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                        TEN YEARS AT SKOKOMISH.

                   [Illustration: SKOKOMISH AGENCY.]




                               TEN YEARS
                                  OF
                            MISSIONARY WORK
                           AMONG THE INDIANS
                                  AT
                   SKOKOMISH, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.
                              1874-1884.

                           BY REV. M. EELLS,
         _Missionary of the American Missionary Association_.

                                BOSTON:
         Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society,
                         CONGREGATIONAL HOUSE,
                  CORNER BEACON AND SOMERSET STREETS.




                          COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY
          CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND PUBLISHING SOCIETY

                     _Electrotyped and printed by
           Stanley & Usher, 171 Devonshire Street, Boston._




PREFACE.


Says Mrs. J. McNair Wright: “If the church can only be plainly shown the
need, amount, prospects, and methods of work in any given field, a vital
interest will at once arise in that field, and money for it will not be
lacking. The missionary columns in our religious papers do not supply
the information needed fully to set our missions before the church. Our
home-mission work needs to be ‘written up.’ The foreign field has found
a large increase of interest in its labors from the numerous books that
have been written,--_interestingly written_,--giving descriptions of the
work, the countries where the missionaries toil, and the lives of the
missionaries themselves. The Pueblo, the Mormon, and the American Indian
work should be similarly brought before the church. A book gives a
compact, united view of a subject; the same view given monthly or weekly
in the columns of periodicals loses much of its force and, moreover, is
much less likely to meet the notice of the young. A hearty missionary
spirit will be had in our church only when we furnish our youth with
more books on missionary themes.”[1]

In accordance with these ideas the following pages have been written.

It is surprising to find how few books can be obtained on missionary
work among the Indians. After ten years of effort the writer has only
been able to secure twenty-six books on such work in the United States,
and five of these are 18mo. volumes of less than forty pages each. Only
five of these have been published within the last fifteen years. Books
on the adventurous, scientific, and political departments of Indian life
are numerous and large; the reverse is true of the missionary
department. Hence it is not strange that such singular ideas predominate
among the American people in regard to the Indian problem.

M. E.

SKOKOMISH, WASHINGTON TERRITORY, August, 1884.




                              DEDICATION.


                              TO MY WIFE,
                            SARAH M. EELLS,

Who has been my companion during these ten years of labor; who has
cheered me, and made a Christian home for me to run into as into a safe
hiding-place, and who has been an example to the Indians,--these pages
are affectionately inscribed.




NOTE.


Much of the information contained in the following pages has been
published, especially in _The American Missionary_ of New York and _The
Pacific_ of San Francisco. Yet, in writing these pages, so much of it
has been altered that it has been impracticable to give quotation-marks
and acknowledgment for each item. I therefore take this general way of
acknowledging my indebtedness to those publications.




CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION                                                          11

I.
SKOKOMISH                                                             15

II.
PRELIMINARY HISTORY                                                   17

III.
EARLY RELIGIOUS TEACHING                                              21

IV.
SUBSEQUENT POLITICAL HISTORY                                          26

V.
THE FIELD AND THE WORK                                                28

VI.
DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF RELIGIOUS WORK                             33
  (_a_) LANGUAGES                                                     33
  (_b_) THEIR RELIGION                                                37
  (_c_) BESETTING SINS                                                53

VII.
TEMPERANCE                                                            60

VIII.
INDUSTRIES                                                            69

IX.
TITLES TO THEIR LANDS                                                 74

X.
MODE OF LIVING                                                        82

XI.
NAMES                                                                 85

XII.
EDUCATION                                                             87

XIII.
FOURTH OF JULY                                                        93

XIV.
CHRISTMAS                                                             97

XV.
VARIETY                                                              100

XVI.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE                                                 105

XVII.
SICKNESS                                                             118

XVIII.
FUNERALS                                                             122

XIX.
THE CENSUS OF 1880                                                   132

XX.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WHITES                                          144

XXI.
THE CHURCH AT SKOKOMISH                                              149

XXII.
BIG BILL                                                             158

XXIII.
DARK DAYS                                                            163

XXIV.
LIGHT BREAKING                                                       170

XXV.
THE FIRST BATTLE                                                     172

XXVI.
THE VICTORY                                                          180

XXVII.
RECONSTRUCTION                                                       184

XXVIII.
JOHN FOSTER PALMER                                                   188

XXIX.
M---- F----                                                          191

XXX.
DISCOURAGING CASES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS                               195

XXXI.
THE CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN                                              200

XXXII.
COOK HOUSE BILLY                                                     209

XXXIII.
LORD JAMES BALCH                                                     214

XXXIV.
TOURING                                                              216

XXXV.
THE BIBLE AND OTHER BOOKS                                            223

XXXVI.
BIBLE PICTURES                                                       227

XXXVII.
THE SABBATH-SCHOOL                                                   230

XXXVIII.
PRAYER