of religion are visible among them. The juggler exercises his {28} profession, though it is almost universally done in behalf of the sick, for the purpose of curing them. If he fail in his attempt, he is suspected of having used some evil influence, and is made to pay the forfeit of his supposed offence. Though nearly all these tribes, of whom we are speaking, possess no particular form of worship, they are naturally predisposed in favor of the Christian religion, especially those who live in the interior. We shall find the most ample evidence of this in the sequel of our narrative.
At the period when the two Catholic missionaries arrived in Oregon territory, the Hudson Bay Company possessed from ten to twelve establishments for the fur-trade, in each of which there was a certain number of Canadians professing our holy faith, and in addition to these there were twenty-six Catholic families at Willamette, and four at Cowlitz. It is easy to imagine to how many dangers they had been exposed of losing their faith, deprived as they were of religious instruction and of every external incentive to the practice of piety, and surrounded by individuals who were not inactive in their efforts to withdraw them from the fold of Catholicity.
The Methodist missionaries had already formed {29} two establishments, one in the Willamette, where they had a school, and another about fifty miles from the cascade. An Anglican minister, who resided at Vancouver two years, left it before the arrival of the Catholic clergy. The Presbyterians had a missionary post at Walla Walla, and among the Nez-percés, and in 1839 they established a third station on the river Spokane, a few days' journey
- [Footnote: god by the name of Ikani, and to him they ascribe the creation of all things. The
god who made the Columbia river and the fish in it they call Italupus.—Expl. Exp., vol. v., p. 119.—Ed. of Catholic Almanac.]
