XXIV. LIGHT BREAKING.

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.