Prof. Salisbury was with us three days of the last week, in the tour of the schools which he is making to get his work in hand. He gave us a helpful talk in chapel one morning, and again gave an account of the other schools he had visited, and we trust his subsequent visits will aid in promoting the symmetry and efficiency of the work of this school.
CHURCH AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK AT S’KOKOMISH, W.T.
June 22d and 23d, 1874, this church was organized with eleven members, only one of whom was an Indian. But while there was only one Indian, it was hoped that God would bless the work so that others would be induced to come in, and we have not been wholly disappointed. Since that time twenty-eight Indians and half-breeds have joined it and our new church at Jamestown, near Dunginess, besides thirteen whites who have joined on profession, and thirteen more by letter, making seventy-five in all, including the first members. Forty-five Indian marriages have taken place here in a Christian way, and twenty-seven funerals. All of those married, who are alive, are still living together, owing mainly to the Agent. Christian services at funerals are something about which the Indians at first cared very little, and often have the dead been hurried off to burial without even letting me know that any one was dead; and their burying-ground with its small houses and clothes, cloth and other things, was a curiosity to visitors. But after a time, having made some slow improvements, they opened a new burying-ground, and when the first grave was made the chief said to me: “To-day we become white people. We do not like the idea of having cloth and other things around our graves, and we expect that there will be none of it here.” That was nearly four years ago, and there are now no such things visible. At a later day I was absent when one person died, and no white man was present at the funeral; but when I returned, the Indians asked me to make arrangements so that if I should necessarily be absent some Christian white man should go and help them bury their dead in a Christian manner.
A prayer-meeting was begun here as soon as the present Agent came (before there was a church or minister), which has been constantly maintained, and its influence has gone into all the Christian work here. But it has been too old for some of the children, and too far away and in a wrong language for many of the Indians; hence it has been supplemented by children’s, ladies’ and Indian prayer-meetings.