S’KOKOMISH AGENCY, W. T.
Sunday-School Progress—An Indian Festival—Temperance and Order.
REV. MYRON EELLS.
Our Sabbath-school is accustomed to make a specialty of inducing the children to learn the lesson in the Bible, believing that the Bible is the best Sabbath instruction with which we can store their minds. Learning six verses places a child on the roll of honor, and reciting them perfectly gives him two credit marks. For four Sabbaths during the past year there was no Sabbath-school, hence the highest number which a child could receive was ninety-six. That number was received by one Indian girl, and it is the best that has ever been done in the school. Last year the highest number was eighty-six, and that was better than the year before. Ten others, out of about thirty who can read English, received over fifty credit marks.
In January and February, I was absent some three weeks at an Indian festival, ninety miles from here. They are wholly heathenish, but thus far it has been about as impossible to prevent them as it is to prevent a river running down stream; hence, the next best thing is to guide them. Drunkenness at such places is one of their worst dangers, and the principal Indians are beginning to realize it. About 550 Indians were present, seventy-five of whom went from this reservation. I have made the trip by canoe several times in the summer, and in the winter by steamer, but the prospect was not pleasant of traveling 180 miles in an open canoe; camping out when it might rain, snow or freeze all the time. But the chiefs there and here urged me to go, and assist in guarding against worthless white men and Indians. There was no one else to go, and it did seem that if they should get on a “big drunk,” and I should be asked why I did not go and try to prevent it, and should reply, because I was afraid it would be stormy, it would be a poor excuse. It was a hard place to attempt to elevate the Indians, though I held several services with them, but there was a prospect that I might prevent their falling as deep into the pit as they would otherwise. The result justified the work. One drunken Indian was arrested, one drunken white man and wife were sent home; and it was plain that, had I not been there, no one could have told where it would have ended. Out of the seventy-five who went with me, I do not know of more than half a dozen who have been drunk within four years, although nearly all drank more or less previous to the adoption of the present policy; and it is considerable to say that 550 Indians were together for a week, and that there was only one case of drunkenness, and only one of quarreling.
GREEN BAY AGENCY.
Education Among the Menomonee Indians.
JOS. C. BRIDGMAN, KESHENA, WIS.