About 1850 Father E. C. Chirouse, a Catholic priest, came to Puget
Sound, and for a time was on Hood’s Canal. He had two missions among the
Twanas, one among the Kolseed band, and the other among the Duhlaylips.
He baptized a large number of them; made two Indian priests, and left an
influence which was not soon forgotten. At a council held after a time
by various tribes, the Skokomish and other neighboring tribes of the
lower eastern sound were too strong for the Twanas and induced Father
Chirouse to leave them. Not long afterward the Indians relapsed into
their old style of religion, and on the surface it appeared as if all
were forgotten: but when Protestant teachers came among them, and their
old religion died, some of the Indians turned for a time to that
Catholic religion which they had first learned, as one easier for the
natural heart to follow than that of the Protestants.
From 1860 to 1871 but little religious instruction was given to these
Indians. At different times Rev. W. C. Chattin, of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and Mr. D. B. Ward, of the Protestant Methodist
Church, taught the school, and each endeavored to give some Christian
teaching on the Sabbath, but they found it hard work, for
Sabbath-breaking, house-building, trafficking, and gambling by the
whites and the Indians were allowed in sight and hearing of the place
where the services were held. “If it is wrong to break the Sabbath, why
does the agent do so?” “If it is wrong to play cards and gamble, why do
the whites do so?” These and similar questions were asked by the Indian
children of their Christian teachers. It was somewhat difficult to
answer them. It was more difficult to work against such influences.
Still the seed sown then was not wholly lost. It remained buried a long
time. I have seen that some of those children, however, although they
forgot how to read, and almost forgot how to talk English, yet received
influences which, fifteen or twenty years afterward, made them a
valuable help to their people in their march upward.
In 1871, however, a decided change was made. In that year President
Grant adopted what has been known as the peace policy, in which he
assigned the different agencies to different missionary societies,
asking them to nominate agents, promising that these should be confirmed
by the Senate. While it was not expected that the government would
directly engage in missionary work, yet the President realized that
Christianity was necessary to the solution of the Indian problem, and he
hoped that the missionary societies who should nominate these agents
would become interested in the work, and encouraged them to send
missionaries to their several fields. These agents were expected to
coöperate with the missionaries in their special work.
At that time the Skokomish Agency was assigned to the American
Missionary Association, a society supported by the Congregationalists.
In 1871 they nominated Mr. Edwin Eells as agent for this place, who was
confirmed by the Senate, and in May of that year he took charge of these
Indians.
Mr. Eells was the oldest son of Rev. C. Eells, D.D., who came to the
coast in 1838 as a missionary to the Spokane Indians, where he remained
about ten years, until the Whitman Massacre and Cayuse War rendered it
unsafe for him to remain there any longer. The agent was born among
these Indians in July, 1841. Like most young men on this coast, he had
been engaged in various callings. He had been a farmer, school-teacher,
clerk in a store, teamster, had served as enrolling officer for
government at Walla-Walla during the war, and had studied law. At the
age of fifteen he had united with a Congregational church, and had
maintained a consistent Christian character. All of these things proved
to be of good service to him in his new position, where education,
farm-work, purchase of goods, law business, intercourse with government,
the ideas which he had received from his parents about the Indians and
Christianity, were all needed.
In 1871, soon after he assumed his new duties, he began a Sabbath-school
and prayer-meeting. He selected Christian men as employees. These
consisted of a physician, school-teacher, and matron, carpenter, farmer,
and blacksmith. He also selected men with families as being those who
would be likely to have the best influence on the Indians. In 1872 Rev.
J. Casto, M.D., was engaged as government physician, and Rev. C. Eells,
the father of the agent, went to live with his son, and both during the
winter preached at the agency and in the camps of the Indians. During
1874 a council-house was built, with the consent of government, at a
money-cost to the government of five hundred dollars--besides the work
which was done by the government carpenter. This has since been used as
a church, and sometimes as a school-house. During that spring it was
thought best to organize a church, for although at first it would be
composed chiefly of whites, yet it was hoped that it would have a
salutary influence on the Indians, and be a nucleus around which some of
the Indians would gather. This was done June 23, 1874, the day after the
writer arrived at the place. It was organized with eleven members, ten
of whom were whites, and one, John F. Palmer, was an Indian. He was at
that time government interpreter. The sermon was by Rev. G. H. Atkinson,
D.D., of Portland, superintendent of Home Missions for Oregon and
Washington, and one of the vice-presidents of the American Missionary
Association; the prayer of consecration by Rev. E. Walker, who had been
the missionary associate of Rev. C. Eells during his work among the
Spokane Indians; the right hand of fellowship by Rev. A. H. Bradford, a
visitor on this coast from Montclair, New Jersey; and the charge to the
church by the writer. Thus affairs existed when I came to the place.