Metlakatla
Guest House
The Indians were divided into various tribes, each at war with the other. He thought if he could succeed in getting the chiefs together and could tell them the Word of God in their own language, he would more readily win their confidence and esteem. So he requested his interpreter to call together all the chiefs to one central point, where he would deliver his first sermon. “But oh!” he said, “when I saw before me the assembled braves, decorated in all the colors of the rainbow, my courage left me, and turning to my teacher, I begged of him to deliver the message I had so carefully prepared to the gathered tribesmen. But he positively refused, and told me his intrusion might cause a war, for the tribes were very jealous of the power and influence of their neighbors. Then I took courage and when I had spoken, oh! what an effect it had upon them! Bodies were rigid and eyes seemed as though they would pierce me through and through. The results were striking. They gathered around in little groups, earnestly discussing the truths made known to them and wondering who could be and whence came this strange white man who spoke their own tongue.
“Father” Duncan’s Church
“From that day I became absorbed in my work. For thirty years I labored among them at Old Metlakatla, when one day I was told that the natives did not own the land and that the title was vested in the Queen of England. The Indians could not understand how a sovereign whom they had never seen could own the land over which they and their ancestors had roamed for centuries, fishing, hunting, and trapping.