# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1854_S289
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 289 —

...of the divine Word. Unfortunately, however, despite the initial
great willingness not only of the Bethany people to receive their red
brothers from Shebahyonk among themselves, but also of the latter
themselves to move to Bethany, Satan has succeeded in filling the
Shebahyonk people with such suspicion and distrust of their own
faithful teacher and fatherly friend, the missionary Auch (who had
served them until now), that they later not only refused to exchange
their home at Shebahyonk for that at Bethany, but also — despite the
most loving and persistent exhortations from missionaries Auch and
Mießler — fell away entirely from Christianity and back into their
former heathenism! — This apostasy of the Shebahyonk people has,
thank God, had no ruinous effect on the congregation at Bethany; they
have only gathered more firmly and faithfully around the Word of God.
— Several of the heathen still living there have been thoroughly
converted to Christianity in the course of the year. — The generous
giving of food and other necessities, even to families whom God has
directed to their own honest labor, the missionaries could not and
would not continue. — Our Synod, on the other hand, has been very
willing to help the Indians, in giving up their former hunting and
fishing way of life, to acquire a small landholding, so that as
industrious farmers they might eat their own bread; the commission
has purchased, from the gifts received for this purpose, a fair
stretch of good farmland and distributed it in parcels of 30 to 40
acres to individual families — as is already known to the readers of
"Der Lutheraner." Yet according to the present report a sizable piece
of land is still needed in order to give all families their promised
share, especially since several heathen Indians living on the Maple
River are now moving to Bethany to enjoy there the blessing of the
preaching of God's Word. The commission therefore asks for further
contributions to the mission fund for this purpose. — The report
bitterly complains of the unchristian efforts of the Methodists to
turn the converted Indians away from our pure and unadulterated
doctrine and to destroy the church of God at Bethany; although these
devilish attempts meet with ever less success, and serve only to
establish the true Christians among the Indians more firmly. — The
young Indian Johannes, who last year raised such joyful hope that he
would train to become a teacher of his people, has withdrawn from
that plan again, because his mother feels she cannot do without him.
In general the commission gives little hope that, for the time being,
capable missionaries could be trained up from among the Indians
themselves. It therefore wishes that parents of capable boys aged 10
to 12 among us would set them apart for training for mission service
and send them to Bethany, so that there, under the oversight and
guidance of the missionaries, for about 4 to 5 years, through contact
with the Indian children they might thoroughly learn their language,
and, after subsequently completing their further theological training
in St. Louis or Fort Wayne, could proclaim the Gospel among the
Chippewa Indians without an interpreter. The commission further
believes that, since our present mission field is small, we must
think about expanding it as our resources grow, and points, instead
of to Oregon or California, to the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota, who
speak the same language as the Bethany people. — At the same time it
recognizes it as a twofold duty to work toward as rapid an increase as
possible of our teaching staff in the