Thou in the darkness drear their one true Light.
Hallelujah!”
—W. W. How.
Among the crowning glories of all missionary endeavor are the living and dying testimonies of men and women who have been reclaimed from vice and heathenism by the power of Divine grace.
Among the An-ko-me-nums were many who witnessed a good confession and passed triumphantly home; too many, indeed, for any extended reference within the limits of one short chapter.
There are some, however, whose character and service caused them to stand forth as mountain peaks, to whom we must refer. Among these were Amos Cushan, our first convert and native missionary; David Sallosalton, “the Boy Missionary,” and Amos Shee-at-ston, our first class-leader among the Songees; old Captain Tsit-see-mit-ston, of Sumas Lake, Snak-wee-multh, Thit-sa-mut, Shee-ah-tluk, August Jackson, and several others.
Amos Cushan.
Kook-shin (or Kicking-foot) was our first convert to Christianity, and for many years a most valuable assistant in the work among his people. He was a youth of some twenty-five years of age when first I took up my work at Nanaimo. As a lad Kook-shin was trained in heathenism, and later when a young man learned to love the white man’s “fire-water.”
As a servant in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company he had acquired a little knowledge of English, and for some time served us in the capacity of interpreter.
His conversion was very clear, and so real to him that in after years he always referred to it with delight. When the enemy came to tempt him as to his conversion, to use his own words, “I pointed him to that place in the mission-house garden on the spring morning when I was working, where God spoke peace to my soul and made me, oh, so happy. For a long time before this I had had two hearts, but now Jesus became chief in my heart. Only one chief now. Jesus is my great Chief.”