Kamiah April 1883
Rev. Dr. J.C. Lowrie

Dear Sir
Last Monday, Robert, James Hayes, and the majority of the Kamiah men started to Lapwai. The Kamians mostly to attend a Council there. Robert and perhaps some others of my pupils purposing to go on to Presbytery at Waitsburg. He and Mr D taking the Umatillas on their way. After Presbytery Robert purposes to go on down to Portland for a little while, if the Lord wills.  Abram Johnson, the least advanced of my new pupils, is improving his opportunity in the absence of his classmates to occupy the full time of his teacher (in the school room). I am glad to be able to ‘push him forward’ what I can, while the others are gone. They may be absent more than a week.

I wish the Kamians were home again. I always dread their visits to Lapwai, and am glad when the snow blocks the road between. Scarcely without a miracle can one of two communities so closely allied as Lapwai and Kamiah retrograde to where the Ls have gone without affecting the other. Mingling little with the people in their daily life seeing little below the surface because of a limited knowledge of the language, traditions &c of the people themselves, I doubt if the friends there know well what is seething below the surface. Both they cannot help seeing the resumed blanket, the long hair &c &c. (which are outward signs).  My fear is not of the soldiers three miles from Lapwai or the Catholic mission on the way or the ungodly whites, but of the Lapwaians, themselves. I know the soldiers have the same influences here, the difference being that with the trained elders there is like a moral police force standing guard so far.

As an illustration, Last 4^th of July the Nez Perces were invited to participate in the festivities in Lewiston in honor of the governor of Idaho last 4^th of July. The Kamians were at the camp meeting in Lapwai. The day before the 4^th some of the leaders of the K church went in to Lewiston and spoke to the Com. of the Army about whiskey "if you give a drop to one our young men" they said "not one of us will attend." The Com. promised that not a drop should be given or sold to the Nez Ps and the leaders marshalled their people into town joined in the festivities and brought every Kamian back at night fall without seeing the fire works for fear they should fall in temptation. At that same camp meeting the Lapwai church members were told that all who had been participating in the horse racing &c&c were not to commune the same day and very few Lapwaians communed.

Perhaps I ought not to write that, I would not, but for the fear but I must call to remembrance Gods care over the Kamiah people in the past and trust them in His hands today. From the failure of the Agent to repair the mill here, and from the partial failure of some of their crops, the Kamians (my pupils among the number) have had (& have) a hard winter & some sore straits. But still they have had a precious winter, the quietest and best in church and community we have had in sometime. Perhaps the united church working in harmony under their beloved & trusted pastor. We always have protracted meetings about the holidays ending at the close of a week of prayer. Just before meeting began this year there was evidence of the presence of Gods Spirit in the church which was followed by a gracious [illegible] time from on high. A revival of professed Christians without excitement but deep and general quickening of those who had been cold or backslidded for years and arousing the others to greater life and earnestness pervades the church up to this

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