The school opened November 17 with about forty students. This number on December 2nd had increased to over 100. We are now receiving new students every day, of these ten are in the senior or graduating class. We note with interest a revival of the early desire for education and the culture which it brings; not just the early desire of ignorant and foolish expectation, but a steadily deepening conviction of the need and advantage of patient, continued study and training for better things in the future. We hope to foster this feeling, and to do what we may to realize the expectation, by building up honest, manly and womanly characters in our students. Many of the pupils have taught during the vacation months; some have not yet completed the term for which they were engaged. So far as we know, all have labored earnestly to exert an influence for good in the communities where they have been located. A few during the sickness were employed by the Howards or other societies as nurses, one young man saving about $200 at this work, and gaining an enviable reputation as a nurse.
Our public library is demonstrating its influence and usefulness in a gratifying way, in awakening in many laboring people a love of reading and of thought, aside from the great advantage it is to the school directly and indirectly. During the summer months, considerably over one hundred volumes were drawn and read. Among many others several white persons of most excellent standing availed themselves of its privileges. Of these latter, one is principal of a boys’ and girls’ school in our vicinity.
I cannot close this letter without a word concerning the church here. During the epidemic, one of its most earnest, reliable members fell a victim to the scourge. By thrift and saving, every family belonging to the church, except one only, got through the long summer of idleness without aid in the way of charity, and before the return of the teachers, and in the absence of the pastor, the church voted to send a delegate to the Conference at Athens, raising money at once to pay his expenses. If this is not an example of commendable church devotion and courage, show us one that is so.
We look for a fuller, stronger school this year than ever before. I sometimes think these people have become so accustomed to adversity and trial, that they come out stronger under it than from any other experience. May it not be that God is leading them through rough ways to better things than we think?
THE INDIANS.
THE S’KOKOMISH AGENCY.
Homes and Schools—Lands and Titles.
EDWIN EELLS, AGENT, S’KOKOMISH.
The favor of a kind Providence has preserved us from any unusual calamities, and general good health, peace and prosperity have attended us and the Indians under my charge. It has been rather a quiet year, with nothing very startling, either good or bad, to affect us. Among the Indians generally, their habits of morality appear to have been growing stronger. Their general deportment is very good, and their style of living in their houses is improving all the time. Their general health, in consequence of their improved manner of living, has never been better than during the past year. Most of their houses have been ceiled and good tight floors put in them during the past winter, so that they are quite as comfortable as the average of white settlers throughout the country. There has been some land cleared by them, a decided advance in the kind of fences built by them, and I have furnished 1,000 fruit trees, which they have set out, nearly all of which have lived.