XXXV.
THE BIBLE AND OTHER BOOKS.
NATURALLY most of the Indians did not care to buy Bibles at first. They were furnished free to the school-children, and, like many other things that cost nothing, were not very highly prized, nor taken care of half as well as they ought to have been. Still they learned that it was the sacred Book and when one after another left school most of them possessed a Bible. I had not been here long when an Indian bought one, and, having had the family record of a white friend of his written in it, he presented it to the man, who had none. It caused some comment that an Indian should be giving a Bible to a white man. When the first apprentices received their first pay, a good share of their earnings were invested in much better Bibles than they had previously been able to buy.
The following item appeared in The San Francisco Pacific in March, 1880:—
“LO, THE POOR INDIAN!
“The following facts speak volumes. Let all read them.—[Chaplain Stubbs, Oregon Editor.]
“During 1879 I acted as agent of the Bible Society for this region. The sales amounted to over twenty-two dollars to the Indians, out of a total of thirty-two dollars. Of the seventy-five Bibles and Testaments sold, thirty-nine were bought by them, varying in price from five cents to three dollars and thirty cents. These facts, with other things, show that there is some literary taste among them. Not many of the older ones can read, hence do not wish for books; but many have adorned their houses with Bible and other pictures, twenty of them having been counted in one house, nearly all of which were bought with their money. In the house of a newly married couple, both of whom have been in school, are twenty-seven books, the largest being a royal octavo Bible, reference, gilt. The Council Fire is taken here. In a room where four boys stay, part of whom are in school, and the rest of whom are apprentices,—none of them being over seventeen years old,—will be found The Port Townsend Argus and The Seattle Intelligencer. On the table is an octavo Bible, for the boys have prayers every evening by themselves, and two of them have spent about five dollars each for other books, “Christ in Literature” being among them. At another house are three young men who have twenty volumes. One of them has paid twenty dollars for what he has bought; Youmans’s Dictionary of Every-day Wants, Webster’s Unabridged, Moody’s and Punshon’s Sermons being among them. He was never in school until he was about twenty-two years old and nine months will probably cover all the schooling he ever had. Here will be found The Pacific. In another house the occupant has spent about fifty dollars for books, and his library numbers thirty volumes. Among them will be found an eighteen-dollar family Bible, Chambers’s Information for the People, “Africa” by Stanley, Life of Lincoln, and Meacham’s Wigwam and Warpath. Here also, is The Pacific, The West Shore Olympia Courier, The Council Fire, and The American Missionary. This man never went to school but two or three weeks, having picked up the rest of his knowledge. When Indians spend their money thus, it shows that there is an intellectual capacity in them that can be developed.”
It has been, however, and still is, somewhat difficult to cultivate in many of them a taste for reading, so as to continue to use it when older. This is not because of a want of intellectual capacity, but for three other reasons. First, as soon as they leave school and go back among the uneducated Indians, there is no stimulus to induce them to read. The natural influence is the other way, to cause them to drop their books. Second, like white people who remain in one place continually, they are but little interested in what is going on in the outside world. Third, in most books and papers there are just enough large difficult words which they do not understand to spoil the sense, and thus the interest in the story is destroyed. Yet notwithstanding these discouragements, the present success together with the prospect that it will be much greater in the future, as more of them become educated, is such as to make us feel that it pays.
XXXVI.
BIBLE PICTURES.
IT is very plain that Indians who can not read, and even some who can read, but only a little, need something besides the Bible to help them remember it. Were white people to hear the Bible explained once or twice a week only, with no opportunity to read it, they would be very slow to acquire its truths. It hence became very plain that some good Scripture illustrations would be very valuable. I could not, however, afford to give them to the Indians, nor did I think it best, as generally that which costs nothing is good for nothing. But to live three thousand miles from the publishing-houses and find what was wanted was difficult, for it was necessary that they should be of good size, attractive, and cheap. For eight years I failed to find what was a real success. Fanciful Bible-texts are abundant, but they convey no Bible instruction to older Indians. Small Bible pictures, three or four by four or six inches are furnished by Nelson & Sons, and others, but they were too small to hang over the walls of their houses and they did not care to buy them. I often put them into my pocket, when visiting, and explained them to the Indians, and so made them quite useful. The same company furnished larger ones, about twelve by eighteen inches, which were good pictures. The retail price was fifty cents. I obtained them by the quantity at about thirty-seven cents and sold them for twenty-five, but they were not very popular. It took too much money to make much of a show. The Providence Lithograph Company publish large lithographs, thirty by forty-four inches, for the International Sabbath-school Lessons, which were somewhat useful. I obtained quite a number, second-hand, at half-price, eight for a dollar, and often used them as the text of my pulpit preaching, but when I was done with them I generally had to give them away. They were colored and showy but too indefinite to be attractive enough to the Indians to induce them to pay even that small price for them.
At last I came across some large charts, on rollers, highly colored, published by Haasis & Lubrecht, of New York. They were twenty-eight by thirty-five inches, and I could sell them for twenty-five cents each, and they were very popular. They went like hot cakes—were often wanted faster than I could get them, although I procured from twenty to forty and sometimes more at once. Protestant and Catholic Indians, Christians and medicine-men, those off the reservation and on other reservations as well as at Skokomish, were equally pleased with them, so that I sold four hundred and fifty in twenty-one months. They were large, showy, cheap, and good, care being used not to obtain some purely Catholic pictures which they publish.