Spokane Garry

CHIEF SPOKANE GARRY

Evangelist to His People

Spokane Garry became a great evangelist, and in years to follow, his people honored him as an important chief. Hundreds traveled from all over the region to hear him preach from the Leaves of Life about the path to heaven through Jesus Christ. He taught them songs of worship and instructed them to pray morning and evening and observe the Ten Commandments. He taught the people to set aside Sunday for worship and learning about God. He also instructed them in basic farming techniques.

Within four years, the impact of his preaching had spread throughout the whole region, even as far as Fort Alexandria, British Columbia, over four hundred miles to the northwest in Canada.

But perhaps the greatest testimony to the effectiveness of this revival occurred the year after Garry’s return when five regional chiefs brought their sons and asked Garry to take them to the mission school so they could learn the Good News, as well. The Nez Perce tribe also sent a delegation down to St. Louis, asking for a missionary. In 1836, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding responded to that call . . . with mixed results. But that’s another story that can be read in the Trailblazer Book, Attack in the Rye Grass.

In the village across the river from the abandoned Spokane House, Garry built a small church, complete with a bell, where he called his tribe together on Sundays for worship. On weekdays, Garry held school in the little building where he taught English, simple agriculture (growing potatoes and vegetables), and the Christian life. During the winter, when the tribe was not busy hunting and gathering, he had as many as a hundred adults and children in attendance at his school.

By the fall of 1833, all but one of the other students Garry had sent to the Red River Mission had graduated and returned to teach Christianity to their people.

In the summer of 1834, Captain Bonneville made a trip through the region and recorded the following in Washington Irving’s 1837 book, Adventures of Captain Bonneville:

Sunday is invariably kept sacred among these tribes. They will not raise [move] their camp on that day unless in extreme cases of danger or hunger; neither will they hunt, nor fish, nor trade, nor perform any kind of labor on that day. A part of it is passed in prayer and religious ceremonies. Some chief . . . assembles the community. After invoking blessings from the Deity, he addresses the assemblage, exhorting them to good conduct, to be diligent in providing for their families, to abstain from lying and stealing, to avoid quarreling or cheating in their play, to be just and hospitable to all strangers who may be among them. Prayers and exhortations are also made early in the morning on weekdays.

Undoubtedly, by the time these religious practices had spread from village to village and tribe to tribe, they lacked some of the essential content of the Gospel, but they nevertheless reflected a people eager to know and serve God.

On this foundation, Garry and the other students from the Red River Mission begged the Church of England to send them missionaries who could build a strong, sound church among them. But for a variety of reasons, years passed without a missionary.

Finally in 1835, the American Board of Foreign Missions sent Rev. Samuel Parker to survey the region. Upon arriving in a Nez Perce village, the chief agreed to assemble all the people for worship the next day, which was Sunday, September 6.

Parker was amazed when four to five hundred men, women, and children gathered in a carefully prepared lodge about a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. He reported, “The whole sight affected me, and filled me with admiration, and I felt as though it was the house of God and the gate of heaven.” They sang and prayed and listened to Parker’s sermon, translated by an interpreter from Fort Hall, at the end of which they said in unison their equivalent of amen.

The next summer, Henry and Eliza Spalding came as missionaries to the Nez Perce while Marcus and Narcissa Whitman went to the neighboring Cayuse.

Soon, however, large numbers of white settlers began to arrive, aided considerably by the Whitmans’ efforts in “opening” the Oregon Trail. From then on, friction with white settlers hindered the establishment of a solid church.

The massacre at the Whitman mission in 1847 sealed in the minds of many white settlers that Native Americans were their enemies—or at the very least obstacles to their desire for land—and so increasing pressure was mounted to remove the Indians to reservations.

Bloody skirmishes and all-out war ensued for years. In 1855, Chief Garry met with white representatives in an appeal for understanding and peace. That same year, Old Joseph, chief of the Nez Perce, signed a treaty with the U.S. that allowed his people to retain much of their traditional lands. However, eight years later, another treaty was drafted that severely reduced the amount of land, but Old Joseph maintained that this second treaty was never agreed to by his people. And so it went.

By 1870, Chief Garry realized that all the tension and lack of receiving missionaries to build a church for the Spokane had left his people in moral decay—marriages failing when white husbands deserted Indian wives, alcoholism from the whiskey introduced by the whites, and a general disinterest in the things of God.

Along with two assistants, Chief Garry launched a revival among his people in 1871 and experienced substantial success, so much so that he wrote to Henry Spalding, asking him if he would come and help. Accompanied by fourteen Nez Perce believers, Spalding held three weeks of services in May 1873 and then two additional evangelistic trips later that summer. At the end of the revival, heralded by the theme, “What shall we do to be saved?” 334 people on examination gave satisfactory evidence of conversion and were baptized, including 81 children, according to Thomas Jessett in his book, Chief Spokane Garry: Christian, Statesman and Friend of the Whiteman.

But still no permanent minister was assigned to minister among the Spokane. Not until 1884, fifty-five years after Garry returned from the Red River Mission to plant the seed, was Rev. J. Compton Burnett sent by the Episcopal Church (as the Church of England was called in the United States) to Spokane Falls. Unfortunately he proved to be an unscrupulous man, who swindled the tribe out of land for his own farming ambitions.

After this, Chief Garry never again asked the Episcopal Church for assistance.

Chief Garry recalled the last half of old Circling Raven’s prophecy: “After the white men with the Leaves of Life come, other white men will come who will make slaves of us. Then our world will end . . . . We will simply be overrun by the white men as though by grasshoppers. When this happens, we should not fight, as it would only create unnecessary bloodshed.” Certainly this tragedy was coming true for all Indian peoples. Garry could not stop it! On three occasions, he applied for a reservation along the Spokane River where his people could “work the land and practice the teachings of Jesus Christ.” But the land was too valuable to the white settlers, and each time the U.S. government denied his request, saying the Spokane would have to remove themselves to the Colville, Coeur d’Alene, or Jacko Reservations.

Finally Garry himself was swindled out of his little farm. In 1891, he became too ill to work, and when a deceitful white man promised that if Garry would pay five dollars and sign some papers, he could get Garry’s farm back for him, Garry said, “I am dying, and all I am thinking of is God. Soon I’ll have nothing more to do with this world.”

With his well-worn Bible and prayer book in his hands, Chief Spokane Garry died in his sleep on January 14, 1892.

A note from the authors:

Such sad conduct on the part of our government and even the church begs for some kind of a response. Fortunately the Bible gives us four steps for dealing with such sweeping historical wrongs as the ill-treatment of Native Americans or the enslavement of Africans. (1) Acknowledge it was wrong. (2) Clearly ask for forgiveness. (3) Do no further wrong. (4) Be prepared to do whatever you can to make it right.

The Bible says, “Confess your sins” (James 5:16). Too often we are tempted to excuse or explain away past wrongs by saying things like, “Well, the other side wasn’t perfect either,” or “That’s just the way it was back then.” Perhaps we make these excuses because we find the burden of guilt too heavy. It is hard to say that in the process of building this great country, our forebears did wrong. It makes us feel like we don’t deserve our current privileges and wealth. And on one hand, we don’t. Everything we have has come from someone else, even our most prized possession, eternal life.

But God doesn’t leave us feeling guilty. We can ask forgiveness. “But,” you may say, “why should I ask forgiveness? I didn’t do the wrong.” Hopefully not, but if you consider yourself an American, then you identify with and benefit from this country’s history. The Bible includes examples of “innocent” people asking forgiveness on behalf of the guilty. Jesus Christ prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But long before that Nehemiah prayed, “[I] confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father’s house have sinned” (Nehemiah. 1:6), even though it was unlikely that he personally committed the sins he then lists. So, we can and should ask God’s forgiveness for past wrongs even if we didn’t personally commit them. And, if we are ever in a position where it is appropriate, we can ask individuals for forgiveness for how our ancestors treated them or their ancestors.

Doing no further wrong is self-explanatory, but the forth step may be more challenging. There may come times and ways when we can and should make restitution for those wrongs, even the wrongs done by our ancestors. After all, most of us are still enjoying land that was obtained unfairly from the Indians and wealth that came from the unpaid efforts of slaves. We owe a lot. How to repay what was unfairly taken is a complicated issue, but the willingness to “make it right” is a godly attitude.