The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which began
its existence in 1812, adopted measures in 1815 for carrying the
gospel to the Indians. One hundred thousand of these people, as
untamed as when the Pilgrims met them at Plymouth, as ignorant in
most respects, and as truly heathen as were their fathers centuries
before them, were then supposed to be living east of the Mississippi
River. The first mission was among the Creeks and Cherokees. Three
missionaries and their wives began the work. In character it was a
compound of mission boarding school and agricultural college. In
eighteen months, the Indian boys could read the Bible, and nearly a
score of them could write; five converted heathen were members of the
church.

Next, in 1818, missions were begun among the Chickasaws and the
Choctaws. Here, also, the first work was that of the school. So eager
were the Choctaws for instruction, that eight children were brought
160 miles across the country before the missionaries were ready for
them, and in one year from that date the Choctaw Nation voted to
devote to the schools their entire annuity of _six thousand dollars_,
from the sale of their lands to the United States.

The missionaries were subject to unceasing hindrances from renegade
whites, who are always on the borders of civilization, and have
usually been the enemies of missionaries.

But among the Cherokees no year passed without conversions. Those who
appeared to the missionaries so wild and forbidding that they were
received with fear, came under the gospel power and were clothed and
in their right mind. In six years the Church had largely increased.