A Highland Welcome.
A short rest having been made in the hospitable home of the Marions, the
young missionary, anxious to meet his future flock, crossed the Red
River by canoe and disembarked about a mile below, at "Colony Gardens."
This was the house of Alexander Ross, sheriff of Assiniboia, who had
been a leader in all the efforts to obtain a minister. Here the expected
minister received a Highland welcome, and the Ross mansion became his
home.
A short sketch of Sheriff Ross and his wife is an absolute necessity to
our understanding of the Red River community to which John Black came.
Alexander Ross was a Highlander who, about 1803, at the age of
twenty-one, came with the disbanded soldiers of the Highland regiment of
Glengarry Fencibles to Upper Canada. He went with them to Glengarry
District on the St. Lawrence, and, being a fair scholar, taught school
there for some time.
In 1810 he entered the Astor Fur Company, which had its headquarters in
New York. Sailing from that city, he rounded Cape Horn, went up the
Pacific coast, and helped to build Astoria, a fort at the mouth of the
Columbia river, on the Pacific. He led a rough and dangerous life for a
number of years, and found his way in the service of the Northwest Fur
Company of Montreal, to the mountains of British Columbia. Here he
married an Indian maiden, the daughter of the chief of the Okanagan
Indians. The writer was well acquainted, many years after, with "Granny"
Ross, as she was called, and can speak of her kindness and Christian
character.
At the end of the first quarter of the century Alexander Ross was
brought across the mountains and prairies by Governor George Simpson,
and took up his abode on the banks of Red River, on what is now the site
of the city of Winnipeg. Here he reared a large family, and took a
leading part in all the affairs of the Red River settlement. Mr. Black's
companion writes: "The old gentleman met us on the bank, welcomed us to
the Selkirk settlement, and escorted us up to his house--a white,
rough-cast, two-storey stone, which stands upon a large bend of the
river and commands a view both ways; and that view is certainly the
finest I have seen for a long time."
The scene about Colony Gardens on that September afternoon was a very
striking one. "A village of farmhouses with barns, stables, hay, wheat,
and barley stooks, with small cultivated fields or lots, well fenced,
are stretching along the meandering river, while the prairies, far off
to the horizon, are covered over with herds of cattle, horses, etc., the
fields filled with a busy throng of whites, halfbreeds, and
Indians--men, squaws, and children--all reaping, binding, and stacking
the golden grain, while hundreds of carts, with a single horse or ox
harnessed in their shafts, are brought in requisition to carry it to the
well-stored barn, and are seen moving, with their immense loads rolling
along like huge stacks in all directions. Add to this the numerous
wind-mills, some in motion, whirling around their giant arms, while
others, motionless, are waiting for a grist. Just above, Fort Garry sits
in the angle at the junction of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, with a
blood-red flag inscribed with the letters 'H. B. Co.' floating gaily in
the breeze."
Of the house of Sheriff Ross the writer says: "We spent the night with
Mr. Ross and family, and found him to be a very intelligent and
interesting old gentleman, full of information as regards the Northwest
region, and of Selkirk colony in particular. He published a book
descriptive of the country and of the Rocky Mountains, Vancouver and the
Pacific Coast, where he spent some fifteen years of his life, since
which he has been residing in this colony, and has been for a long time
one of its leading citizens."
A book entitled "Red River Settlement," published by Sheriff Ross, some
years after this time, is really a lively and correct account in most
respects of the Selkirk colony. We have gleaned from his writings, and
from the information communicated to Dr. Burns by him, the main facts
leading up to the coming of John Black to the Highland colony. No doubt,
late into that first night, the religious story of the forty years
preceding, was told by the old fur trader to the youthful missionary. We
may well rehearse the tale of disappointment now to be turned to joy.
The Scottish settlers of Red River were chiefly emigrants from the north
of Scotland, brought to the country during and before the year 1815, by
the Earl of Selkirk. They had a clergyman of their own persuasion
promised by his lordship at the time of leaving their native country,
the Rev. Mr. Sage, but he remained behind them for a year in order to
perfect himself in the Gaelic language. He was expected to follow them.
Next year, however, came and passed away and with it no clergyman; and
up to the time of Mr. Black's coming no Presbyterian minister had ever
visited Rupert's Land. In the winter of 1815-16 the settlers had to
abandon the colony for want of food, and they betook themselves to the
plains for buffalo, and to the lakes for fish, and wintered among the
natives in all directions. In 1816, after their return to the
settlement, they were driven from the colony at the muzzle of the gun by
the Northwest fur traders, who did not want a farming settlement in
Rupert's Land, and they spent the following winter three hundred miles
to the north of the colony, at the foot of Lake Winnipeg.
Led by the vicissitudes of his settlers, Lord Selkirk visited his colony
in 1817, made a treaty with the Indians, and made promises to his
settlers, among other things, to send them a minister of their own
faith. Much encouraged by his lordship's visit, the people settled down
to work, when they were invaded by a grasshopper scourge, and had been
compelled again to leave their farms and seek subsistence by the chase
of the buffalo on the plains.
At this juncture (1818) they were surprised at the arrival of two Roman
Catholic priests sent from Montreal, on the request of Lord Selkirk, for
the Roman Catholic colonists taken out by him, and the French halfbreeds
of Red River. But no Presbyterian minister was sent. It is to be said
for Lord Selkirk that the financial difficulties of his colony and the
strife and opposition which had arisen preyed on his mind to such an
extent that he died in the south of France in 1820. He had, however,
given strict charges to his agent, then in London, to send out a
minister as promised. The agent was an Englishman and seemed to have
used his position with the directors of the Hudson Bay Company very
unfairly. In 1820 there arrived in Red River Rev. John West, a good and
suitable man, but the settlers complained that he was of the Church of
England, and that there were not "twenty individuals in the whole colony
belonging to the Church of England."
Much dissatisfied, the colonists, in 1822, applied to Lord Selkirk's
executors for redress, but no answer was made to them. Governor Donald
Mackenzie, who was in charge at Fort Garry, made them, in the year
following, a promise that a minister of their own persuasion would be
sent them. A petition sent to Scotland for assistance received no reply.
Years rolled on, the people still adhering in their homes to the customs
of their fathers, holding prayer meetings from house to house and
teaching the Shorter Catechism in their families. In 1843 they saw six
Roman Catholic priests in the settlement, and four Church of England
ministers, but none of their own faith.
The state of depression produced by these unavailing efforts may be seen
in the fact that in 1835 a party of one hundred and ten persons, all
Scotch settlers, left the colony for the United States, "solely because
at the Selkirk settlement they had neither minister nor church of their
own." Two years after a number of additional families left the country
for the same reason. The indiscreet and uncalled for public address of
one of their ministers, who had been once a Presbyterian but was so no
longer, did much to influence their feeling and stir up resentment.
In the year 1844, Duncan Finlayson, a Scotchman, who was Governor at
Fort Garry, advised another application to be made to the company in
London. The petition of the people is really a most pathetic one. In it
they say that "they are in danger of forgetting that they have brought
with them into this land, where they have sought a home, nothing so
valuable as the faith of Christ, or the primitive simplicity of their
form of worship; and that their children are in danger of losing sight
of those Christian bonds of union and of worship, which everywhere
characterize the sincere follower of Christ."
In reply to this petition, the company denied any promise of Lord
Selkirk to the settlers in the matter, but agreed to pay the expenses of
a minister of their own faith to the country, provided they were willing
to undertake his support. Again stirred up to vindicate their position,
the leaders made affidavits as to Lord Selkirk's promise in their old
Highland home of Helmsdale, in Sutherlandshire, before the Colonists
emigrated, as well as at the time in 1817 when His Lordship gave the
grant of land for church and school. The response to these declarations
from the Hudson's Bay Company was no more satisfactory than the former
had been, and thus ended the expectation which the Kildonan people had
fondly cherished for more than thirty years of having a minister sent
them by the company.
Now that they had learned the wisdom of the admonition--"Put not your
trust in princes," the disappointed colonists began to turn their
thoughts to the sympathy of the Scottish people. In 1846 they addressed
a letter to the Free Church of Scotland, which in the following year
reached the Colonial Committee of that Church. This committee sought in
vain to obtain a minister for Red River, in Scotland, and in turn,
through Dr. Bonar, the convener of the committee, handed the matter over
to the Free Church in Canada.
Then the persistent settlers of Red River transferred their case to
Montreal, and wrote to Sir George Simpson, who has been called the
"Emperor of Rupert's Land," and asked for his countenance and support.
Though very diplomatic, Sir George seems to have favored them. An
interesting correspondence between Rev. Mr. Rintoul, of Montreal, and
Sir George, now took place. The work of obtaining a suitable missionary
was, as we have seen, in the hands of Rev. Dr. Robert Burns, of Knox
Church, Toronto, a relative of Dr. Bonar. Chief Factor Ballenden,
resident governor at Fort Garry, took much interest in the matter, and
pressed the case of the Red River settlers on Dr. Burns and his
committee. We have already seen the steps by which the apostle of Red
River was sent upon his way.
Mr. Black had faced the journey, and now on the scene of his future
labors heard the details of the well-nigh forty years of disappointment,
as well as of the Highland welcome awaiting him. The joy that took
possession of the Highland hearts of the people of Red River was almost
beyond measure. They had unremittingly striven in the face of many
rebuffs for a pure Gospel and for the coming of the house of the Lord.
And now in many of the homes of Red River at their family worship they
sang:
When Sion's bondage God turned back
As men that dreamed were we,
Then filled with laughter was our mouth,
Our tongue with melody.
As streams of water in the south,
Our bondage, Lord, recall.
Who sow in tears a reaping time
Of joy enjoy they shall.
That man who, bearing precious seed,
In going forth doth mourn,
He doubtless bringing back his sheaves,
Rejoicing shall return.
It was Friday afternoon when John Black arrived at his destination on
Red River. On Sabbath following he went with the people to the Episcopal
Church of St. John's, now on the north side of the city of Winnipeg, in
which the Kildonan people always claimed a share. Expecting their
minister, the people had made a compromise with the Hudson's Bay Company
as to property, and had been given a glebe lot called "La
Grenouilliere," Frog Plain, two or three miles down the river, as a site
for church and manse. Here they had already erected a manse for their
new minister, and though not quite finished, it served as a
meeting-place for the people in their worship for the first year or two
of the mission.
During the week after Mr. Black's arrival, the news went quickly about
the settlement, so that on Sabbath, September 28th, 1851, three hundred
of the Selkirk settlers, who had a week before met in St. John's,
assembled for service in the manse at Kildonan. Here the first sermon
was preached by a Presbyterian minister in the wide region west of Lake
Superior, where now the Presbyterian Church is much the largest body
engaged in spreading the Gospel.