# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S66
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 66 —

As for the station at Gabitawigama in Minnesota, missionary Cloeter
worked there for two years, that is, until September of 1859, with
the help of the young man Heinrich Cramer, as well as was possible
under the circumstances prevailing there; from then until now he has
stood entirely alone. He himself, in lengthy reports published in
"Der Lutheraner," has given the Reverend Synod an account of his
present work, from which it can be seen that so far it could only be
called preparatory. No visible results have yet been achieved, and
if missionary Miessler's being left alone at Bethany already had to
be painfully regretted, missionary Cloeter, given his initial
unfamiliarity with the Indian language, felt it still more bitterly
that he had no co-worker; for of the two young men who resolved in
1858 at Milwaukee to go to his aid with the farm work, one had to be
dismissed as unfit, and the other, named Declos, was moved by family
considerations to leave the station again after a short time. Even
the young interpreter of missionary Cloeter, Heinrich Cramer, had to
return to Fort Wayne for the sake of his further education, so that
for the past year all the outward and inward business occurring at
the station has rested on the shoulders of one man. The missionary's
activity was limited solely to house visits with individual families,
whom he could reach only now and then. Just how far the Chippewa
people in Minnesota have sunk through drunkenness and a shameful,
unchaste way of life is attested by all the missionary's reports in
the saddest terms. He himself, at the end of last year, received a
call to serve as pastor of a German congregation, which he declined,
because he recognized it as his God-given task to
persevere further among his Indians. "How could it be
possible," runs his conviction, "to win any fruit among
them, if we were not willing to persevere with them longer than we
have done so far? Not much, to be sure, can still be expected of the
old Indians, but we must turn to them first in order to win the
coming generation. The Indians lie prostrate in the deepest moral,
and consequently also physical, misery, and their spiritual
callousness has so far made every attempt to work upon them
fruitless; but who can set bounds of place or time on the Spirit of
God? Who knows whether these dry bones [an allusion to
Ezekiel 37] may not yet stir once again? Whether we are
appointed as the instruments by which this is to come about through
our service, we certainly do not know — I do not indulge in any
hopes at all regarding our mission; I do not know how things will
yet turn out with the Indians and our mission — but I have resolved
to remain still longer among these Indians." Such are the words of
missionary Cloeter from his most recent letters.

As for the outward condition of the Gabitawigama mission station, we
have acquired a claim to 160 acres of land situated on the upper
Mississippi. On it a few acres of woodland have been cleared and the
mission buildings erected on them — mere log buildings, of course; a
splendid prairie adjoins the cleared land, on which enough fodder can
be made for the two horses and the cattle. After...