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.