SAYS Mrs. J. McNair Wright: “If the church can only be plainly shown the need, amount, prospects, and methods of work in any given field, a vital interest will at once arise in that field, and money for it will not be lacking. The missionary columns in our religious papers do not supply the information needed fully to set our missions before the church. Our home-mission work needs to be ‘written up.’ The foreign field has found a large increase of interest in its labors from the numerous books that have been written,—interestingly written,—giving descriptions of the work, the countries where the missionaries toil, and the lives of the missionaries themselves. The Pueblo, the Mormon, and the American Indian work should be similarly brought before the church. A book gives a compact, united view of a subject; the same view given monthly or weekly in the columns of periodicals loses much of its force and, moreover, is much less likely to meet the notice of the young. A hearty missionary spirit will be had in our church only when we furnish our youth with more books on missionary themes.”[1]

In accordance with these ideas the following pages have been written.

It is surprising to find how few books can be obtained on missionary work among the Indians. After ten years of effort the writer has only been able to secure twenty-six books on such work in the United States, and five of these are 18mo. volumes of less than forty pages each. Only five of these have been published within the last fifteen years. Books on the adventurous, scientific, and political departments of Indian life are numerous and large; the reverse is true of the missionary department. Hence it is not strange that such singular ideas predominate among the American people in regard to the Indian problem.

M. E.

Skokomish, Washington Territory, August, 1884.