HONORABLE RECORD FOR INDIANS.
BY REV. MYRON EELLS, S'KOKOMISH AGENCY, WASHINGTON.
During the late financial stringency the principal business man near this reservation failed, and put his property into the hands of a receiver. The S'kokomish Indians owed him about three thousand dollars, and the whites owed him over twenty thousand. The first business of the receiver was to try to collect these debts. After he had made considerable effort in this direction he said to me substantially as follows: "These Indians have made more honest efforts to pay these debts than the whites have, as a whole."
As the Indians have become citizens they have been required to work road taxes among their other duties. The road supervisor said to me: "I obtained more satisfactory work out of the Indians than I did out of the white men." The Indians had often said that the roads were theirs, and they wanted to use them, so that they were not losing anything, even if they worked a little over their time, and several of them who were over fifty years of age voluntarily gave a day's work or two. While the Indians by no means always do as I wish to have them, yet these facts are encouraging.
MISSION HOME, S'KOKOMISH.
The Trials of Missionary Life.—The hardships and dangers to which our Indian missionaries are exposed are illustrated in the sad experience of Rev. T. L. Riggs, the superintendent of the missions of the Association at Oahe, S. D.
The exposure to the blazing sun and cutting winds and excessive cold of the Dakota winters has produced acute inflammation of the eyes, so that Mr. Riggs is entirely blind. We trust this is only temporary, but the pain and confinement in a dark room, and necessary retirement from the active work which Supt. Riggs so energetically carries on, are a painful trial, and will awaken the sympathy of all our readers.
A sad affliction has also befallen our honored missionary, Dr. A. L. Riggs, and his family, of Santee, Neb. Their little grandson, the child of the missionary daughter in China, has recently died of small-pox under very painful circumstances. The entire family in China had this disease, but at last accounts all but the little child were recovering.