Read 0800722329 for Free Online Page A

the trip all the way from the Sandwich Islands where their mission work had been so successful. Having our own printing press was a luxury and we saw it as God’s divine gift for furthering our work. We did not hold it over the other sites that we had this gift, but I sensed envy, even then.
    Little Eliza was but a year old when the Halls and Mr. Rogers and their giant boxy press arrived, the size of two pie cabinets with rollers and gears. Mr. Rogers would help S put all the parts together. Flats of typeface and reams of paper, precious paper. The party also arrived with Indian paddlers who had brought Sarah Hall lying on her back in a canoe while the men rode overland on horseback with the press, meeting Sarah at evening time, the men preparing the meals at the water’s edge. Once arrived, the Indians faded into the Nez Perce community as though family, but I heard one woman paddler, tall and stately, speak soft French and English. Sarah called her Marie and said she was of the Iowa Tribe. “She’s a long way from home. She arrived with the Astor Expedition of 1811.” She had been an overlander too, one who, like me, remained.
    “We are all come from faraway places,” I said, to her agreement.
    We settled the Halls in, placing Sarah on a pallet laid upon two timber rounds inside the house so she could be with me as I chopped potatoes and washed greens from our abundant garden. She spoke to Eliza as though she was an adult and I liked that. Baby talk never appealed to me, and after Eliza’s close call with death the first month she lived, I treated her like a companion.
    “What’s she saying?” Sarah asked. I listened.
    “She says you have pretty hair.”
    Sarah laughed. “I’m not sure how it can be as I haven’t had a chance to wash it since we left Vancouver. I just hope the lice have not found their way as they did on board ship.”
    “We’ll settle your clothes in cedar bark just to be sure. Something in the bark kills the fleas and ticks and might kill lice too. And later, if you wish, Matilda and I will wash your hair.”
    “Lovely.” Eliza stroked Sarah’s golden hair and I saw the woman close her eyes in blessed rest.
    “Come,” I whispered to my daughter. “Let Mrs. Hall sleep.”
    The Nimíipuu, Matilda especially, sensing the festive nature of the arrival of the Halls, brought fresh fish and planned a gathering in their honor. I found The People looked for any excuse to sing and dance and play their stick games. (It was only much later I learned that the stick games amounted to gambling, and I had some consternation over my having learned how to play the games and finding such delight in the sleight of hand, not knowing that such actions might mean the exchange of horses and valued pelts and hatchets. It’s odd I’d think of gambling on a day when my daughter testifies, perhaps gambling away the peace we’ve worked so hard for her to seize.)
    Mr. S was at his very best that evening as well he should be. In such a short time he could boast (though he didn’t) a home for us, with a meeting place at one end large enough to house over one hundred Nimíipuu who came to hear him speak while one of the Nimíipuu criers translated. Fields of corn and potatoes and wheat surrounded our mission, and beyond were rings of tipis set like praying hands pointing to the sky. It was Mr. S’s belief that the Indians needed to be domesticated and be less wandering by seasons not only so they could consistently hear the Word and learn the Lord’s ways but because he worried there would be more white people coming into our country and they would overrun The People.
    Mr. S described them as “Children. Such kind people, the Nimíipuu, while many of our ‘white tribe’ are not.” I agreed with the latter but not the former. They were not children. But they were curious, questioning, intelligent, caring people, non-judging. As for the white tribe? I cringed when I heard that the missionaries at The