File:A Native Village on the African Plateau.jpg

Identifier: spiritofmissions80epis (find matches)
Title: The Spirit of missions
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Episcopal Church. Board of Missions Episcopal Church. Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society
Subjects: Episcopal Church Episcopal Church Missions
Publisher: Burlington, N.J. : J. L. Powell
Contributing Library: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ow, the white man must tell them! The social and industrial conditionsof this region are so interrelated thatany. consideration of the one must dealwith both. The native races are notedfor prevailing immorality, and someof the tribes for an apparent lack ofany moral concepts. The reason forthis deplorable condition (as in thiscountry) is largely the housing con-ditions. So long as the short-lived A SUSPENSION BRIDGE OF ROOTS AND VINESThe end of this bridge, with steps to reach it, is seen on the opposite page. mud huts are built by the laboriousmethods now employed, just so longwill the utmost use be made of them,and from ten to twenty people of bothsexes, all ages and all relationshipswill work, play, eat and sleep in theone small windowless room. Men who live like the beasts are prone to actlike them. The universal practice of polygamyis another root of many evils in thelife of the natives; and it is likely tocontinue just so long as the women ofAfrica are its beasts of burden. This
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620 Untouched Africa is an economic quite as much as amoral problem. Africans as a wholeare an agricultural people, but theirmethods are most primitive. Plowsand other implements and machinesare unknown. Everything is done byhand,—usually the hands of thewomen and children. In this sectionof the country the jungle growth iscleared out and the farms made in adifferent place each year. The cryingneed is for the introduction of a sys-tem of agriculture in which the sizeof a man s crop does not depend uponthe number of his wives. Until somesuch solution is found for this prob-lem, polygamy will continue to be anecessary part of native life and per-haps the greatest single obstruction tomissionary work. Dr. Josiah Strongsays: One reason why Mohammed-anism is making such rapid progressin Africa is because it accepts polyg-amy. A new industrial system whichdestroys polygamy will close the dooron Islam and open it to Christianity. In Africa womans primary positionis not that of mother and h

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