THE INDIANS.
WASHINGTON TERRITORY.
Three Christian Boys and their Letters.
REV. MYRON EELLS, S’KOKOMISH
Our hearts were gladdened, last Sabbath, by receiving into our Church three of the Indian school-boys, each of them supposed to be about thirteen years of age. We had kept them on a virtual probation for nearly a year, until I began to feel that to do so any longer would be an injury both to themselves and to others. Their conduct, especially towards their school-teacher, although not perfect, has been so uniformly Christian that those who were best acquainted with them felt the best satisfied in regard to their change of heart. Said a member of our Church of about fifty years’ Christian experience—who was not here much during the summer, and hence knew comparatively little about them—after hearing a full statement, “I wish that some of the white children whom we have received into the Church had given one half as good evidence of being Christians as these boys give.” And yet the Church was satisfied in regard to them. On religious subjects, they have been most free in communicating both to their teacher and myself by letter. I have thought that you might be interested in extracts from some of them, and hence send the following:
“I am going to write to you this day, please help me to get my father to become a Christian,” (his father is an Indian doctor) “and I think I will get Andrew and Henry” (the other Christian boys) “to say a word for my father. I want you to read it to my father.”
He wrote to his father the following, which I read to him: