Ten years of missionary work among the Indians at Skokomish, Washington Territory, 1874-1884. Eells Myron
nearly two thousand of which is excellent bottom land. As much more is hilly and gravelly, and the rest is swamp land. With the exception of the latter, it is covered with timber.
II.
PRELIMINARY HISTORY.
EVER since the Spanish traders and Vancouver in the latter part of the last century, and the Northwest Fur Company and Hudson’s Bay Company in the early part of the present century, came to Puget Sound, these Indians have had some intercourse with the whites, and learned some things about the white man’s ways, his Sabbath, his Bible, and his God. Fort Nisqually, one of the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was situated about fifty miles from Skokomish, so that these Indians were comparatively near to it.
About 1850, Americans began to settle on Puget Sound. In 1853 Washington was set off from Oregon and organized into a territory, and in 1855 the treaty was made with these Indians. Governor I. I. Stevens and Colonel M. C. Simmons represented the government, and the three tribes of the Twanas, Chemakums, and S’klallams were the parties of the other part. The Chemakums were a small tribe, lived near where Port Townsend now is, and are now extinct. The S’klallams, or Clallams (as the name has since become), lived on the south side of the Straits of Fuca, from Port Townsend westward almost to Neah Bay, and were by far the largest and strongest tribe of the three. It was expected that all the tribes would be removed to the reservation. The government, however, was to furnish the means for doing so, but it was never done, and as the Clallams and Twanas were never on very friendly terms, there having been many murders between them in early days, the Clallams have not come voluntarily to it, but remain in different places in the region of their old homes. The reservation, about three miles square, also was too small for all of the tribes, it having been said that twenty-eight hundred Indians belonged to them when the treaty was made. There were certainly no more.
The treaty has been known as that of Point-No-Point, it having been made at that place, a few miles north of the mouth of Hood’s Canal on the main sound, in 1855. It was, however, four years later when it was ratified, and another year before the machinery was put in motion, so that government employees were sent to the reservation to teach the Indians. In the meantime the Yakama War took place, the most wide-spread Indian war which ever occurred on this north-west coast, it having begun almost simultaneously in Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and Washington, and on Puget Sound. The Indians on the eastern side of the sound were engaged in it, but the Clallams and Twanas as tribes did not do so, and never have been engaged in any war with the whites. They were related by marriage with some of the tribes who were hostile, and a few individuals from one or both of these tribes went to the eastern side of the sound and joined the hostiles, but as tribes they remained peaceable.
A WAR INCIDENT.
The Clallams were a strong tribe, and large numbers of them lived at an early day about Port Townsend. Here, too, was the Duke of York, who was for many years their head chief and a noted friend of the Americans. About 1850, he went to San Francisco on a sailing-vessel, and saw the numbers, and realized something of the power, of the whites. After his return the Indians became very much enraged at the residents of Port Townsend, who were few in numbers, and the savages were almost all ready to engage in war with them. Had they done so, they could easily have wiped out the place, and the white people knew it. The Indians were ready to do so, but the Duke of York stood between the Indians and the whites. For hours the savage mass surged to and fro, hungry for blood, the Duke of York’s brother being among the number. For as many hours the Duke of York alone held them from going any farther, by his eloquence, telling them of the numbers and power of the whites; and that if the Indians should kill these whites, others would come and wipe them out. At last they yielded to him. He saved Port Townsend and saved his tribe from a war with the whites.
In 1860 the first government employees were sent to Skokomish, and civilizing influences of a kind were brought more closely to the Indians. With one or two exceptions, very little religious influence was brought to bear upon them. Of one of their agents, Mr. J. Knox, the Indians speak in terms of gratitude and praise. He set out a large orchard, and did considerable to improve them. In 1870, when all the Indians were put under the military, these Indians were put under Lieutenant Kelley. The Indians do not speak well of military rule. It was too tyrannical.
III.
EARLY RELIGIOUS TEACHING.
ABOUT 1850 Father E. C. Chirouse, a Catholic priest, came to Puget Sound, and for a time was on Hood’s Canal. He had two missions among the Twanas, one among the Kolseed band, and the other among the Duhlaylips. He baptized a large number of them; made two Indian priests, and left an influence which was not soon forgotten. At a council held after a time by various tribes, the Skokomish and other neighboring tribes of the lower eastern sound were too strong for the Twanas and induced Father Chirouse to leave them. Not long afterward the Indians relapsed into their old style of religion, and on the surface it appeared as if all were forgotten: but when Protestant teachers came among them, and their old religion died, some of the Indians turned for a time to that Catholic religion which they had first learned, as one easier for the natural heart to follow than that of the Protestants.
From 1860 to 1871 but little religious instruction was given to these Indians. At different times Rev. W. C. Chattin, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mr. D. B. Ward, of the Protestant Methodist Church, taught the school, and each endeavored to give some Christian teaching on the Sabbath, but they found it hard work, for Sabbath-breaking, house-building, trafficking, and gambling by the whites and the Indians were allowed in sight and hearing of the place where the services were held. “If it is wrong to break the Sabbath, why does the agent do so?” “If it is wrong to play cards and gamble, why do the whites do so?” These and similar questions were asked by the Indian children of their Christian teachers. It was somewhat difficult to answer them. It was more difficult to work against such influences. Still the seed sown then was not wholly lost. It remained buried a long time. I have seen that some of those children, however, although they forgot how to read, and almost forgot how to talk English, yet received influences which, fifteen or twenty years afterward, made them a valuable help to their people in their march upward.
In 1871, however, a decided change was made. In that year President Grant adopted what has been known as the peace policy, in which he assigned the different agencies to different missionary societies, asking them to nominate agents, promising that these should be confirmed by the Senate. While it was not expected that the government would directly engage in missionary work, yet the President realized that Christianity was necessary to the solution of the Indian problem, and he hoped that the missionary societies who should nominate these agents would become interested in the work, and encouraged them to send missionaries to their several fields. These agents were expected to coöperate with the missionaries in their special work.
At that time the Skokomish Agency was assigned to the American Missionary Association, a society supported by the Congregationalists. In 1871 they nominated Mr. Edwin Eells as agent for this place, who was confirmed by the Senate, and in May of that year he took charge of these Indians.
Mr. Eells was the oldest son of Rev. C. Eells, D.D., who came to the coast in 1838 as a missionary to the Spokane Indians, where he remained about ten years, until the Whitman Massacre and Cayuse War rendered it unsafe for him to remain there any longer. The agent was born among these Indians in July, 1841. Like most young men on this coast, he had been engaged in various callings. He had been a farmer, school-teacher, clerk in a store, teamster, had served as enrolling officer for government at Walla-Walla during the war, and had studied law. At the age of fifteen he had united with a Congregational church, and had maintained a consistent