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The Dakota Experience Creating Communities: The Frontier (1860-1880)
arrow Onward, Christian Soliders
Missions for America Of the Cloth Out of Darkness
Missions for America

Most churches recruited missionaries and raised money for their missions. Free to work anywhere, the churches also competed for government assignments (and funding) for specific sites. Missions began with chapels and housing for the workers. Then they added schools. All the missions worked to make the Indian people more like white Americans. And if the Sioux did not come to the missions, the missionaries took their word to the Sioux.
We offer you: No Salary; No Recompense; No Holidays; No Pensions. But: much Hard Work; A Poor Dwelling; Few Consolations; Many Disappointments; Frequent Sickness; A Violent or Lonely Death; an Unknown Grave.
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Related items from the collections

Letter from the Ladies of the "Dorcas Society" in Philadelphia to Presbyterian missionary Reverend John Poage Williamson, inquiring about a need for clothing for the Indians, February 7, 1873.

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