selves soberly, and taking part in the exercises. Having prayed with them, Parker tried to convey to these people some idea of the principles of Christianity. When he had concluded, the head chief desired to be heard. He told Parker that he had many times prayed to the great spirit without finding his heart better, but rather worse. He had before listened to the teachings of a white man, who had told him to observe the sabbath by raising a flag which he gave him, on that day, by praying, singing, and dancing around the flag-staff; and that he observed these instructions for a long time without benefit. He wished to know if it was right. On being told that it was all right but the dancing, he promised to give that up, and to teach his people the right way. Parker told this benighted being, who humbly acknowledged his ignorance, that he needed a teacher but did not promise him one, though he felt like weeping over him; nor did he propose to send him one, having learned very early in his experience that an Indian cannot discriminate between a proposal and a promise.[1] A month afterward a party of the same natives visited Fort Vancouver, and related that since they had left off dancing on the sabbath their prayers had been answered; that when they were hungry and prayed for deer their hunting was successful. They again appealed, unsuccessfully, for a teacher.
Winter over, on the 14th of April Parker bade farewell to the inmates of Fort Vancouver with a lively sense of the obligations under which they had placed him. They had even declined to accept any return for Indian goods, or interpreter's services furnished him on his several excisions, where according to custom payment was made to his native crew in shirts and blankets. His design was to go back to the Nez Percés, to whom he felt bound by their services
- ↑ Parker's Jour., Ex. Tour, 79.
