There was one good result from the whole excitement: it kept the subject
of religion prominently before the people. It did not die of stagnation,
as it had almost seemed to do during some previous years. In my visits I
was well treated and was asked many questions on the subject. I was
welcomed at two or three of the logging-camps during the winter for an
evening service, where I talked Bible to them as plainly as I could.
They at least asked me to go to them, although they would not come to
our church. A constant call, too, came for large Bible pictures. In
March a barrel came from the Pearl-street Church in Hartford,
Connecticut, full of clothes and substantial good things, the value of
which I estimated at about a hundred and twenty dollars. This came when
the whites were mostly gone, salary failing, and seemed to be a voice
from above, saying, “You go on with the work and I will take care of the
support.”
During the month of March some of the older Indians came back again to
church, so that I could hold the service in Indian. There had been three
whom I had been willing to receive into the church for some time, and
during the latter part of the month I found two more. The sub-chief who
had declined joining in January was one of them and a policeman was
another--both men of influence. So, on the first Sabbath in April, the
five were received into the church, and we rejoiced with trembling.
These had seen the whole opposition; they had mingled with its followers
and had refused to join them, and hence were not likely to wander off
into those errors. This was more of the older Twana Indians who had
never been in school than had united with the church since its
organization. These gave up horse-racing, betting, gambling, and all of
tamahnous except that which had reference to the sick, to which they
held as a superstition but not a religion. I felt that on this point
they were as children, or persons with their heads and hearts in the
right direction but with their eyes only half-open. In July two Indian
women and a school-girl were added to the number and in October another
school-girl and a woman. These drew with them so many that we had a
respectable congregation.