Birmingham age-herald., 1895-08-28
BIG TREES TRUE TALE.
How An Indian Chief Was Converted and
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 Became an Ardent Baptist. q One of the attendants at the Young Peoples Baptist union, recently in ses- sion at Baltimore. was Chief Big Tree, full-blooded Kiowa Indian. Before the conclusion of the convention he had pow-wow in the Brantly Baptist church. If numbers count for anything it was a highly successful pow-wow, for there was not a vacant place in the whole church when he arose to speak. The number of people, however, who under stood what he had to say was small in- deed. for the big Indian spoke in his na- tive dialect, and Kiowa is not a popular language even among the most cul- tured of the earth. But they got the drift of it sifted for them by an interpreter named Samuel A-Ha-Tone, who stood ongside the mighty warrior on the plat form and sandwiehed his English yer sion in between the gutteral sounds or the Chiefs Kiowa tongue, which seems to consist of a marvelously large number of syllables like '.ono" and "ano.' Big Tree began to talk in a quiet way, uslng but one gesture, that of pointing with the index finger of his right hand at some one in the audience. But when he got warmed up he spread both hands to the winds with fervor and shook the raven locks which hung down the back of ms neck.
 Interpreter A-Ha-Tone was scarcely a master of the best of English, put ms language was picturesque and ms eheI- hi citation clear, particularly when he Iol- lowed the chief with short account or his own conversion. In interpreting the chiefs speech he preceded each sentence with the remark, "He say" Here IL IS translated:
 I have come from 2000 miles away on visit to your church. I am very glad l am here with you, and I very glad that all of you speak to me kindly and all the ladies shake hands with me. You doI | know how much I glad to be here. III my old times, when I was young, when my father was chief of the Kiowas, he set such an example to me: You go to a certain place to war and fight the people so as you be chief same as l do. Me take my fathers word and l war every body. I went fight against every people, Indian or not Indian, ana that liie way I do all my past life.
 "Nov by and by some one come, lock like doctor who come when l very sick, and they bring me the gospel and raise me up and so I stand before you now. You see me different man from what l was before they come. God he has open ed my heart and I am new man. am very sorry to say this: Why don't you send gospel to Kiowas for so long time?' I lose so many my people who now gone away in the dark and l find them no more in the world to come.
 "A good many there have become Christians and now they are very much interested in having missionaries there to teach them. I, too, am glad to have missionaries there, because before We worshiped anything-treeS, mountains, sticks. And now we stand face to lace with God and worship Him. Whenever l have an opportunity in our church, ana I stand before my people, l talk strong to them and tell them to follow me and go to the Savior much same as l do And I preach as much as I can. The mission aries have told about you people who are good and are working for us, and we pray every Sunday for the Christians who think of us and for all the Christians in the states And I hope you'll pray for the Christian Kiowas and all other tribes. l followed the road to Christian life, and now I stand before my people very much like a locomotive, with my people behind me- and I'm going to pull them along the good road. I don't only want to be locomotive myself, but want other loco- motives given to my people to take them to Christ. And now, my brothers and sls- ters, I thank you from the bottom Of my heart. Help us just as much as you can in our missionary work. We want some more missionaries. I thank you again. And that's all May your kindness to us be everlasting"
 Such was the effect of the presence of this Indian, who, before his conversion, a year ago, was redhanded from the slaughter of both whites and redskins, that when he had ended his simple re- marks the entire audience spontaneously bursted out into that stirring old mis- sionary hymn "There Is Fountain Filled With Blood"