During the past winter, a murder was perpetrated, under very slight temptation, by an excommunicated church-member, on the person of one in regular standing. The murderer was soon arrested, a court of his own people was summoned, before whom he was tried with great deliberation and propriety, his guilt fully proved, and he sentenced to be executed, which was carried into effect on the 13th of March. This was the first execution which ever occurred among these Indians.

On the whole, good order and habits of sobriety and temperance seem to be gaining ground.

MISSION TO THE NEW-YORK INDIANS.

TUSCARORA.-Gilbert Rockwood, Missionary, and Mrs. Rockwood; Hannah T. Whitcomb, Teacher.

SENECA.-Asher Wright, Missionary, and Mrs. Wright; Asenath Bishop and Sophia Mudgett, Teachers.

CATTARAUGUS.-Asher Bliss, Missionary, and Mrs. Bliss; Fidelia Adams, Teacher. ALLEGHANY.-William Hall, Missionary, and Mrs. Hall; Margaret N. Hall, Teacher.

(4 stations; 4 missionaries, 9 female assistants and teachers;-total, 13.)

Three female teachers have joined this mission during the year to which this report relates. Miss Whitcomb arrived at Tuscarora on the 2d of October. Miss Hall, having been previously employed in occasionally teaching at Cattaraugus and Alleghany, was appointed an assistant missionary in June, and now has charge of one of the mission schools on the Alleghany reservation.

Miss Mudgett taught the mission school for some years among the Stockbridge Indians, from which ill health obliged her to retire more than a year since. In June last she was appointed an assistant missionary, and joined the Seneca station about the 20th of July.

Ŏn all the reservations the schools have been subjected to changes and interruptions, owing to various causes. Ten schools have been taught on the four reservations more or less of the time during the year, embracing an aggregate of about two hundred and fifteen pupils; the average attendance, however, not being more than 140 to 150. Three of these schools have been continued through the year, while others have been taught for various periods from six months down to six or eight weeks. Miss Adams has been employed through the last summer, in teaching a large and flourishing school, the expense of which is defrayed by the Friends. As its location accommodates most of the heathen portion of the people on the reservation, and a number of christian families, it seemed to present a wider sphere of usefulness than was furnished

by the school at the station. One of the schools connected with the Alleghany station, is on the small reservation within the limits of Pennsylvania, occupied by the descendants of the late chief called Cornplanter. The reservation is one mile square, and on it are ten families, with twenty children of a suitable age to attend school. These families have formerly been much opposed to christian instruction, but their prejudices have been gradually giving way, and now they listen to the truths of the New Testament with respect, and express a strong desire for a school.

At Tuscarora two members of the church, long under discipline, have been excommunicated, while three Indians and one white man have been added, the last of whom has since joined another church: leaving the present number in the church fifty-five or sixty. At Seneca the church embraces about forty members. At Cattaraugus one hundred, including twelve white persons, have been received to the church since it was organized in July, 1837. Of these, fourteen have died; thirteen have been dismissed to other churches, and fifteen excluded; leaving now fifty-eight, of whom fifty-three or four are Indians. The church at Alleghany has about forty-five members in good standing. The whole number of members connected with all the churches is about 200. The additions on profession of faith are four to the Tuscarora church and three to that at Cattaraugus. No death has occurred in the Tuscarora church, and but one, and that of a child, on the reservation; a rare instance in a population of more than 300 souls.

In general the churches have been less agitated, and have manifested more of christian feeling and more harmony of action, than for some years past. The assembling of the convention of christian Indians at Cattaraugus in February seemed to have a softening influence on those who had before been alienated, and numbers of both parties consented to commune together at the Lord's table.

More attention has been given to the means of grace, and the assemblies on the Sabbath have been larger than during the year or two preceding. The heathen party have manifested less prejudice against Christianity than heretofore, and numbers of them, on all the Seneca reservations, have frequently been present at the public worship on the Sabbath.

The treaty which was negotiated with these Indians in June, 1838, and which, after having been amended by the senate of the United States in August, 1839, was referred back to the chiefs for their approval of the amendments, received, as those employed to transact the business with the Indians alleged, the signatures of a majority of the chiefs. It was then again laid before the senate of the United States, with a statement from the friends of the Indians of the manner in which the negotiation had been conducted, and the signatures of the chiefs obtained. The committee on Indian

affairs to whom it was committed, reported decidedly against its ratification. It was, however, ratified by a bare majority in the senate and has since been proclaimed by the president.

By this measure the Indians feel themselves to have been deeply injured, and are thrown into great distress and despondency. They allege, and think they adduce sufficient evidence to show, that not more than one third of their legitimate chiefs have voluntarily signed the amended treaty; that nearly all these have been operated upon by fraud and bribery; that not more than one in fourteen of their whole population is in favor of a sale of their lands; and that the whole transaction is characterized by falsehood, dishonesty, and oppression.

As no appropriation has been made by congress for carrying this treaty into effect, the Indians entertain some faint hopes that a new investigation of the circumstances of the negotiation may be had, which may lead to annulling the treaty, and prevent the injurious effects of it on their community.

MISSION TO THE ABENAQUIS.

Peter P. Osunkherhine, Native Preacher; Caroline Rankin, Teacher.

(1 station; 1 native preacher, and 1 female teacher;—total, 2.)

Last autumn the opposition of the papists seemed to subside, and the leading chiefs admitted that it was wrong to persecute the members of the mission church. Subsequently their hostility broke out anew, and the same dishonest measures were resorted to, to injure the church and prevent others from attending Mr. Osunkherhine's meetings. Still a few of the papal Indians are occasionally present.

One member of the church, a deacon, well educated at Moor's charity school, and whose character and influence was, for a while, of great value to the mission, has fallen away and joined the papal party, and in June last was excommunicated for various unchristian practices. The day of the excision was a very painful one to the church, who all wept over their deluded, and, as they feared, lost brother. On the next Sabbath two Indians of promising character were admitted to church fellowship, who, with one received in December, make the present number twenty-seven. The conduct of the church members is such as to adorn their profession and give much joy to their pastor.

The school is attended by twenty-three pupils, and is prosperous and successful. Most of the pupils attend a Sabbath-school.

Some movement has been made for obtaining a translation of the New Testament into the Abenaquis language. A young man of the tribe, a member of the church, and with an education in some

degree adequate, is ready to engage in the work, if the means of support can be furnished him, with the requisite assistance; and provision can be made for printing the translation when completed. The language of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians so nearly resemble the Abenaquis, that such a translation would meet their wants, should they be taught to read. The whole number of Indians who can understand the language may be two thousand.

SUMMARY.

Having completed the annual survey of the year, it remains to sum up the whole. The receipts have been $241,691 04, and the expenditures $246,601 37, exceeding the receipts $4,910 33. The debt of the Board has of course been increased that amount, and is $24,083 42. The number of the missions is 25, the Cyprus mission having been connected with that to Turkey. These missions embrace 80 stations, at which there are 134 ordained missionaries, ten of whom are physicians; 10 physicians not preachers, 14 teachers, 10 printers and book-binders, 11 other male and 186 female assistant missionaries; making in all 365 missionary laborers from this country, or ten less than were reported the last year. But to these we must add 15 native preachers, and 107 other native helpers, which makes the whole number 487, six more than the whole number reported a year ago. Five ordained missionaries, one physician, two male and ten female assistant missionaries, in all eighteen, have been sent forth during the year now closed.

The number of printing establishments is 15; of presses, 32; of type-founderies, 5; of churches, 55; of church-members, 17,234; of those received into the church during the last year, 10,810; of seminaries for boys, 8, containing 412 boarding scholars; of preparatory boarding-schools for boys, 6, containing 100 pupils; of female boarding-schools, 10, containing 295 pupils; making the whole number of boarding-schools 24, and of boarding scholars of both sexes 807; of free schools, 415, containing 21,606 pupils; of books and tracts printed about 685,000 copies, and 45,202,506 pages the past year; and from the beginning, according to the reports of the several missions, 233,156,081 pages.

CONCLUSION.

In concluding this Report the Committee would submit some remarks respecting the prospects of the missionary work.

When the nation of Israel had come out of Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and received the law, it seemed as if they were immediately to enter the land of promise; and probably they anticipated soon entering on the security and rest of that happy abode. God however, had other purposes to accomplish in respect to them. Forty years of journeying in the wilderness must elapse before they could enter that resting place.

In the days of the apostles, it seemed as if Christianity were speedily to spread and triumph over the world. The brightness of the dawning light, the splendor of its beams, and the distance to which they at once shot forth, promised speedily a universal and permanent day. But such was not God's plan. All things were not ready for such a consummation. More than twelve centuries

of awful night were impending over the church.

Days of brightness and promise have at other periods dawned on the church, but have been followed by long nights of darkness and despondency. We regard the present as a day of brightness and promise. May we be confident that the church is approaching the period of her rest and glory on earth; or must she turn again into the wilderness? Are we going uninterruptedly forward to the time when truth and righteousness shall reign over the earth, or do other centuries of darkness and error lie between us and that longed-for consummation? Are the institutions, the plans, and the measures in which we are now so much interested, and by means of which we are operating, to be honored with an agency in actually accomplishing the conversion of this world to God; or are all our societies, our missions, our translations, our schools, and our agencies of every description, after having effected some limited good, to be found inadequate and worthless in the conflict with the powers of evil, and all the fruits they have yielded to disappear and be forgotten, leaving wickedness again to triumph, and all the work of the world's renovation to be done over again?

These are questions of surpassing interest to every benevolent mind, and at the thought of them, who that is engaged in the work of converting this world to Christ, can fail to cry most heartily to God, "Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands, establish thou it."

That Christianity is ultimately to triumph and prevail among all nations, the number and explicitness of the Scripture promises to this effect do not permit us to doubt. Without attempting to