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Page 13
The handling of the Indians here was one of the first fruits of
President Grant's Peace Policy, by which the agencies were assigned to
the several missionary societies, which were to nominate their
respective agents. This was one of those which were assigned to the
American Missionary Association. In 1871 the Association nominated to
this Agency Edwin Eells, Esq., the eldest son of Rev. Gushing Eells,
D.D., who was one of the mission band that crossed the Rocky Mountains
in 1838, under commission of the American Board, to be associated with
Dr. Marcus Whitman's series of Indian Missions. Here is an illustration
of the wisdom of that policy, which has secured a highly successful
management in all the secular, educational and religious affairs of the
Agency, and one that has been continued on through the changes of
governmental administration, and also one that has resulted in repeated
promotions, until now Agent Eells has charge of five of the seven
distinct Reservations in the State of Washington. His present
headquarters are at the Puyallup Agency, near Tacoma, where he has just
completed an eight thousand dollar building to displace an old one, for
the Government Boarding School. In all these five reservations, lands
have been secured in severalty to the Indians, and largely through his
persistent devotion to their welfare. For two or three years his father
had care of the S'kokomish Mission under the American Missionary
Association, and in 1874, his brother, Rev. Myron Eells, was appointed
to the same work, in which he still abides. Besides the preaching, the
care of the Sunday-school and the prayer meetings and the pastoral
work, in which he gets around among his people as often as once in a
month, he has also the charge of the Indian Church among the Clallams,
near New Dunginess, the brethren of that station, in the pastor's
absence, maintaining stated worship. The people at S'kokomish have
gotten beyond Government payments; they live on their own allotted
lands, in cabins or frame houses, wearing citizens' dress, and doing
business as white men do it. One of Pastor Eells's first Sundays at the
mission was noted for the celebration of Christian marriage on the part
of seven or eight couples who had been living together under their
heathen way of taking up. So they have been shuffling off their
polygamy. While we were there, a man of middle life came to the
pastor's house with his first wife, to be married to her after the
Christian form, having made a satisfactory pecuniary arrangement with
the second, who was a sister of the first. In this case there were no
children to complicate settlement. After I had addressed the church
upon their duty of doing more for the support of their pastor, even as
I had betimes had to do before in white home missionary churches, the
several responses were as decorous and assuring as could be desired.
As another advantage of this Grant plan, the Government School and the
Mission are found to be in entire harmony, the principal, Mr. Foster,
and his assistants and the industrial teacher all being Christians and
caring for the moral advancement of their pupils. Nor does the
missionary administration come in any way to overlie the governmental.
From the herd of cows kept for the service of the boarding school,
neither is one set aside for the pastor's family, nor is he allowed to
buy their milk. He gets his supply from outside. Nor does the preacher
use from Uncle Sam's wood pile. He buys from the Indians.
Some may wonder how a man in such a field can keep from drying up. Come
with me into this missionary study. The first thing that strikes you is
a growth of English ivy, from its root in the earth outside creeping
through a crack in the siding and climbing up one corner and then
around the upper corners of the four sides of the room. That evergreen
wreath is a symbol of the fresh intellectual life in that study, which
has all the air and fix of a workshop. On the shelves, besides the
ordinary outfit, there is an extensive geological collection, which
in its classification and nomenclature shows scientific investigation.
Then there is a fine cabinet of Indian relics and curios, appropriate
to the calling of the incumbent: and there is a supply of Indian
literature, historic and scientific, out of which this student is
transmuting the essential elements of the Indian problem of the Pacific
Northwest. And so it is a small library of his own that has thus been
elaborated. The first is a "History of Indian Missions on the Pacific
Coast," published by the American Sunday-school Union; and the second
is "Ten Years at S'kokomish,"--1874-1884--published by our own
Congregational Sunday-school and Publishing Society. These books would
make an enrichment of any Sunday-school library, giving the very
essence of romance and of heroism along with Christian instruction. The
others are monographs, among them the following:
"Marcus Whitman, M.D.: Proofs of his Work in Saving Oregon to the
United States, and in promoting the immigration of 1843;" "Justice to
the Indian;" "Indian Traditions as to Religion;" "Hand of God in the
History of the Pacific Coast;" "Papers on the Anthropology of the
Indians of Washington," as published in the Smithsonian Report of
1886-7. Another such monograph he now has ready for the press--"God's
Hand in the Missions to the Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains," a
paper read at the recent fiftieth anniversary of the organizing of Dr.
Whitman's church. And beyond all this literary work is the occasional
supply of destitute white congregations round about, and service as a
Trustee of the Pacific University in Oregon, and of the Whitman
College, at Walla Walla, Washington. Surely in literary work, to the
names of Jonathan Edwards among his Stockbridge Indians, and John Eliot
among his Naticks, and S.R. Riggs among the Dakotas, and not a few
others, maybe added this of Myron Eells among the S'kokomish.
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