Several of the children of the employees also came into the church; one of them, eleven years old, being the youngest person whom I ever received into church membership. Such events as these had a silent but strong influence upon the Indians, as strong I think as if these persons had been Christians before they came to the reservation. Thirteen white persons in all united with the Skokomish church, on profession of faith, and twenty-three by letter. At Jamestown it was different. There was only a school-teacher as a government employee, and he was not sent there until 1878. There are only a few church privileges or Christians in the county, but fortunately a good share of the Christians have lived near to the Indian village, the Indians have worked largely for them, and I have sometimes thought that their influence has had as much to do in elevating the Jamestown people as that of the missionary and agent. “Hungry for preaching” was the way I felt about one old lady in 1880, who was seventy-six years old. With her son she walked two and a half miles to Jamestown to church to the Indian service in the morning, then a mile further to a school-house where I preached to the whites in the afternoon, and then home again--seven miles in all; and she has done it several times since, although now nearly eighty. She often walks to the Indian services when there is no white person to take charge of it. On one communion Sabbath a lady too weak from ill-health to walk the three quarters of a mile between her house and the Indian church was taken by her husband on a wheelbarrow a good share of the way. In 1883 an old gentleman seventy-three years of age stood up with four Indians to unite with the church--the oldest person I ever saw join a church on profession of faith. As we went home he said: “This is what I ought to have done forty years ago.” Such influences as these have done much to encourage these Indians. XXI. THE CHURCH AT SKOKOMISH.