Indian Shaker Church at The Dalles

This photograph, taken by The Dalles resident Gladys Seufert in 1959, shows the remains of the Indian Shaker church at Lone Pine just east of The Dalles. This structure was built by Henry Gulick, a Scottish immigrant who settled in the area in the 1890s. His wife Harriet, a local Wasco woman, was a member of the Indian Shaker movement. Though Henry was not religious, he built his wife a small wooden church, which soon became one of the centers of Indian Shaker activity on the Columbia River.

The Indian Shaker Church was a unique mix of Catholicism, Protestantism, and indigenous spiritual practices. In the early 1880s, John Slocum, a Squaxin Indian and resident of western Washington’s Skokomish Reservation, claimed to have died and been resurrected. While “dead,” Slocum said he had a vision in which he was rejected from heaven and told to return to earth in order to lead others away from sin.

About a year later, Slocum’s wife Mary began shaking during a healing ceremony being performed on her husband. This practice of shaking while performing faith healings gave the church its name and would become a common practice among its members.

Despite efforts by missionaries and Indian agents to abolish the movement, the Shaker faith became quite popular and quickly spread outward from the Skokomish Reservation, moving east to Idaho, south to California, and north to British Columbia. It arrived on the Columbia River in the 1890s. Sam Williams (also known as Nee-Wamsh), a Cowlitz Indian who had taken a homestead near The Dalles, became the bishop of the church at Lone Pine. He retired and moved to Hood River in the 1920s, after which the congregation was probably dissolved.

The church building at Lone Pine collapsed under snow in November 1996. The Indian Shaker Church is still active in some communities, though it is not as influential as it once was.