THE FIRST INDIAN SCHOOL OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
By Robert Moulton Gatke
The first Indian School of the Pacific Northwest was the child of the Oregon Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was conducted at their original station on the banks of the Willamette River, about ten miles north of the present city of Salem.
No portion of the Mission work was more important than its schools. While the work of daily instruction was not begun until the Fall of 1835, one year after the station was established, the actual work of teaching had been in progress for some time. In a letter written on September 24th, 1835, Cyrus Shepard speaks of his plan to teach every day and also mentions the fact that for some time he had been teaching the halfbreed children every other day, while their Sabbath School, which had been opened almost as soon as the mission was established, had taught reading as well as religious subjects. Even tho the missionaries had not planned to take up the teaching work it would have been forced upon them by the conditions they faced. They had scarcely erected their first shelter when Christian love and charity demanded that they receive under their care Indian children who had no one to care for them, or who were brought to the Mission by their parents that they might be instructed in matters relating to the white man's religion and life. Daniel Lee tells us that the first Indian lads were left in their care during the Spring when they were busy planting their first crop upon the Mission farm,[1] but he must have had in mind the work on the field during the winter, for a letter from Cyrus Shepard, dated Dec. 20, 1834, tells of the mission having the care of three orphan children. By the fall of that year, (1835) the mission wards had increased to five, one having died during August, and Shepard writing to his brother tells him that they are expecting seven more soon.[2]
