The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report for 1878, recommended the passage of a law compelling all Indians who were living together as man and wife to be married. The law has not been made, but the agent worked on the same principles long before 1878--indeed ever after he first took charge in 1871. He urged them to be married, making for a time special presents from government annuities to those who should consent, as a shawl or ladies’ hat, and some consented. Only two couples had been thus married when I went there. It seemed rather comical on the Fourth of July, 1874, when I had been on the reservation only about two weeks, to be asked to join in marriage seven couples, some of whom had children. One Sabbath in 1883 a couple stood up to be married, the bride having a baby in her arms, and she would probably have held it during the ceremony had not my wife whispered to a sister of the bride to go and get it. During the ten years I have married twenty-six couples among the Twanas, and twenty-nine couples among the Clallams, and a number of other Clallams have been married by other persons. Some very comical incidents have occurred in connection with some of these ceremonies. In 1876 I was called upon to marry eleven couples at Jamestown. All went well with the first ten, the head chief being married first, so that the others might see how it was done, and then nine couples stood up and were married with the same set of words. But the wife of the other man was sick with the measles. She had taken cold and they had been driven in, but had come out again, so that she was as red as a beet. Still they were afraid that she would die, and as I was not to be there again for several months they were very anxious to be married so as to legalize the children. She was so near death that they had moved her from their good house to a mat-house, which was filled with smoke. The fire was thrown out, and soon it became less smoky. She was too sick to stand, and only barely able to sit up. This, however, she managed to do in her bed, which was on the ground. Her husband sat beside her and took her hand, and I married them, measles and all. She afterward recovered.