Another of the first meetings established on the reservation under the
new policy was the prayer-meeting along with the Sabbath-school. To
those white people near the reservation who cared but little for
religion, and who had known the previous history of the reservation, a
prayer-meeting on a reservation! ah, it was a strange thing, but they
afterward acknowledged that it was a very proper thing for such a place.
That regular church prayer-meeting has been kept up from 1871 until the
present time, varied a little at times to suit existing circumstances.
The employees and school-children were the principal attendants, as it
was too far away from most of the Indians for them to come in the
evening. But few of the children ever took part. Too many wise heads of
a superior race frightened them even if they had wished to do so. The
average attendance on it has varied from twenty-two in 1875 to
thirty-eight in 1880. Previous to 1880, it ranged below thirty--since
then above that number.
To suit the wants of the children we had boys’ prayer-meetings and
girls’ prayer-meetings. Sometimes these were merely talks to them, and
sometimes they took part. In the summer of 1875 the white girls first
made a request to have one. I had been to our Association and on my
return I reported what I had heard of a children’s meeting at Bellingham
Bay. Two of the girls were impressed with the idea and made a request
for a similar one. Indian girls were soon invited to come and more or
less took part. It was not long before from its members some came into
the church. For a long time my mother had charge of this. She died in
1878, after which my wife took charge. The white girls at last all left
and only Indian girls remained in it. They have often taken their turn
in leading the meeting.
Although for two or three years I had asked a few boys to come to my
house from time to time to teach them and try to induce them to pray,
yet they never did any thing more than to repeat the Lord’s Prayer,
until February, 1877. Then three boys came and asked for instruction on
this subject, and soon we had a prayer-meeting in which all took part.
Previous to that school-boys had seemed to be interested in religion,
but when they became older and mingled more with the older Indians they
went back again into their old ways; but none ever went as far as these
did then--none ever prayed where a white person heard them or asked to
have a prayer-meeting with their minister. During that summer the
interest increased and it grew gradually to be a meeting of twenty with
a dozen sometimes taking part, but all were not Christians. After a few
months of apparent Christian life, some found the way too hard for them
and turned back, yet a number of them came into the church.
But all of these meetings did not reach the older Indians. They were too
far away to attend, and, had they been present, the meeting was in an
unknown tongue. So in the summer of 1875 I began holding meetings at
their logging-camps. They were welcomed by some, while with some,
especially those who leaned toward the Catholic religion and the old
native religion, it was hard work to do any thing. In these meetings I
was usually assisted by the interpreter John Palmer. At our church
services and Sabbath-school it was very difficult to induce them to sing
or to say any thing. There were enough white folks to carry them and
they were willing to be carried. At our first meetings with them they
sang and talked well, but preferred to wait a while before they should
pray in public. They did not know what to say, was the excuse they gave.
On reading I found that the natives at the Sandwich Islands were
troubled in the same way; and I remembered that the disciples said:
“Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples;” so we
offered to teach them how, for they professed to be Christians. One of
us would say a sentence and then ask one of the better ones to repeat it
afterward. I remember how something comical struck one of the Indians
during one of these prayers and he burst out laughing in the midst of
it. Feeling that a very short prayer would be the best probably for them
to begin with alone, I recommended that they ask a blessing at their
meals. This was acceptable to some of them. I taught them a form, and
they did so for that fall and a part of the winter. I once asked one
Indian if he ever prayed. His reply was that he asked a blessing on
Sabbath morning at his breakfast. That was all, and he seemed to think
that it was enough.
When winter came the logging-camps closed and they went to their homes.
They were too far off to hold evening services with them, because of
the mud, rain, and darkness, and, as they had but little to do, I took
Tuesdays for meetings with them. About the first of December we induced
four of them to pray in a prayer-meeting without any assistance from us.
This meeting was three hours long. It seemed as if a good beginning had
been made, but Satan did not propose to let us have the victory quite so
easily. In less than a week after this the Indians were all drawn into a
tribal sing tamahnous, and all of these praying Indians took some part,
though only one seemed to be the leader of it. That was the end of his
praying for years. The agent told him that he had made a fool of himself
and he said that it was true. In 1883 he was among the first to join the
church and since then he has done an excellent work. Still I kept up the
meetings during the winter. The Indian, however, is very practical. His
ideas of spiritual things are exceedingly small. His heaven is sensual
and his prayers to his tamahnous are for life, food, clothes, and the
like. So when they began to pray to God, they prayed much for these
things, and when they did not obtain all for which they asked, they grew
tired. Others then laughed at them for their want of success. I talked
of perseverance in prayer.
Not long after this the trouble with Billy Clams and his wife, as
already related under the head of marriage, occurred. He escaped at
first, but others were put in jail for aiding him. At one of the first
meetings after this trouble began, I asked one to pray, but he only
talked. I asked another and he said “No,” very quickly, and there was
only one left. Soon after this, they held a great meeting to petition
the agent to release the prisoners. The only praying one prayed
earnestly that this might be done. The petition was rightfully refused.
The other Indians laughed at him for his failure, and that stopped his
praying in public for a long time, with one exception. Once afterward we
held a meeting with them and after some urging a few took part, but it
was a dying affair. Notwithstanding all that they had said about being
Christians, the heart was not there, and until 1883 hardly any of the
older uneducated Indians prayed in public in our meetings. Of those
four, one left the reservation and became a zealous Catholic; one has
apparently improved some; one was nearly ruined by getting a wife with
whom he could not get along for a time, and at last became a leader in
the shaking religion; and one, as already stated, has done very well.
The next summer, 1876, I visited their logging-camps considerably, and
was well received by some, while others treated me as coldly as they
dared, doing only what they could not help doing. But they did not take
as much part in the meetings as they had done the previous summer,
talking very little and praying none. Their outward progress toward
religion had received a severe check. As has been the case with some
other tribes, Satan would not give up without a hard struggle. Like some
of the disciples, they found the gospel a hard saying, could not bear
it, and went back and walked no more with Christ.
The business of logging was overdone for several years, and during that
time I was not able to gather them together much for social meetings. I
worked mainly by pastoral visiting. In the winter of 1881-82 some of
them went to the Chehalis Reservation and attended some meetings held by
the Indians there and were considerably aroused. They again asked for
meetings and held them, but while they were free to talk and sing, they
were slow to pray. Logging revived, and I held meetings quite constantly
with them during the next two years.
At that time four of them professed to take a stand for Christ.
Gambling was a besetting sin of some of them, but with some help from
the school-boys, who had now grown to be men, they passed through the
Fourth of July safely, although there was considerable of it on the
grounds, and two of them were strongly urged to indulge. The other two
were absent. But in the fall there was a big Indian wedding with
considerable gambling and horse-racing, and then two fell. Another did a
very wrong thing in another way and was put in jail for it, and that
stopped his praying for a time, though he has since begun it again. The
other was among the first of the older Indians to join the church in
1883, and he has done a firm good work for us since.
In other camps I was welcomed also, but it has ever been difficult to
induce them, even the Christians, to pray or speak much in public. Those
prayer-meetings have usually been what I have had to say. Occasionally
they speak a little; but, not being able to read, their thoughts run in
a small circle, and they are apt to say the same things over again, and
they tire of it unless something special occurs to arouse them. “You
speak,” they often say to me, when I have asked them to say something.
“You know something and can teach us; we do not know any thing and we
will listen.” It is a fact that what we obtain from the Bible is the
great source of our instruction for others; still if we are Christians
and know only a little, the Spirit sometimes sanctifies that even in a
very ignorant person so that he may do some good with it.
The Clallam prayer-meetings at Jamestown have been different. They began
them when I visited them only once in six months, hence they had to take
part or give them up. They were not willing to do the latter, therefore
they have had to do the former. Sometimes eight or ten take part. They
seem to expect that if a person join the church he will take part in the
prayer-meeting, and the children of thirteen or fourteen years of age do
so with the older ones. Thrown on their own resources in this respect,
as well as in others, it has had its advantages.