SUPERSTITIONS AMONG CHRISTIAN INDIANS.
By Myron Eells
It is strange what singular ideas Indians who give up their old ideas of incantations and accept Christianity in some form, get of baptism and the outward forms of religion. The first incorrect idea I had to combat was that if they were baptized, they were sure to go to heaven. Another has been that baptism would cure them when seriously sick. Many years ago a man who was sick unto death asked me to baptize him, because he had heard that a man who was very sick, a hundred miles away, had been baptized and had recovered. Of course that had no influence with me; yet, owing to my belief, and that of the agent and others, that he was a Christian, I baptized him and received him into the church as a Christian, though ignorant and superstitious. I should have been willing to have baptized him some time before. He lived as an ignorant Christian a few months, and died, as we expected he would. Another idea is that if their children are baptized, they will not die. Deaths among their children have been very frequent, owing to their mode of living. None of my four have died or ever been seriously sick, thanks to a kind, protecting Providence. Hence the Indians have reasoned that it was because I am a Saghalie Tyee man (God's man and favorite), and that if they should become Christians, join the church, and have their children baptized, they would not die, but live as mine have done. Only a short time ago a prominent man asked me to receive his daughter-in-law into the church and baptize her child, so that her infant might not die, as her first child had done. Thirteen years ago I met a number of Indians ninety miles from here, who had received very little religious instruction, who thought that if they should stop drinking whisky and get a Bible picture, they were sure to get to heaven.—American Missionary.