By changing a single word in the third line to Pa sai ooks (French), China, Klale man (black men, or negroes), we had other verses.

In time I, however, became satisfied that the Indians would be better pleased if they could sing a few songs in their native languages; but it was very difficult to make them, as I could not talk their languages, and so could not revolve a sentence over until I could make it fit a tune. The Indians, on the other hand, were too young or too ignorant of music to adapt the words properly to it for many years. I had, however, written down about eighteen hundred words and sentences in each of the Twana, Clallam, and Squaxon dialects of the Nisqually language, for Major J. W. Powell at Washington, and could understand the Twana language a very little, and this knowledge helped me greatly. Some of the older school-boys became interested in the subject, and so we worked together. After some attempts, which were failures, we were able in 1882 to make a few hymns which have become quite popular. Some the Indians themselves made, and some they and I made. The following samples are given of one in each language:—

The following is a translation of our hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” so literally that it can be sung in both languages at the same time. The other two verses have also been likewise translated.

As an illustration of the difficulty I had, the following is given. I wished to obtain the chorus to the hymn, “I’m going home,” and obtained the expression, “I will go home,” in Clallam, in the following seven different ways. The last one was the only one that would fit the music.

As a literary curiosity I found that the old hymn, “Where, oh, where is good old Noah?” to the tune of “The Hebrew Children,” could be sung in four languages at the same time, and this was the only English hymn that I was ever able to translate into Chinook jargon, thus:—

These sentences can be mixed up in these languages in any way, make good sense, and mean almost precisely the same. I found no other hymn in which I could do likewise, but the chorus to “I’m going home” can be rendered similarly in the English, Twana, and Clallam.

Clallams are much more natural singers than the Twanas. For this reason, and also because there have never been enough whites in church to do the singing for them, there has never been any difficulty in inducing them to sing in church. But for very many years it was different with the Twanas. When the services were first begun among them the singing was in English and they were not expected to take part in it. When hymns were first made in the Chinook jargon there were so many whites to sing in church, that the Indians did not seem to take hold. They would sing well enough at their camps, the boys would sing loud enough when alone at the boarding-house or outdoors, but when they came to church they were almost mum. The whites and the school-girls did most of it. It is only within the past year or two that a perceptible change has been made for the better.

XL.

NATIVE MINISTRY AND SUPPORT.

All people are tempted to be proud, but owing to this lack of foundation, Indians are peculiarly so. A little knowledge puffeth up, and, to use a common expression, they soon get the “big-head.” That spoils them for the ministry. My first hope of this kind was that John Palmer would turn his attention to the subject, but he had a family before I knew him, and I never could induce him to look much in that direction. In the spring of 1882 two young men who had been in school from childhood took hold well. They began to talk with the Indians, to assist me in holding meetings, and to take charge of them in my absence. I felt that they were too young,—less than twenty-one,—and yet at times I could see no other way to do; but I had reason to fear that both felt proud of their position. During the next summer one of them, in getting married, fell so low that we had to suspend him from the church for almost a year, and the other for a time went slowly backward. Both have come up again considerably, and the latter has done quite well for the last year in holding lay-meetings. I pray “the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

As to the support of the ministry, I always felt a delicacy in speaking of the subject, because I was the minister. For several years, as long as very few of the older Indians were members of the church, and the ones who were members were scholars without money, it was difficult to say much. As soon as some of the school-boys were put to work as apprentices, I broached the subject to them, talked about it, and gave them something to read on it. While they were apprentices and employees most of them gave fairly. The agent urged them to do so, but compelled none, and a few refused entirely. But when they left the government employ and the agent moved away, they stopped doing what they had never liked to do.

The older Indians, when they did come into the church, were hardly prepared for it. The Catholic set said that if the people joined them they would have nothing to pay. One of the Catholics told me that the only reason why I wanted to get him into the church was to obtain his money. It had been revealed to them that it was wrong to sell God’s truth. These arguments, somewhat similar to those used years ago by some of the more ignorant people in the Southern and Western States, coupled with the natural love of money, has made it very difficult to induce even the members of the church to contribute for the support of their pastor. One of them once almost found fault with me for taking the money contributed at a collection by whites at Seabeck, where I often preached, and he thought I ought not to do so.

The Indians at Jamestown have done somewhat differently. In their region, when there has been preaching by the whites, generally a collection is taken. Noticing this, of their own accord, in 1882 when I went to them, they passed around the hat and took up a collection of three dollars and forty-five cents, and they have sometimes done so since.

XLI.

TOBACCO.

The following incident shows the ideas some of them have obtained. About 1876 the school-teacher heard something going on in the boys’ room. He quietly went to the key-hole and listened to see if any mischief were brewing. The result was different from what he had feared. The boys were holding a court. They had their judge and jury, witnesses and lawyers. The culprit was charged with the crime of being drunk. After the prosecution had rested the case, the criminal arose and said about as follows: “May it please your honor, I am a poor man and not able to pay a lawyer, so I shall have to defend myself. There is a little mistake about this case. My name is Captain Chase [a white man of the region]. I came to church on Sunday; the minister did not know me. I was well dressed, and the minister mistook me for another minister. So when he was done, he asked me to say a few words to the Indians. I was in a fix, for I had a large quid of tobacco in my mouth. I tried to excuse myself, but the minister would not take no for an answer. So at last I quietly and secretly took out the tobacco from my mouth [suiting his words with a very apt illustration of how it was done], threw it behind the seat, and went up on the platform to speak. But I was not sharp enough for the Indians. Some of them saw me throw it away, and they thought a minister had no business with tobacco, and that is why I am here; besides I was a little tipsy.” I have enjoyed telling this story to one or two tobacco-using ministers.

Somewhat later a rather wild boy wrote me, asking me to allow him to enter the praying band of Indian boys. He promised to give up his bad habits; and among others he mentioned the use of tobacco, which he said he would abandon.

Within the past year a number of the older Indians have abandoned its use. I have a cigar which was given me by one man. He said that when he determined to stop its use, he had a small piece of tobacco and two cigars, and that for months afterward they lay in his house where they were at that time, and he gave me one of them. Most of those who stopped using it belonged to the shaking set. It was one of the few good things which resulted from that strange affair. But they have been earnestly encouraged to continue as they have begun in this respect.

A white man who has an Indian woman for a wife told me the following. For years both he and his wife used tobacco, himself both chewing and smoking. When she professed to become a Christian, she gave up her tobacco and tried to induce him to do the same, and at last he did so far yield as to stop smoking; but he continued to chew. All her talk did not stop him. But he saw that when he had spit on the floor and stove, she would get a paper or rag and wipe it up, and hence he grew ashamed and stopped chewing in the house, using only a little—when he told me—in the woods when at work.

XLII.

SPICE.

But then Indian houses are not their only dwellings. At one place I once stayed at a white man’s house, who was as kind as he knew how to be: but backing for twenty years with very few neighbors except Indians is not very elevating; it is one of the trials of the hardy frontiersman. I tried to go to sleep—one bit; I kicked—he stopped; I shut my eyes—another wanted his supper; I scratched; and so we kept up the interminable warfare until three o’clock, when sleep conquered for two hours. The next day, on the strength of it, I preached twice, held a council, tramped five miles, and talked the rest of the time. That night mine host, having suspected something, proposed that we take our blankets and go to the barn. I was willing, and we all slept soundly; but the hay was a year old, and in that region sometimes innumerable small hay-lice get on it—a fact of which I was not aware. They did not trouble us during the night; but when we arose the next morning our clothes, which had lain on the hay, were covered with thousands of them. Every seam, torn place, button-hole, and turned-over place was crowded with the lilliputians. It took me three quarters of an hour to brush them from my clothes. However, it did not hurt the clothes or me. My better two-thirds would have said that they needed brushing.

Twice while traveling to Jamestown have I been obliged, when within twenty miles of the place, to stop all day Saturday because of heavy head-winds, when I was exceedingly anxious to be at Jamestown over the Sabbath. That day was consequently spent not where I wished to be. It seemed to me to be a strange Providence; but I have since been inclined to believe that my example in not traveling on the Sabbath, when the Indians knew how anxious I was to reach the place, was worth more than the sermons I would have preached.

The following appeared in The Child’s Paper in January, 1878:—

“In the school on the Indian reservation where I live twenty-five or thirty Indian children are taught the English language. At one time a new boy came who knew how to talk our language somewhat but not very well. Soon after he came he was at work with the other boys and the teacher, when, in pronouncing one English word, he did not pronounce it aright. He was corrected but still did not say it right. Again he was told how, but still it seemed as if his tongue were too thick; and again, but he did not get the right twist to it. At last one of the scholars thought that he was doing it only for fun and that he could pronounce it correctly if he only would do so, so he said: ‘O boys, it is not because his tongue is crooked but because his ears are crooked!’”

Query: Are there not some others who have crooked ears?

What does Paul say? “Five times received I forty stripes save one.” Well, I have never been treated so, for the people are as kind as can be. “Shipwrecked”? No, only cast twice on the beach by winds from a canoe. “A night and a day in the deep”? No, only a whole night and a part of several others on the mud-flats, waiting for the tide to come. No danger of drowning there. So I have determined to take more of such spice if it shall come.

XLIII.

CURRANT JELLY.

THERE is, however, another side to the picture, more like currant jelly. The people generally are as kind as they can be. “We will give you the best we have,” is what is often told me, and they do it. Here is a house near Jamestown, where I have stopped a week at a time, or nearly that, once in six months for about six years, and the people will take nothing for it. For seventy-five miles west of Dunginess is a region where a man’s company is supposed to pay for his lodgings at any house. I meet a man, who offers to go home, a half a mile, and get me a dinner, if I will only accept it. A girl, with whose family I was only slightly acquainted, stood on the porch one day as I passed, and said: “Mister, have you been to dinner? You had better stop and have some.” A hotel-keeper, who had sold whiskey for fifteen years, put me in his best room, one which he had fitted up for his own private use, and then would take nothing for it. The Superintendent of the Seabeck Mills, Mr. R. Holyoke, invited me to go to his house whenever I was in the place, and would never take any thing for it. It amounted to about four weeks’ time each year for five or six years, and yet he would hardly allow me to thank him. Others, too, at the same place, have been very kind. The steamer St. Patrick for two years and a half always carried myself and family free, whenever we wished to travel on it, and during that time it gave us sixty or seventy-five dollars’ worth of fare. Captain J. G. Baker, of the Colfax, said to me, six or seven years ago: “Whenever you or your family, or an Indian whom you have with you to carry you, wish to travel where I am going, I will take you free.” He has often done it, sometimes making extra effort with his steamer in order to accommodate me. The steamers Gem and McNaught also made a rule to charge me no fare when I traveled on them.

Indians, too, are not wholly devoid of gratitude. It is the time of a funeral. They are often accustomed at such times to make presents to their friends who attend and sympathize with them. “Take this money,” they have often said to me at such times, as they have given me from one to three dollars. “Do not refuse—it is our custom; for you have come to comfort us with Christ’s words.” At a great festival, where I was present to protect them from drunkenness, and other evils equally bad, they handed me seven dollars and a half, saying, “You have come a long distance to help us; we can not give you food as we do these Indians, as you do not eat with us; take this money, it will help to pay your board.” But when I offered to pay the gentleman with whom I was staying, Mr. B. G. Hotchkiss, he too would take nothing for the board. The good people of the Pearl Street Church in Hartford, Connecticut, sent us a barrel of things in the early spring of 1883, whose money value I estimated at considerably over a hundred dollars, and whose good cheer was inestimable in money, because it came when our days were the darkest.

God has been very good to put it into the hearts of so many people to be so kind, and not the least good thing that he has done is that he has put that verse in the Bible about the giving a cup of cold water and the reward that will follow.

XLIV.

CONCLUSION.

There is much of human nature in them. In many respects—as in their habits of neatness and industry, their visions, superstitions, and the like—I have often been reminded of what I have read about ignorant whites in the Southern and Western States fifty years ago, and of what I have seen among the same class of people in Oregon thirty years ago.

Soon after I came here, an old missionary said to me: “Keep on with the work; the fruits of Christian labor among the Indians have been as great or greater than among the whites.” I have found it to be in some measure true. Something has, I trust, been done; but the Bible and experience both agree in saying that “God has done it all.” I sometimes think I have learned a little of the meaning of the verse, “Without me ye can do nothing,” and I would also record that I have proved the truth of that other one, “I am with you alway,"—for the work has paid.

I went to Boise City, in Idaho, in 1871, with the intention of staying indefinitely, perhaps a lifetime, but Providence indicated plainly that I ought to leave in two and a half years. When I came here, it was only with the intention of remaining two or three months on a visit. The same Providence has kept me here ten years and I am now satisfied that his plans were far wiser than mine. So “man proposes and God disposes.” The Christians’ future and the Indians’ future are wisely in the same hands.

THE END