Ten years of missionary work among the Indians at Skokomish, Washington Territory, 1874-1884

by Myron Eells

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.