REVIEWS.
The author of this sketch has certainly used to excellent advantage his privilege of delving "at will among the records and correspondence of the early days at old Fort Nisqually, the earliest white man's home in what is now Western Washington. "He has examined a rich collection of historical sources with a mind unprejudiced, but clear and well-filled through previous wide reading of the sources of history connected with the beginnings of the Sound country.
Among the many vital matters his comment touches and illuminates special mention may be made of the results of the early protestant missionary activities in the Pacific Northwest, the development of the cattle and sheep industries on the prairie country tributary to the old Fort, the conditions under which the manufacture of shingles was begun, the planting of the first permanent American community in that quarter, and the relations between these pioneers and the officials in charge of the Hudson Bay Company's interests.
Mr. Bagley in the kindest manner possible exposes the utter failure of the protestant missionaries as such that is. the futility of their efforts to accomplish directly the conversion of any considerable number of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. His sweeping statement on this matter is, however, open to criticism when applied to the missionary activity among the Nez Perces. Mr. Bagley attributes the discomfiture of the protestant missionaries to two chief causes:
The Catholic brethren who started a keen competition with them used the more objective methods better calculated to get an immediate hold upon the Indian's thought. The "black gowns "with their pictorial "ladders," handled with highest pedagogical skill, represented the expert efficiency of centuries of experience with the aboriginal American. The protestants could not enter so fully and sympathetically into the Indian's point of view, and being also without effective methods, they seemed like novices at their work. Fully as consecrated these missionary families no doubt were, but they were under a fearful handicap in this race for the souls of the benighted Indians.
