Ten years of missionary work among the Indians at Skokomish, Washington Territory, 1874-1884. Eells Myron
rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_e2557fc7-50a3-5af2-adf6-3948e5a4d40a">XLII. SPICE.
PREFACE.
SAYS Mrs. J. McNair Wright: “If the church can only be plainly shown the need, amount, prospects, and methods of work in any given field, a vital interest will at once arise in that field, and money for it will not be lacking. The missionary columns in our religious papers do not supply the information needed fully to set our missions before the church. Our home-mission work needs to be ‘written up.’ The foreign field has found a large increase of interest in its labors from the numerous books that have been written—interestingly written—giving descriptions of the work, the countries where the missionaries toil, and the lives of the missionaries themselves. The Pueblo, the Mormon, and the American Indian work should be similarly brought before the church. A book gives a compact, united view of a subject; the same view given monthly or weekly in the columns of periodicals loses much of its force and, moreover, is much less likely to meet the notice of the young. A hearty missionary spirit will be had in our church only when we furnish our youth with more books on missionary themes.”[1]
In accordance with these ideas the following pages have been written.
It is surprising to find how few books can be obtained on missionary work among the Indians. After ten years of effort the writer has only been able to secure twenty-six books on such work in the United States, and five of these are 18mo. volumes of less than forty pages each. Only five of these have been published within the last fifteen years. Books on the adventurous, scientific, and political departments of Indian life are numerous and large; the reverse is true of the missionary department. Hence it is not strange that such singular ideas predominate among the American people in regard to the Indian problem.
M. E.
Skokomish, Washington Territory, August, 1884.
D E D I C A T I O N.
TO MY WIFE,
S A R A H M. E E L L S,
Who has been my companion during these ten years of labor; who has cheered me, and made a Christian home for me to run into as into a safe hiding-place, and who has been an example to the Indians—these pages are affectionately inscribed.
NOTE.
Much of the information contained in the following pages has been published, especially in The American Missionary of New York and The Pacific of San Francisco. Yet, in writing these pages, so much of it has been altered that it has been impracticable to give quotation-marks and acknowledgment for each item. I therefore take this general way of acknowledging my indebtedness to those publications.
INTRODUCTION.
THE Indians are in our midst. Different solutions of the problem have been proposed. It is evident that we must either kill them, move them away, or let them remain with us. The civilization and Christianity of the United States, with all that is uncivilized and un-Christian, is not yet ready to kill them. One writer has proposed to move them to some good country which Americans do not want, and leave it to them. We have been trying to find such a place for a century—have moved the Indians from one reservation to another and from one State or Territory to another; but have failed to find the desired haven of rest for them. It is more difficult to find it now than it ever has been, as Americans have settled in every part of the United States and built towns, railroads, and telegraph-lines all over the country. Hence no such place has been found, and it never will be.
Therefore the Indians are with us to remain. They are to be our neighbors. The remaining question is, Shall they be good or bad ones? If we are willing that they shall be bad, all that is necessary is for good people to neglect them; for were there no evil influences connected with civilization(!), they would not rise from their degradation, ignorance, and wickedness without help. When, however, we add to their native heathenism all the vices of intemperance, immorality, hate, and the like, which wicked men naturally carry to them, they will easily and quickly become very bad neighbors. Weeds will grow where nothing is cultivated.
If we wish them to become good neighbors, something must be done. Good seeds must be sown, watched, cultivated. People may call them savage, ignorant, treacherous, superstitious, and the like. I will not deny it. In the language of a popular writer of the day: “The remedy for ignorance is education;” likewise for heathenism, superstition, and treachery, it is the gospel. White people can not keep the civilization which they already have without the school and the church; and Indians are not so much abler and better that they can be raised to become good neighbors without the same.
Impressed with this belief, the writer has been engaged for the past ten years in missionary work with a few of them in the region of Skokomish, and here presents a record of some of the experiences. In the account he has recorded failures as well as successes. In his earlier ministry, both among whites and Indians, he read the accounts of other similar workers, who often recorded only their success. It was good in its place, for something was learned of the causes of the success. But too much of this was discouraging. He was not always successful and sometimes wondered if these writers were ever disappointed as much as he was. Sometimes when he read the record of a failure it did him more good than a record of a success. He took courage because he felt that he was not the only one who sometimes failed. The Bible records failures as well as successes.
TEN YEARS AT SKOKOMISH.
I.
SKOKOMISH.
THE Skokomish Reservation is situated in the western part of Washington Territory, near the head of Hood’s Canal, the western branch of Puget Sound. It is at the mouth of the Skokomish River. The name means “the river people,” from kaw, a river, in the Twana language, which in the word has been changed to ko. It is the largest river which empties into Hood’s Canal; hence, that band of the Twana tribe which originally lived here were called the river people. The Twana tribe was formerly composed of three bands: the Du-hlay-lips, who lived fourteen miles farther up the canal, at its extreme head; the Skokomish band, who lived about the mouth of the river, and the Kol-seeds, or Quilcenes, who lived thirty or forty miles farther down the canal. The dialects of these three bands vary slightly.
When the treaty was made by the United States in 1855, the land about the mouth of the Skokomish River was selected as the reservation; the other bands in time moved to it, and the post-office was given the same name; hence, the tribe came to be known more as the Skokomish Indians than by their original name of Tu-án-hu, a name which has been changed by whites to Twana, and so appears in government reports.
The reservation is small, hardly three miles square, comprising