A Young Yakama.
Despite persecutions, the Catholic Indians with but few exceptions remained faithful to the Church.
A Methodist minister who for some time had labored to turn Ignace, the chief of the Yakimas, from his faith, asked him one day how much he would want for changing to Protestantism.
Family of Chief Nouh “Jimmy” Sluiskin, Yakima Tribe.
“A big price,” the chief answered him.
“Two hundred dollars?”
“More than that.”
“Then how much? Five hundred, six hundred dollars?”
“Oh, more than that!”
“Indeed! State your price.”
“The price of my soul.”
It was thus that the Christian spirit, united to Indian pride, made these primitive natures admirable types of nobility and fidelity.
E. Laveille, S.J., The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. (1801–1873), trans. Marian Lindsay (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1915), 367.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 789
