The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 181

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

181

SS eee —

Bible classes were conducted, as well as thirty cate-
chetical lessons given, and twenty Saturday-schools
held seven vacation-school sessions. Nine Sunday-
school teachers’ meetings were held, and_ social
organizations, such as the Ladies’ Aid, the Sewing
Circle, and the Girls’ Glee Club, held a total of
thirty-nine meetings in the course of the year. Five
evenings were spent in rehearsals for socials and
entertainments, and ten socials and entertainments
were given for and by the members of the mission.
One hundred eighty visits were made to the homes
of missionary prospects, and many hundreds of con-
versations were had with those interested in the
mission.

“Statistics cannot reveal the blessings brought to

Colored Missions has granted a subsidy of $35 a
month for the support of the student for the year.
Eventually, we hope the Board for Colored Missions
will take over the entire responsibility for this work.
In the mean time, however, we hope and pray that
the interest of our people in this work will not grow
less and that God will continue to bless our efforts in
order that the new colored Lutheran Church of Our
Savior may prosper and grow.”

The Hopi Snake-Dance.

The Hopi, or Moqui, are a tribe of Pueblo In-
dians occupying seven villages on the high table-
lands of the northern part of Arizona. These vill-

A Rich Harvest in Buffalo, N. Y.
Rev. H. F. Wind baptized and confirmed the above on September 4.

the colored people by the work of this mission.
Interest in the work of the mission has grown, and
the fruitage is becoming apparent. ‘

“God was pleased on the first Sunday in Sep-
tember to grant us the first harvesting, when eight
children were baptized and eight adults were
received into the fellowship of the Church through
confirmation. Together with the two students who
were previously confirmed and are now attending
college, we thus can boast of a total membership of
eighteen confirmed and baptized members. A num-
ber of others have already registered for instruction
for the coming year. We feel that we have now
definitely passed the experimental stage, and, God
continuing His blessing, the colored mission in
Buffalo will now prosper and grow. :

“The support given this enterprise by our local
churches has been very liberal. The Board for

ages are hundreds of feet above the surrounding
desert, and the paths leading to them are very steep
and quite difficult. As the Hopi have come in con-
tact with the whites less than any other native tribe,
they still retain a number of old customs, among
them the uncanny and weird snake-dance, in per-
formance of which religious ceremony the Indians
dance around among living rattlesnakes, which they
even take into their mouths as they dance.

We take the following particulars concerning the
snake-dance from a recent account written by Hugh
Stevens Bell, a well-known and reliable American
correspondent. Mr. Bell writes that, though he and
his party knew that the dance would not begin until
five o’clock, they climbed up the long road to the top
of the plateau and made their way through the vil-
lages which occupied the northeastern portion of the
mesa before noon. Though they arrived at the court

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