Notwithstanding all this, some laurels have been added by the late war to the Christian work which has been done among the Indians. One “who wishes to be understood” has written a letter in which he speaks very harshly against the Christian workers on the Yakama Reservation, where Father Wilbur, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, has been successfully laboring for sixteen years. He says: “The present reservation system is a failure in every respect. We, who daily come in contact with the Indians, cannot be made to believe that prayer-books, praying generals, and Methodist preachers, (or any other preachers,) are a good safeguard against the tomahawk and the scalping-knife; and the pseudo-philanthropists, the Christian-mongers of the East, who are paying thousands to send missionaries among these barbarians, would do us a favor if they would keep them away; and if the U. S. Government would be less influenced in its conduct toward the Indians by the advocates of Christianity, our wives and children might be annually spared the sight of murdered husbands and fathers. So far we have been loyal, while Indians, with passes from Wilbur and other Agents, have been on the war-path. We have reliable information that some of the dead Indians found after the battles near Pendleton had on their persons passes from Wilbur.” Now it is probably a fact that some of the Umatilla Indians, and perhaps a few of the Yakamas, were engaged in aiding the enemy. There are always some renegade Indians connected with each tribe, as well as white renegades and tramps. As tribes, however, they did not engage in the war, and comparatively few individuals did. In the Indian war of 1855–6, before Father Wilbur went among these same Yakamas, they were the leading spirits, and it was the most wide-spread war which has ever devastated this coast. If they and the Umatillas had joined in this war, it would have been far more terrible than it has been. Inducements were not wanting to lead them into it. It is said on good authority that two thousand horses were offered them by the hostiles if they would join them, and yet they refused. An army officer in command of one of the battles said that some of those Indians did nobly in aiding our soldiers to gain the victory. It may be said that they had too much permanent property in homes and farms, to allow them to engage in the war; for they knew that if they should do so, they would certainly in the end lose it all. This is undoubtedly so; and yet when Father Wilbur went among them they had none of this kind of property, but only movable property which they could carry with them even in war, as the Bannocks have done. It is a fact that Christianity gave them this property.