FRED W. TEMPLE by FRED W. TEMPLE

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 2, 1913

FRED W. TEMPLE

By FRED W. TEMPLE

Alaska

FRED W. TEMPLE

This morning I find on my desk a little pamphlet written by John L. Myers, M. D., of Ketchikan, Alaska, and believing it will be of interest to the readers of the REVIEW, I have secured his permission to copy a portion of it and send it along with some photographs that I have.

“Alaska! The meaning of that word is ‘Great Land.’ Like Caesar’s Gaul, it is divided into three parts, Southeastern, Central, and Western. Not only is the land divided into three parts, but the inhabitants embrace three classes, native, American, and foreign. People from every part of the world are found here, globe-trotters, gold-hunters, home-seekers.”

“Mission work in this country is radically different from what it was even ten years ago. Today there are more whites in this country than there are natives, and to work among the natives and neglect the whites would be doing less than half the work, for the natives are influenced by the non-Christian white as well as the Christian, and at times I think they follow the former more readily than the latter. Not long since a good-intending native said: ‘Too lonesome to be a Christian all the time.’ The vice and immoral practises of these whites have brought much sorrow, disease, and even death to the natives. We must save the native, but in reaching for him we must not neglect those of our own flesh.”

“The natives of Alaska are far different today from those of a century ago. Then they lived in crude houses with an open fire in the center, and they were clad in furs; now they more and more affect our manner of life and are clothed as we are. Then they spoke a language of dialects, varying according to the tribe and their location; now most of the younger generation speak English. Then they lived by hunting and fishing; now many are more or less steadily employed in sawmills, canneries, and other industries of civilization. Sturdy, stolid, stoic were those of old, and their characteristics have been passed down to those of today. Natural imitators they are. By watching a white man or woman perform a piece of work a few times the art is readily acquired.”

“A hundred years have made a great change among the natives. It has produced a great change among the white people also. The change which has come over the civilized world in the last century is sufficiently amazing to races who have lived in and progressed with it. But the native Alaskan has not even such an advantage. All that the civilized world has to offer has been thrust upon him, not during a century or centuries of progress, but within the last twenty-five years, and most of it within the last ten years. His bewilderment is not surprising. Think of flashing a searchlight in the face of one whose only artificial light has been the rays from a burning

pine knot. Imagine his consternation as he is dazed with the brilliancy, and you may have some idea of the bewilderment of these people.”

“In place of their old ideas of spirits, and of a something, they knew not what, which after the death of a friend haunts them with a dread fear, to be taught that there is a God who loves them and a heaven awaiting them, is an exceedingly bewildering experience. And the doctrine is the more strange that the white man teaches it. He also teaches that there should be no more feuds and fightings, no more murder and immoral practises, that kindness is due to all; yet there are more white men who belie these doctrines than there are who support and exemplify them. I know very few natives who do not profess Christianity, but I know very few who are Christians. Yet what may be expected of an imitative race, where example so slightly supports theory and teaching?”

“What we need in Alaska is more Christian men and women, not necessarily missionaries, as we usually consider them, but men and women who can make Christianity practical by living the every-day life and doing every-day duties. Missionary work in Alaska is the reaching for all mankind to the exclusion of none,—not native alone, not white alone. One thing that makes the work all the more difficult is that there are so many here who in the States were active workers in the church, but since coming here have allowed their desire to secure wealth to take precedence over all other considerations.”

Dr. J. L. Myers is connected with the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and is an active and sincere worker. He has assisted us in many ways, and showed himself a missionary indeed this past winter during our family sickness.

Ketchikan.