Chapter VI: Part 6

Another of the first meetings established on the reservation under the new policy was the prayer-meeting along with the Sabbath-school. To those white people near the reservation who cared but little for religion, and who had known the previous history of the reservation, a prayer-meeting on a reservation! ah, it was a strange thing, but they afterward acknowledged that it was a very proper thing for such a place. That regular church prayer-meeting has been kept up from 1871 until the present time, varied a little at times to suit existing circumstances. The employees and school-children were the principal attendants, as it was too far away from most of the Indians for them to come in the evening. But few of the children ever took part. Too many wise heads of a superior race frightened them even if they had wished to do so. The average attendance on it has varied from twenty-two in 1875 to thirty-eight in 1880. Previous to 1880, it ranged below thirty--since then above that number.

To suit the wants of the children we had boys’ prayer-meetings and girls’ prayer-meetings. Sometimes these were merely talks to them, and sometimes they took part. In the summer of 1875 the white girls first made a request to have one. I had been to our Association and on my return I reported what I had heard of a children’s meeting at Bellingham Bay. Two of the girls were impressed with the idea and made a request for a similar one. Indian girls were soon invited to come and more or less took part. It was not long before from its members some came into the church. For a long time my mother had charge of this. She died in 1878, after which my wife took charge. The white girls at last all left and only Indian girls remained in it. They have often taken their turn in leading the meeting.

Although for two or three years I had asked a few boys to come to my house from time to time to teach them and try to induce them to pray, yet they never did any thing more than to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, until February, 1877. Then three boys came and asked for instruction on this subject, and soon we had a prayer-meeting in which all took part. Previous to that school-boys had seemed to be interested in religion, but when they became older and mingled more with the older Indians they went back again into their old ways; but none ever went as far as these did then--none ever prayed where a white person heard them or asked to have a prayer-meeting with their minister. During that summer the interest increased and it grew gradually to be a meeting of twenty with a dozen sometimes taking part, but all were not Christians. After a few months of apparent Christian life, some found the way too hard for them and turned back, yet a number of them came into the church.

But all of these meetings did not reach the older Indians. They were too far away to attend, and, had they been present, the meeting was in an unknown tongue. So in the summer of 1875 I began holding meetings at their logging-camps. They were welcomed by some, while with some, especially those who leaned toward the Catholic religion and the old native religion, it was hard work to do any thing. In these meetings I was usually assisted by the interpreter John Palmer. At our church services and Sabbath-school it was very difficult to induce them to sing or to say any thing. There were enough white folks to carry them and they were willing to be carried. At our first meetings with them they sang and talked well, but preferred to wait a while before they should pray in public. They did not know what to say, was the excuse they gave. On reading I found that the natives at the Sandwich Islands were troubled in the same way; and I remembered that the disciples said: “Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples;” so we offered to teach them how, for they professed to be Christians. One of us would say a sentence and then ask one of the better ones to repeat it afterward. I remember how something comical struck one of the Indians during one of these prayers and he burst out laughing in the midst of it. Feeling that a very short prayer would be the best probably for them to begin with alone, I recommended that they ask a blessing at their meals. This was acceptable to some of them. I taught them a form, and they did so for that fall and a part of the winter. I once asked one Indian if he ever prayed. His reply was that he asked a blessing on Sabbath morning at his breakfast. That was all, and he seemed to think that it was enough.

When winter came the logging-camps closed and they went to their homes. They were too far off to hold evening services with them, because of the mud, rain, and darkness, and, as they had but little to do, I took Tuesdays for meetings with them. About the first of December we induced four of them to pray in a prayer-meeting without any assistance from us. This meeting was three hours long. It seemed as if a good beginning had been made, but Satan did not propose to let us have the victory quite so easily. In less than a week after this the Indians were all drawn into a tribal sing tamahnous, and all of these praying Indians took some part, though only one seemed to be the leader of it. That was the end of his praying for years. The agent told him that he had made a fool of himself and he said that it was true. In 1883 he was among the first to join the church and since then he has done an excellent work. Still I kept up the meetings during the winter. The Indian, however, is very practical. His ideas of spiritual things are exceedingly small. His heaven is sensual and his prayers to his tamahnous are for life, food, clothes, and the like. So when they began to pray to God, they prayed much for these things, and when they did not obtain all for which they asked, they grew tired. Others then laughed at them for their want of success. I talked of perseverance in prayer.

Not long after this the trouble with Billy Clams and his wife, as already related under the head of marriage, occurred. He escaped at first, but others were put in jail for aiding him. At one of the first meetings after this trouble began, I asked one to pray, but he only talked. I asked another and he said “No,” very quickly, and there was only one left. Soon after this, they held a great meeting to petition the agent to release the prisoners. The only praying one prayed earnestly that this might be done. The petition was rightfully refused. The other Indians laughed at him for his failure, and that stopped his praying in public for a long time, with one exception. Once afterward we held a meeting with them and after some urging a few took part, but it was a dying affair. Notwithstanding all that they had said about being Christians, the heart was not there, and until 1883 hardly any of the older uneducated Indians prayed in public in our meetings. Of those four, one left the reservation and became a zealous Catholic; one has apparently improved some; one was nearly ruined by getting a wife with whom he could not get along for a time, and at last became a leader in the shaking religion; and one, as already stated, has done very well.

The next summer, 1876, I visited their logging-camps considerably, and was well received by some, while others treated me as coldly as they dared, doing only what they could not help doing. But they did not take as much part in the meetings as they had done the previous summer, talking very little and praying none. Their outward progress toward religion had received a severe check. As has been the case with some other tribes, Satan would not give up without a hard struggle. Like some of the disciples, they found the gospel a hard saying, could not bear it, and went back and walked no more with Christ.

The business of logging was overdone for several years, and during that time I was not able to gather them together much for social meetings. I worked mainly by pastoral visiting. In the winter of 1881-82 some of them went to the Chehalis Reservation and attended some meetings held by the Indians there and were considerably aroused. They again asked for meetings and held them, but while they were free to talk and sing, they were slow to pray. Logging revived, and I held meetings quite constantly with them during the next two years.

At that time four of them professed to take a stand for Christ. Gambling was a besetting sin of some of them, but with some help from the school-boys, who had now grown to be men, they passed through the Fourth of July safely, although there was considerable of it on the grounds, and two of them were strongly urged to indulge. The other two were absent. But in the fall there was a big Indian wedding with considerable gambling and horse-racing, and then two fell. Another did a very wrong thing in another way and was put in jail for it, and that stopped his praying for a time, though he has since begun it again. The other was among the first of the older Indians to join the church in 1883, and he has done a firm good work for us since.

In other camps I was welcomed also, but it has ever been difficult to induce them, even the Christians, to pray or speak much in public. Those prayer-meetings have usually been what I have had to say. Occasionally they speak a little; but, not being able to read, their thoughts run in a small circle, and they are apt to say the same things over again, and they tire of it unless something special occurs to arouse them. “You speak,” they often say to me, when I have asked them to say something. “You know something and can teach us; we do not know any thing and we will listen.” It is a fact that what we obtain from the Bible is the great source of our instruction for others; still if we are Christians and know only a little, the Spirit sometimes sanctifies that even in a very ignorant person so that he may do some good with it.

The Clallam prayer-meetings at Jamestown have been different. They began them when I visited them only once in six months, hence they had to take part or give them up. They were not willing to do the latter, therefore they have had to do the former. Sometimes eight or ten take part. They seem to expect that if a person join the church he will take part in the prayer-meeting, and the children of thirteen or fourteen years of age do so with the older ones. Thrown on their own resources in this respect, as well as in others, it has had its advantages.

XXXIX.

INDIAN HYMNS.

Our first singing was in English, as we knew of no hymns in the languages which the Indians could understand. In the Sabbath-school prayer-meeting and partly in church we have continued to use them, as the children understand English, and it is best to train them to use the language as much as possible. “Pure Gold” and the Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, as used by Messrs. Moody and Sankey, have been in use among the Indian children for the last twelve years. Two or three of the simplest English songs which repeat considerably have also been learned by many of the older Indians, who understand a little of our language, as: “Come to Jesus!” and “Say, brothers, will you meet us?” Yet all these did not reach the large share of the older Indians as we wished to reach them. “What are you doing out here?” “Why do you not go to Sabbath-school?” were questions which were asked one Sabbath by the wife of the agent to an Indian who was wandering around outside during that service. His reply was that as the first part of the exercises and the singing were in English they were very dry and uninteresting to him. Only when the time came for singing the Chinook song was he much interested. That was in 1874, and there was only one such song, which the agent had made previous to my coming; but the want of them, as expressed by that Indian, compelled us to make more. The first efforts were to translate some of our simpler hymns into the Chinook language, but this we found to be impracticable, with one or two exceptions. The expressions, syllables, words, and accent did not agree well enough for it; so we made up some simple sentiment, repeated it two or three times, fitted it to one of our tunes, and sang it. In the course of time we had eight or ten Chinook songs. They repeated considerably, because the older Indians could not read and had to learn them from hearing them, somewhat after the principle of the negro songs. Major W. H. Boyle visited us in 1876, and was much interested in this singing. He took copies of the songs and said he would see if he could not have them printed on the government press belonging to the War Department, at Portland, free of expense; but I presume he was not able to have it done, as I never heard of them again.

In my visits among white people and in other Sabbath-schools I was often called upon to sing them, and was then often asked for a copy; so often was this done that I grew tired of copying them. Encouraged by this demand and by Major Boyle’s interest in them, I thought I would see if I could not have them published. I wrote to several other reservations, asking for copies of any such hymns which they might have, hoping that they also would bear a share of the expense of publishing them; but I found that most of them had no such songs, and, to my surprise, some seemed to have no desire for them. So I was compelled to carry on the little affair alone. I was unable to bear the expense, but fortunately then Mr. G. H. Himes, of Portland, consented to run all risks of printing them, and so in 1878 a little pamphlet, entitled “Hymns in the Chinook Jargon Language,” was printed, and it has been very useful. The following, from its introductory note, may be of interest:--

“These hymns have grown out of Christian work among the Indians.... The chief peculiarity which I have noticed in making hymns in this language is that a large proportion of the words are of two syllables, and a large majority of these have the accent on the second syllable, which renders it almost impossible to compose any hymns in long, common, or short metres.”

The following remarks were made about it by the editor of _The American Missionary_:--

“It is not a ponderous volume like those in use in our American churches, with twelve or fifteen hundred hymns, but a modest pamphlet of thirty pages, containing both the Indian originals and the English translations. The tunes include, among others, ‘Bounding Billows,’ ‘John Brown,’ and ‘The Hebrew Children.’ The hymns are very simple and often repeat all but the first line. The translations show the poverty of the language to convey religious ideas.... It is no little task to make hymns out of such poor materials. Let it be understood that these are only hymns for the transition state--for Indians who can remember a little and who sing in English as soon as they have learned to read. This little book is a monument of missionary labor and full of suggestion as to the manifold difficulties to be encountered in the attempt to Christianize the Indians of America.”

Since then I have made a few others which have never been printed, one of which is here given. The cause of it was as follows: One day I asked an Indian what he thought of the Christian religion and the Bible. His reply was that it was good, very good, for the white man, but that the Indian’s religion was the best for him. Hence in this hymn I tried to teach them that the Bible is not a book for the white people alone, but for the whole world--an idea which is now quite generally accepted among them. In all we now have sixteen hymns in Chinook, five in Twana, five in Clallam, and two in Nisqually.

_Tune_, “Hold the Fort.”

(1) Sághalie Tyee, yáka pápeh,
Yáka Bible kloshe,
Kópa kónoway Bóston tíllikums
Yáka hías kloshe.

CHORUS.

Sághalie Tyee, yáka pápeh,
Yáka Bible kloshe,
Kópa kónoway tíllikums álta,
Yáka hías kloshe.

(2) Sághalie Tyee, yáka pápeh,
Yáka Bible kloshe,
Kópa kónoway Síwash tíllikums
Yáka hías kloshe.

CHORUS.

Sághalie Tyee, etc.

(3) Sághalie Tyee, yáka pápeh,
Yáka Bible kloshe,
Kópa kónoway King George tíllikums
Yáka hías kloshe.--_Cho._

TRANSLATION.

(1) God, His paper--
His Bible is good;
For all American people
It is very good.

CHORUS.

God, His paper--
His Bible is good;
For all people now
It is very good.

(2) God, His paper--
His Bible is good;
For all Indian people
It is very good.

(3) God, His paper--
His Bible is good;
For all English people
It is very good.

By changing a single word in the third line to Pa sai ooks (French), China, Klale man (black men, or negroes), we had other verses.

In time I, however, became satisfied that the Indians would be better pleased if they could sing a few songs in their native languages; but it was very difficult to make them, as I could not talk their languages, and so could not revolve a sentence over until I could make it fit a tune. The Indians, on the other hand, were too young or too ignorant of music to adapt the words properly to it for many years. I had, however, written down about eighteen hundred words and sentences in each of the Twana, Clallam, and Squaxon dialects of the Nisqually language, for Major J. W. Powell at Washington, and could understand the Twana language a very little, and this knowledge helped me greatly. Some of the older school-boys became interested in the subject, and so we worked together. After some attempts, which were failures, we were able in 1882 to make a few hymns which have become quite popular. Some the Indians themselves made, and some they and I made. The following samples are given of one in each language:--

TWANA.

_Tune_, “Balerma.”

(1) Se-seéd hah-háh kleets Badtl Sowul-lús!
Se-seed hah-háh sa-lay!
Se-seéd hah-háh kleets Badtl Sowul-lús!
Se-seed hah-háh sa-láy!

(2) O kleets Badtl Wees Sowul-lús,
Bis e-lál last duh tse-du-ástl
A-hots ts-kai-lubs tay-tlía e-du-ástl;
Bis-ó-shub-dúh e du-wús!

TRANSLATION.

Great Holy Father God!
Great Holy Spirit!
Great Holy Father God!
Great Holy Spirit!

O our Father God,
We cry in our hearts
For the sins of our hearts;
Have mercy on our hearts!

CLALLAM.

_Tune_, “Come to Jesus!”

(1) N ná a Jesus
A-chu-á-atl.

(2) Tse-íds kwe nang un tun
A-chu-á-atl.

(3) E-yum-tsa Jesus
A-chu-á-atl.

(4) E-á-as hó-y
A-chu-á-atl.

TRANSLATION.

(1) Come to Jesus
Now.

(2) He will help you
Now.

(3) He is strong
Now.

(4) He is ready
Now.

SQUAXON DIALECT OF THE NISQUALLY.

_Tune_, “Jesus loves me.”

The following is a translation of our hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” so literally that it can be sung in both languages at the same time. The other two verses have also been likewise translated.

(1) Jesus hatl tobsh, al kwus us hai-tuh,
Gwutl te Bible siats ub tobsh:
Way-so-buk as-tai-ad seetl,
Hwāk us wil luhs gwulluh seetl as wil luhl.

CHORUS.

A Jesus hatl tobsh,
Gwutl ti Bible siats ub tobsh.

(2) Jesus hatl tobsh, tsātl to át-to-bud
Guk-ud shugkls ak hāk doh shuk,
Tsātl tloh tsa-gwud buk dzas dzuk
Be kwed kwus cha-chushs atl tu-us da.

As an illustration of the difficulty I had, the following is given. I wished to obtain the chorus to the hymn, “I’m going home,” and obtained the expression, “I will go home,” in Clallam, in the following seven different ways. The last one was the only one that would fit the music.

O-is-si-ai-a tsa-an-tok^{hu}.
Ku-kwa-chin-is-hi-a tok^{hu}.
Ho-hi-a-tsan-u-tok-^{hu}.
Tsā-ā-ting-tsin-no-tok^{hu}.
U-tsā-it-tok^{hu}.
U-its-tla-hutl tok-^{hu}.
To-kó-tsa-un.

As a literary curiosity I found that the old hymn, “Where, oh, where is good old Noah?” to the tune of “The Hebrew Children,” could be sung in four languages at the same time, and this was the only English hymn that I was ever able to translate into Chinook jargon, thus:--

_Chinook Jargon._--Kah, O kah mit-lite Noah álta?
_Twana._--Di-chád, di chád ká-o way klits Noah?
_Clallam._--A-hín-kwa, a hín chees wi-á-a Noah?
Far off in the promised land.

CHORUS.

By-and-by we’ll go home to meet them.
_Chinook Jargon._--Alki nesika klatawa nánitch.
_Twana._--At-so-i-at-so-i hoi klis-há-dab sub-la-bad.
_Clallam._--I-á che hátl sche-túng-a-whun.

LITERAL TRANSLATION.

_Chinook Jargon._--Where, oh, where, is Noah now?
_Twana._--Where, oh, where, is Noah?
_Clallam._--Where, oh, where, is Noah now?
Far off in the promised land.

CHORUS.

By-and-by we’ll go home to meet them.
_Chinook._--Soon we will go and see [him].
_Twana._--Soon we will go and see him.
_Clallam._--Far off in the good land.

These sentences can be mixed up in these languages in any way, make good sense, and mean almost precisely the same. I found no other hymn in which I could do likewise, but the chorus to “I’m going home” can be rendered similarly in the English, Twana, and Clallam.

Clallams are much more natural singers than the Twanas. For this reason, and also because there have never been enough whites in church to do the singing for them, there has never been any difficulty in inducing them to sing in church. But for very many years it was different with the Twanas. When the services were first begun among them the singing was in English and they were not expected to take part in it. When hymns were first made in the Chinook jargon there were so many whites to sing in church, that the Indians did not seem to take hold. They would sing well enough at their camps, the boys would sing loud enough when alone at the boarding-house or outdoors, but when they came to church they were almost mum. The whites and the school-girls did most of it. It is only within the past year or two that a perceptible change has been made for the better.

XL.

NATIVE MINISTRY AND SUPPORT.

But little has been done in these respects except to sow the seed, but if the work shall continue another ten years I trust that more will be accomplished. Since I have been here I have worked with the idea that in time the Indians ought to furnish their own ministers and support them. It will, however, naturally take more time to raise up a native ministry than a native church, native Christian teachers than native Christian scholars. These must come from our schools after long years of training. Owing to a lack of early moral training among them,--the want of a foundation,--the words of Paul on this subject have appeared to me to have a striking significance, more so than among whites, although they are true even among them: “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.”

All people are tempted to be proud, but owing to this lack of foundation, Indians are peculiarly so. A little knowledge puffeth up, and, to use a common expression, they soon get the “big-head.” That spoils them for the ministry. My first hope of this kind was that John Palmer would turn his attention to the subject, but he had a family before I knew him, and I never could induce him to look much in that direction. In the spring of 1882 two young men who had been in school from childhood took hold well. They began to talk with the Indians, to assist me in holding meetings, and to take charge of them in my absence. I felt that they were too young,--less than twenty-one,--and yet at times I could see no other way to do; but I had reason to fear that both felt proud of their position. During the next summer one of them, in getting married, fell so low that we had to suspend him from the church for almost a year, and the other for a time went slowly backward. Both have come up again considerably, and the latter has done quite well for the last year in holding lay-meetings. I pray “the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

As to the support of the ministry, I always felt a delicacy in speaking of the subject, because I was the minister. For several years, as long as very few of the older Indians were members of the church, and the ones who were members were scholars without money, it was difficult to say much. As soon as some of the school-boys were put to work as apprentices, I broached the subject to them, talked about it, and gave them something to read on it. While they were apprentices and employees most of them gave fairly. The agent urged them to do so, but compelled none, and a few refused entirely. But when they left the government employ and the agent moved away, they stopped doing what they had never liked to do.

The older Indians, when they did come into the church, were hardly prepared for it. The Catholic set said that if the people joined them they would have nothing to pay. One of the Catholics told me that the only reason why I wanted to get him into the church was to obtain his money. It had been revealed to them that it was wrong to sell God’s truth. These arguments, somewhat similar to those used years ago by some of the more ignorant people in the Southern and Western States, coupled with the natural love of money, has made it very difficult to induce even the members of the church to contribute for the support of their pastor. One of them once almost found fault with me for taking the money contributed at a collection by whites at Seabeck, where I often preached, and he thought I ought not to do so.

The Indians at Jamestown have done somewhat differently. In their region, when there has been preaching by the whites, generally a collection is taken. Noticing this, of their own accord, in 1882 when I went to them, they passed around the hat and took up a collection of three dollars and forty-five cents, and they have sometimes done so since.

XLI.

TOBACCO.

The use of tobacco is not as excessive among the Twanas as among many Indians--not as much so as among the Clallams. Seldom is one seen smoking or chewing, though a large share of the Indians use it a little. Yet not much of a direct war has been waged against it. There have been so many greater evils against which it seemed necessary to contend that I hardly thought it wise to speak much in public against it. Still a quiet influence has been exerted against it. The agent never uses it, and very few of the employees have done so. This example has done something.

The following incident shows the ideas some of them have obtained. About 1876 the school-teacher heard something going on in the boys’ room. He quietly went to the key-hole and listened to see if any mischief were brewing. The result was different from what he had feared. The boys were holding a court. They had their judge and jury, witnesses and lawyers. The culprit was charged with the crime of being drunk. After the prosecution had rested the case, the criminal arose and said about as follows: “May it please your honor, I am a poor man and not able to pay a lawyer, so I shall have to defend myself. There is a little mistake about this case. My name is Captain Chase [a white man of the region]. I came to church on Sunday; the minister did not know me. I was well dressed, and the minister mistook me for another minister. So when he was done, he asked me to say a few words to the Indians. I was in a fix, for I had a large quid of tobacco in my mouth. I tried to excuse myself, but the minister would not take no for an answer. So at last I quietly and secretly took out the tobacco from my mouth [suiting his words with a very apt illustration of how it was done], threw it behind the seat, and went up on the platform to speak. But I was not sharp enough for the Indians. Some of them saw me throw it away, _and they thought a minister had no business with tobacco_, and that is why I am here; besides I was a little tipsy.” I have enjoyed telling this story to one or two tobacco-using ministers.

Somewhat later a rather wild boy wrote me, asking me to allow him to enter the praying band of Indian boys. He promised to give up his bad habits; and among others he mentioned the use of tobacco, which he said he would abandon.

Within the past year a number of the older Indians have abandoned its use. I have a cigar which was given me by one man. He said that when he determined to stop its use, he had a small piece of tobacco and two cigars, and that for months afterward they lay in his house where they were at that time, and he gave me one of them. Most of those who stopped using it belonged to the shaking set. It was one of the few good things which resulted from that strange affair. But they have been earnestly encouraged to continue as they have begun in this respect.

A white man who has an Indian woman for a wife told me the following. For years both he and his wife used tobacco, himself both chewing and smoking. When she professed to become a Christian, she gave up her tobacco and tried to induce him to do the same, and at last he did so far yield as to stop smoking; but he continued to chew. All her talk did not stop him. But he saw that when he had spit on the floor and stove, she would get a paper or rag and wipe it up, and hence he grew ashamed and stopped chewing in the house, using only a little--when he told me--in the woods when at work.

XLII.

SPICE.

An experience which is not very pleasant comes from the vermin, especially the fleas--not a refined word; but the most refined society gets accustomed to it here because they _have to do so_, and the more so the nearer they get to the native land of these animals--the Indians. I stood one evening and preached in one of their houses when I am satisfied that I scratched every half-minute during the service; for, although I stood them as long as I could, I could not help it. I would quietly take up one foot and rub it against the other, put my hand behind my back or in my pocket, and treat the creatures as gently as I could, and the like, so as not to attract any more attention than possible.

But then Indian houses are not their only dwellings. At one place I once stayed at a white man’s house, who was as kind as he knew how to be: but backing for twenty years with very few neighbors except Indians is not very elevating; it is one of the trials of the hardy frontiersman. I tried to go to sleep--one bit; I kicked--he stopped; I shut my eyes--another wanted his supper; I scratched; and so we kept up the interminable warfare until three o’clock, when sleep conquered for two hours. The next day, on the strength of it, I preached twice, held a council, tramped five miles, and talked the rest of the time. That night mine host, having suspected something, proposed that we take our blankets and go to the barn. I was willing, and we all slept soundly; but the hay was a year old, and in that region sometimes innumerable small hay-lice get on it--a fact of which I was not aware. They did not trouble us during the night; but when we arose the next morning our clothes, which had lain on the hay, were covered with thousands of them. Every seam, torn place, button-hole, and turned-over place was crowded with the lilliputians. It took me three quarters of an hour to brush them from my clothes. However, it did not hurt the clothes or me. My better two-thirds would have said that they needed brushing.

Twice while traveling to Jamestown have I been obliged, when within twenty miles of the place, to stop all day Saturday because of heavy head-winds, when I was exceedingly anxious to be at Jamestown over the Sabbath. That day was consequently spent not where I wished to be. It seemed to me to be a strange Providence; but I have since been inclined to believe that my example in not traveling on the Sabbath, when the Indians knew how anxious I was to reach the place, was worth more than the sermons I would have preached.

The following appeared in _The Child’s Paper_ in January, 1878:--

“In the school on the Indian reservation where I live twenty-five or thirty Indian children are taught the English language. At one time a new boy came who knew how to talk our language somewhat but not very well. Soon after he came he was at work with the other boys and the teacher, when, in pronouncing one English word, he did not pronounce it aright. He was corrected but still did not say it right. Again he was told how, but still it seemed as if his tongue were too thick; and again, but he did not get the right twist to it. At last one of the scholars thought that he was doing it only for fun and that he could pronounce it correctly if he only would do so, so he said: ‘O boys, it is not because his tongue is crooked but because his ears are crooked!’”

Query: Are there not some others who have crooked ears?

What does Paul say? “Five times received I forty stripes save one.” Well, I have never been treated so, for the people are as kind as can be. “Shipwrecked”? No, only cast twice on the beach by winds from a canoe. “A night and a day in the deep”? No, only a whole night and a part of several others on the mud-flats, waiting for the tide to come. No danger of drowning there. So I have determined to take more of such spice if it shall come.

XLIII.

CURRANT JELLY.

There is, however, another side to the picture, more like currant jelly. The people generally are as kind as they can be. “We will give you the best we have,” is what is often told me, and they do it. Here is a house near Jamestown, where I have stopped a week at a time, or nearly that, once in six months for about six years, and the people will take nothing for it. For seventy-five miles west of Dunginess is a region where a man’s company is supposed to pay for his lodgings at any house. I meet a man, who offers to go home, a half a mile, and get me a dinner, if I will only accept it. A girl, with whose family I was only slightly acquainted, stood on the porch one day as I passed, and said: “Mister, have you been to dinner? You had better stop and have some.” A hotel-keeper, who had sold whiskey for fifteen years, put me in his best room, one which he had fitted up for his own private use, and then would take nothing for it. The Superintendent of the Seabeck Mills, Mr. R. Holyoke, invited me to go to his house whenever I was in the place, and would never take any thing for it. It amounted to about four weeks’ time each year for five or six years, and yet he would hardly allow me to thank him. Others, too, at the same place, have been very kind. The steamer _St. Patrick_ for two years and a half always carried myself and family free, whenever we wished to travel on it, and during that time it gave us sixty or seventy-five dollars’ worth of fare. Captain J. G. Baker, of the _Colfax_, said to me, six or seven years ago: “Whenever you or your family, or an Indian whom you have with you to carry you, wish to travel where I am going, I will take you free.” He has often done it, sometimes making extra effort with his steamer in order to accommodate me. The steamers _Gem_ and _McNaught_ also made a rule to charge me no fare when I traveled on them.

Indians, too, are not wholly devoid of gratitude. It is the time of a funeral. They are often accustomed at such times to make presents to their friends who attend and sympathize with them. “Take this money,” they have often said to me at such times, as they have given me from one to three dollars. “Do not refuse--it is our custom; for you have come to comfort us with Christ’s words.” At a great festival, where I was present to protect them from drunkenness, and other evils equally bad, they handed me seven dollars and a half, saying, “You have come a long distance to help us; we can not give you food as we do these Indians, as you do not eat with us; take this money, it will help to pay your board.” But when I offered to pay the gentleman with whom I was staying, Mr. B. G. Hotchkiss, he too would take nothing for the board. The good people of the Pearl Street Church in Hartford, Connecticut, sent us a barrel of things in the early spring of 1883, whose money value I estimated at considerably over a hundred dollars, and whose good cheer was inestimable in money, because it came when our days were the darkest.

God has been very good to put it into the hearts of so many people to be so kind, and not the least good thing that he has done is that he has put that verse in the Bible about the giving a cup of cold water and the reward that will follow.

XLIV.

CONCLUSION.

Dr. H. J. Minthorne, superintendent of the Indian Training School at Forest Grove, Oregon, once remarked to me, “that, in the civilization of Indians, they often went forward and then backward; but that each time they went backward it was not quite so far as the previous time, and that each time they went forward it was an advance on any previous effort.” I have found the same to be true. They seem to rise much as the tide does when the waves are rolling--a surge upward and then back; but careful observation shows that the tide is rising.

There is much of human nature in them. In many respects--as in their habits of neatness and industry, their visions, superstitions, and the like--I have often been reminded of what I have read about ignorant whites in the Southern and Western States fifty years ago, and of what I have seen among the same class of people in Oregon thirty years ago.

Soon after I came here, an old missionary said to me: “Keep on with the work; the fruits of Christian labor among the Indians have been as great or greater than among the whites.” I have found it to be in some measure true. Something has, I trust, been done; but the Bible and experience both agree in saying that “God has done it all.” I sometimes think I have learned a little of the meaning of the verse, “Without me ye can do nothing,” and I would also record that I have proved the truth of that other one, “I am with you alway,"--for the work has paid.

I went to Boise City, in Idaho, in 1871, with the intention of staying indefinitely, perhaps a lifetime, but Providence indicated plainly that I ought to leave in two and a half years. When I came here, it was only with the intention of remaining two or three months on a visit. The same Providence has kept me here ten years and I am now satisfied that his plans were far wiser than mine. So “man proposes and God disposes.” The Christians’ future and the Indians’ future are wisely in the same hands.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Among the Alaskans, pp. 271, 272.

[2] It was not at that time, at this place.

[3] Added to the Jamestown Church, and inserted here to give a view of the whole work.