West, there our future world is. We do not think that the White Man's spirit goes to the same place: we think it goes to a different place. This is the opinion which many of my countrymen have, when I attempt to preach unto them the Lord Jesus. They say that the Great Spirit gave us a country, different from yours, and where the sun sets, for our souls to go to when we die. In speaking to my countrymen on this subject, I have frequently told them that they were very much mistaken about their Indian Country for souls to inhabit in the West. I have told them that the Good Book says, that the righteous shall go to Heaven and the wicked to Hell. I have often told my countrymen that the White Man had sailed all over the world; and that he had with his big canoe visited the West, where they thought the souls of the Indians went, and that he had never found out such a country.

-Sometimes in roving about, as our mode of life is, we arrive at places where there are no deer to be found, nor any fish to be met with; ah! then we get very hungry, and some of our people starve to death. Let me tell you what happened once on account of this dreadful suffering of hunger, two or three years ago. But I do not like to mention the circumstances [after a slight hesitation], yet I believe I must [with great firmness of expression]: I will mention it, for the purpose of shewing you to what an extremity we are reduced in those seasons of famine to which I have alluded. The circumstance happened on our native shores, off the great Lake Huron. A man and his wife were out in the woods, and could get nothing to eat: they remained a great many days searching for food, without meeting with any thing to eat the man at last fell asleep. The woman killed her husband whilst he June 1831.

was sleeping. She killed him for the purpose of eating him. She did it to preserve her own life. After committing this horrible act-for all the Indians abhor such acts as murder--she was obliged to flee away. She went off, and was shunned by all who saw her. I myself saw her last winter: she was then an outcast from her fellow-creatures: she

was called by them " Wendegoo," that is, "a man-eater." The Indians thought the deed so wicked, that she ought to be left to perish.

-Let me tell you some things that have transpired since your fathers came among us. Before they came we had no knowledge, no idea, of the FIRE-WATERS -what you call whiskey. We were strangers to these things; but some of your wicked fathers brought the poison among us; and what have been the consequences of its introduction? Why, it has been poisoning us-it has been killing us one after another, and now we are left only a handful, to weep over the graves and the ruins of our forefathers, and to have sorrow in our hearts. I do not mention this, My Christian Friends, with any thing in my heart to reproach you, because I think it was some of your White Heathens that brought this to us.

But

-There are now about 2000 of my countrymen receiving Christian Instruction from the Methodists and Missionaries, besides many who are taught by Members of the Church of England. Among the Converted Indians you will be rejoiced to hear that there are fifteen Schools in different parts of Upper Canada, and there are no less than 450 Indian Children attending them, learning the English Language: of these, 200 can read the Word of God, and understand it. There was no book in the Chippewa Tongue: there was no written or printed language among us: but, since we have found the Great Spiritthe True God-we have tried and succeeded in making books. My Brother, an Indian Chief, and myself, were engaged some time in translating portions of the Holy Scriptures into the Chippewa Tongue, which we accomplished. I have brought with me what we translated, the Gospel of St. John, to get printed; and I hope, if God spares my life, to be able to translate some of those good little Tracts which your Society has, and have them printed and distributed among my people. My Dear Friends,

2 N

the work of the Lord among us is going on very rapidly: we might increase our labours to a very great extent, if we had only the means; but, on account of not having those means which are necessary to establish Schools and Missionary Stations, we are very much tied in our hands, so that we cannot help our poor Indian Brethren who are yet destitute of the comforts of Religion, and are ignorant of Jesus Christ.

It makes the heart of the poor Indian rejoice to see his child read in a book: to see him put the talk upon paper, and to see the talk go to a distance, that makes him to rejoice. I will give you one instance. At the River Credit we have a Station. A Chief had a Son who was instructed in our Mission School: after, he was employed as a Teacher in another School, and went away more than a hundred miles from his Father: after a time, he wrote a Letter to his Father in the Indian Tongue, which he did not know how to read: the Father brought it to me, to read it for him; and, while I read, the tears ran down his eyes, and he rejoiced to hear the talk of his Son on the paper at a distance, and he blessed and praised God for that his Son was instructed in Reading and Writing.

-I will now tell you of the goodness of God in making some conversions, to my own knowledge. There was a Son of a Chief who resided with us, and whose name was Chichinaw, which, being translated, means" Big-Canoe." His Father lived at the back of the lakes upon the Huron, and was a Heathen. Big-Canoe became a convert; and, about two years ago, accompanied me on a journey to the part of the country where his people dwelt. We saw his Father, and conversed with him; and he said, "I accept your words, and will pray to the Great Spirit." Having stayed a day-and-ahalf, I left the Settlement; but Big-Canoe remained, to complete the conversion of his Father. In two months afterward I saw him again, and asked how he had succeeded with his people; and he said they had been all turned to the Great Spirit, and were all worshipping Him in their hearts: he had been allowed no rest, so desirous were the people of being taught; but he told them he himself knew little more than his ABC. They wished him to tell them that, but he had no book: at last he thought of going into the woods, and taking the birch-bark, which is perfectly white: he wrote the letters of the

Alphabet upon it, with a piece of burned stick; and thus taught the people. I will state only one case more. In coming to this country, I passed through a White Settlement on my way to New York: the people were very bad and wicked: I heard two men swearing: I went up to one of them, and put a little Tract of this Society's, called "The Swearer's Prayer," into his hands, and then went away: in a few months afterward I heard, from the Clergyman of the place, that these men had been converted, and turned to God.

-I had heard much of England, and of the English, when I came down to Canada from my own country; and I had expected to see much, when I should come among you: but now that I have seen what you have done, and what you are doing, I must say, that until I came here I did not half know you or your country. But one thing I have seen which I must own to you I did not expect to see among you: I have been here, now, two Sabbath-days, and I have seen hundreds of your children running about the streets idle, and evidently neglected. How comes this, My Brothers and Sisters! You, who have the means in your power, ought to prevent these things. I know that this Society is intended for that purpose; but then every man who thinks Education good, and Christian Education good, ought to help. If you see a farmer who works smart, you will also see that he makes great profit; for the smarter he works, the greater will be his harvest. In the same way, the more you work at the Society the more you will lessen the number of those children who are now growing up without instruction.

-I am very glad, My Christian Friends, to meet you; and to see what you are doing for the spreading of the Gospel among the poor benighted Nations of the earth. I heartily wish you success, and I pray that God may bless and own your efforts in so good a cause. I am glad to be present at your Meeting, so that I may have it within my power, when I go back among my people, to tell them what I have seen in this Great City; and what I have heard coming out of your hearts, from time to time, in this place. I am glad to know that God is no respecter of persons, but that He is merciful to all; that He has provided His Good Religion for all; not only for our White Friends, but for us poor Indians : for I find, since I have been among the

White People, that the same hopes fill both our hearts; and I find the same experience in the Indian's heart as in yours. We all rejoice in one Spirit, in one Lord, in one God; and all walk together in one road to Heaven. I hope that we shall all meet together in our Father's House, where we shall be all one in Christ Jesus.

Continent.

France.

Rev. Mark Wilks stated, that he did not consider this as sufficiently accounted for by the political circumstances of the country; but ascribed it, in part, to the want of confidence and interest in the Society: many, not knowing what was to be understood by the "Christian Morals" the promoting of which was its professed object, declined to render it their assistance: he added

It is necessary that the Society should define in what consists the difference of Christian Morals from all other: the motive of all Christian Morals is, that love to God, with which the Christian is inspired by the knowledge which he has of God's love to man, manifested in Christ Jesus: it is this which

FROM a late Number of the "Archives du Christianisme," we collect some notices of the Anniversaries, in Paris, of various Pro- distinguishes the System of Christian Morals

testant Societies.

Religious-Tract Soc.-This Institution, as usual, led the way; M. Stapfer in the Chair. The Receipts of the Year had been 19,561 francs; and the Payments, including the discharge of a previous debt, had exceeded the Receipts by 193 francs. Nearly 450,000 Tracts had been distributed; being about 200,000 more than in the preceding year. M. Martin, jun., of Bourdeaux, in moving the acceptance of the Report, greatly affected the Meeting by the following statement:

I knew a man who was an enemy of the Society, and who was its enemy because he did not believe the Divinity of Christ. He read a Tract on this subject-your Tract entitled, "Scriptural Views of Jesus Christ." This reading, entered on in sincerity and as in the presence of God, was the means of

his conversion. He now adores the Saviour as his Lord and his God. This man is known to a great number of persons here presentit is his happiness to make this confession before you-it is he who is permitted at this moment thus to address you!

Bible Society-The Twelfth Annual Meeting was held on the 13th of April, under the Presidency of Admiral Count Ver-Huell. The Receipts had amounted to 43,751 francs; and the Issues to 4434 Bibles and 4001 Testaments. One Department, that of the Lower Pyrenees, has set the example of furnishing every Protestant Family with a Bible; and, with the aid of Donations of 500 francs each from the Rev. Daniel Wilson and the Rev. Mark Wilks, the same benefit will speedily be conferred on the Department of the Drôme.

Society of Christian Morals-The Members met on the 14th of April; M. Stapfer, in consequence of the indisposition of the Marquis de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, in the Chair. The Society having made but little progress during the year, the

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from all the Systems of Morals invented by man: it is this love to God, which renders the Christian System efficacious and powerful. If such are the views of the Committee, let them be plainly declared; and they will soon find themselves supported by the cooperation of all those who are influenced by the knowledge of God's infinite love. such be not their views, let that be stated; in order to ascertain whether they can find sufficient support from such as may be willing to associate with them in pursuit of their different objects of utility, without ranging themselves however under the banner of Christianity. Let the Society clearly state what are the views which it entertains. public have a right to require this at its hands.

The

These remarks were favourably. received; and it may be hoped that the Committee will feel the necessity of seeking for living principle where only it can

be found.

Missionary Society-The Meeting took place on the 15th of April; Adm. Count Ver-Huell in the Chair. The Receipts had been 23,609 francs, and the Payments 26,403. The Missionary Institution has six Students: Mr. Firmin Didot has admitted one of them, M. Pélissier, to acquire under him the knowledge of Printing, preparatory to his proceeding to join

the Missionaries in South Africa: to this

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object he was set apart on the following day, the 16th, in the Church in the "Rue Saint-Antoine; on which occasion M. Grand-Pierre, the Director of the Institution, preached from 2 Cor. v. 18.

Society of Elementary Instruction-This Society, which has been lately formed among the Protestants, confined itself, as in the preceding year, to a more private meeting of Subscribers, held on the 16th of April, not wishing a degree of publicity out of proportion to the extent of its present labours: the Marquis de Jaucourt was in the Chair. The state

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