CONVERTING THE INDIANS

New Zealand Tablet, 9 August 1917, Page 37

CONVERTING THE INDIANS

According to Father Philip Gordon, the Chippewa Indian priest, there will be 200,000 Indian Catholics in the United States in twenty years. Already there are 120,000 Indian Catholics and about 80,000 pagans who follow the teachings ot their tribes. Protestantism claims 70,000. A well-planned effort will be made to gather in the pagans by means of grammars and books of instruction written in the language of the Indian tribes. It is intended to form Indian parishes with native priests in charge, who will be educated at the expense of societies which will be formed later. The course will be the same as that followed in the ordinary seminary, for the priest among the Indians must be as well equipped as his white brother. A Navajo grammar is being prepared and Father Ketcham, the well-known director of the Indian Bureau at Washington, is translating the catechism into the Choctaw language. o O