Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/90

82 shaping the destiny of Oregon, nevertheless they did add much to the higher life of the Pacific Northwest. Myron Eells was born on Walker's Prairie, near the present city of Spokane. October 7, 1843, and was the second son of Reverend Cushing Eells and Myra Fairbanks Eells, who came across the plains in 1838 as missionaries of the American Board to assist Dr. Marcus Whitman and wife and Reverend Henry H. Spalding and wife in their work among the Oregon Indians. Myron entered Pacific University in 1861 and was graduated in 1866. He then went East and began his study in theology in Hartford Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1871. He was pastor for the Congregational Church at Boise from 1871 to 1874, when he received an appointment by the American Missionary Association as a missionary on the reservation where he continued his labors until his death. During this period of more than thirty years, however, he was most active and influential in promoting the educational and scientific interests of the Pacific Northwest. He was a trustee of Whitman College and of Pacific University for many years. He had a membership in the Anthropological Society at Washington, D. C., and in the Victoria Institute, London, England, and in many others. The publications of the Smithsonian Institution contain many of his contributions. He was the leading authority in the Pacific Northwest on all questions pertaining to Indian life. He was also a zealous student of the missionary history of this region and made most valuable contributions to the literature bearing on missionary activities. In addition to many minor pamphlets and newspaper articles we have his "History of Indian Missions of the Pacific Coast Oregon, Washington, and Idaho," published by the American Sunday School Union in 1882; and his "Father Eells, or the Results of Fifty-five Years of Missionary Labors in Oregon and Washington"—essentially a life of his father. This was issued by the Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society, Boston, in 1894. Pacific University is, I believe, about to publish his history of that institution. In