Sowing and Weeping.
It was not strange that the mixture of population should be a matter of
anxiety to the young pioneer of the Red River. Almost all the
Highlanders and their descendants followed the newly-arrived preacher;
but the Orkneymen, who had largely in the Hudson's Bay Company outposts
married Indian women, seemed to form a guild of their own, and were more
inclined to adhere to the Church of England. No doubt the Highland pride
of character and connection of the Selkirk settlers kept the Orcadians
at arm's length. Twenty years afterward the writer found a sentiment of
this kind in Kildonan. The hope of Dr. Burns that John Black might, on
account of his knowledge of French, gain an entrance to the Metis was
never to any extent realized. Though never able to speak more than a few
words of Indian, yet the minister had, as we shall afterwards see, a
warm side for the red men.
Thus shut in, the young man found himself surrounded from the first by
stalwart theologians, and for these he framed his habits of thought and
course of action. So successfully did he do this that he reached their
ideal as a preacher, though he knew not a word of Gaelic, and "bore his
faculties so meek" that he won unusual admiration and regard on Red
River.
NO INFANCY OR CHILDHOOD.
The work of the hardy pioneer is usually a slow and painful process of
gathering together a few people at a time, of making the community
familiar with his voice and thought, and at last from a small beginning
growing gradually stronger and stronger. This is the natural course of
development, but in Kildonan Mr. Black found a congregation ready made,
and it arose like Minerva, fully armed and scarcely needing equipment.
Its infancy, childhood, and youth were all omitted. Within two months of
Mr. Black's arrival, and while the people worshipped in the manse, which
was used as a temporary church, the organization was begun.
At this time the pioneer wrote as follows:
"Red River, Dec. 17th, 1851.
"The temporary church will accommodate 250 or 300 persons, and is
always well filled with a most attentive auditory. We have service
forenoon and afternoon, and also a lecture on Wednesday. We have a
large and interesting Sabbath-school. There are ninety-six
scholars, thirty-six of whom are young people in my own class.
Finding, as I did, that the congregation was pretty ripe for
organization, I proceeded, with the help of a few of the heads of
families, whom the people at my request appointed to aid me in the
work, to examine and admit to the privilege of Church membership,
such as presented themselves with this desire."
THE ELDERS OF THE PEOPLE.
In any other than a Highland community it would have been a dangerous
experiment to choose elders so soon in the history of the congregation.
But the Highlander has the natural tendency to follow leaders. His chief
is everything to him. Every Highland community, by a process of natural
selection--character of a lofty kind being a chief element--chooses its
ideal men.
Precisely seven weeks after the first Presbyterian service was held in
Red River six elders were chosen by ballot by the people who had been
admitted by Mr. Black. Alexander Ross, of whom it was said that his work
for the people for twenty-five years laid the people under a debt that
they could never discharge, was chosen as leading elder. He died four
years afterward. A second, James Fraser, a man of high spiritual power,
filled the office for eleven years, till his death. George Munro, Donald
Matheson, and John Sutherland made up the five who accepted office. One
chosen, Robert McBeth, did not see his way to enter upon the office. The
ordination of this first kirk session took place on the 7th of December.
The young minister was always a wholesome upholder of the principle of
doing everything "decently and in order." He did not even perform a
baptism till the session was formed. A most interesting entry is made at
this time in the session record: "On the same day as the ordination of
the elders took place, the ordinance of baptism was dispensed for the
first time in the congregation, the recipient being the child of Mr.
Richard Salter, the only Englishman in the community. It was also the
first baptism dispensed by the minister." At this time, too, came the
recognition of the new minister by the governor and council of
Assiniboia. A resolution was passed authorizing any legally ordained
Presbyterian minister belonging to the settlement to solemnize
marriages. This was regarded as a very considerable concession at the
time.
A HIGHLAND COMMUNION.
To the Highland imagination the communion stands out as the great feast
day at Jerusalem did to the ancient Jew. The Celt is highly imaginative
and is especially fervid. Few of us can estimate how much religion owes
in the old world and the new to Celtic fervor. The communion is looked
forward to as an especially close approach to God himself. At times we
have to deplore a false view that keeps some in Highland communities
from coming forward until late in life to the Lord's table. How much it
must have meant to the exiles on Red River, forty years after some of
them had partaken of the communion in the Kildonan in Sutherlandshire to
now take part in Kildonan on Red River.
Due preparation was made for the first celebration of the New Testament
feast by the newly constituted session. On December 13th, 1851, the
people met together for a preparatory service--not now with perhaps
thousands gathered from parishes far and near, but with the few hundreds
dwelling side by side. Tokens of admission to the Lord's table were
cautiously distributed, and we learn that the position of the tables was
carefully determined, as well as the number of table services and the
part each elder should take in the administration. The method seen by
the writer twenty years after this date was then introduced. It was to
have the table covered with linen and to have it successively occupied
by different relays of communicants. The number of communicants, at this
first communion after the Presbyterian form on Red River, was 45. The
services following the communion were carried out as rigidly as those
preceding it. Rev. John Black wrote in his description of this same
service: "It was to all of us a solemn day, being the first time in
which, according to our simple and scriptural form, that blessed
ordinance was ever dispensed here. It was also the first time for the
pastor who administered; the first time for the elders who served; and
the first time for not a few who sat at the table--among others, two old
men--the one 87 and the other 99 years of age; and all this in addition
to its own intrinsic solemnity."
ARISE AND BUILD!
To the settlers on Red River the only true ideal was that of the parish
church--and it was the parish church of the beginning of this century
when in the Highlands dissent was unknown. New settlers elsewhere have
been willing to erect such temporary structures as their circumstances
permit and to wait for better days. In new countries this plan has some
advantages. But to the Highland hearts on Red River old Kildonan parish
church must be reproduced in the Kildonan of the New World. But stone
and mortar were needed, and there were few stone buildings in the
settlement. The site on which the church was to be built had been given
by the Hudson's Bay Company along with £150 toward the new church, as an
equivalent to the people for their rights in St. John's Church which
they relinquished to the Church of England, although they retained an
interest in the burying ground in which their dead were lying. The new
site at Frog Plain was really more centrally situated than that at St.
John's for the Scottish settlers, and it contained glebe land amounting
to some three hundred acres. Already their manse and school had been
erected upon it. It had formerly been a camping place for the Indians,
and of it Mr. Black remarked in one of his letters: "The church is to be
erected on a piece of land long desecrated by the idolatrous revels of
the Indians, and the Sabbath evening sports of some who bore a better
name, but whose works were not so much better than theirs." Ten miles
away from Red River on the open plain is an old Silurian outlier of
limestone rock, which still furnishes building stone for Winnipeg. Even
by the end of December the people had quarried at Stony Mountain nearly
all the stone required, and with Red River cart or ox-sled had brought
the most of the material to the new site on Frog Plain. The limestone of
Stony Mountain produces excellent lime, and a sufficient quantity had
already been burnt and placed on the ground ready for work in the
spring. It was a time of earnest enthusiasm in Kildonan, and the most
real parallel to it which comes to the mind of the writer is where in
the days of Ezra after the captivity "the people gathered themselves
together as one man to Jerusalem" and "when the builders laid the
foundation of the temple of the Lord."
THE FLOODS OPPOSE.
The people but awaited the opening of spring in 1852 to erect the
building for which they had the material on the ground. The winter had
been one of great blessing to the newly-founded church. There had,
however, been a great fall of snow and the swamps and streams had been
filled with water in the autumn. The Red and Assiniboine rivers run
through flat prairie lands, and an overflow in time of high water is
very possible. In 1826 the valley of the Red River had been flooded, the
water reaching in a great lake for miles across the country. The
fathers of Kildonan remembered that former date when in 130 tents they
had dwelt on Stony Mountain and the higher lands back from the river.
Now to the people ardent to go on with their church building--which was
all in all to their Highland hearts--it came as a great disappointment
to see another flood, which, while not so great as the former, yet was
very serious. We are fortunate in having a letter of Mr. Black's which
gives us a vivid description of the
SCATTERING OF THE PEOPLE.
"Red River, May 27th, 1852.
"The only thing of great consequence of which I have to tell is that we
are at present suffering from a great inundation--second only to that of
the year 1826, of which you have heard. The consequence is that we are
living in a tent on the Stony Hill, whither many have fled for shelter,
and where I have been for more than two weeks and have the prospect of
being so for some time longer.
"The ice began to break up on the river about the 23rd of April; by the
29th, the water was coming over the lower lands. Its increase was about
a foot per day, and those whose houses were low had to flee to the
heights on the 1st of May. Still rising, on the 7th and 8th the river
began to carry down floating houses from the upper or French part of the
settlement, where the banks are lower and the houses less substantial.
On Sabbath 9th, I preached for the last time in our temporary church and
had to go part of the way to it in a canoe. On Monday 10th, the flight
from the Scotch part of the settlement was general. On that very day
twenty-six years before had the poor people fled from the former flood.
"Such a scene it has never before been my lot to see. The water was now
a considerable depth in many of the houses and flowing in behind them
completely surrounded the people. In trying to reach a place of safety
men and women were seen plunging through the water, driving and
carrying, while the aged and little children were conveyed in carts
drawn by oxen or horses. Most of the Scotch settlers had from 100 to 300
bushels of wheat in lofts which they kept from year to year in case of
failure, and now for this there was much anxiety. The first night we
encamped on the plain without wood or shelter, saving what we erected;
and amid the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, and the roaring
of calves, and the squealing of pigs, and the greeting of bairns, you
may be sure we had a concert. After three days we arrived here which is
a beautiful woody ridge far from water mark, but thirteen miles from our
houses. A few families are with me here, but my congregation is
scattered, so that, from extreme to extreme is, I suppose, more than
thirty miles.
A SEA OF WATERS.
"Thus the waters prevailed and spread themselves over the cultivated
lands, sweeping away everything loose and much that was thought fast.
Houses, barns, byres, stacks of wheat, etc., were floating down thick
and fast. The rail fences--and there were no other--were swept clean
away. Not a bridge is left on the road in all the flooded district.
Sometimes the wind blew very strong, and acting on the lakelike expanse
of waters agitated them like a sea, and this was very destructive to the
houses of the settlers. The breadth flooded in our part of the
settlement might be eight or nine miles, while the ordinary width of the
river is not more than 150 yards. The destruction of property has been
immense. From 3,000 to 4,000 people have been driven from their homes,
though the water did not rise so high as in 1826 by 3 feet 6 inches. I
have crossed this wide expanse twice to visit our people on the east
side. It is like a great lake. I have now three preaching stations
instead of one--_all camp meetings_. The water began to fall about the
21st. We hope to be home again in about two weeks. Our sacrament was to
have been held last Sabbath, but we have had to defer it indefinitely.
The whole will be a serious blow to the settlement, and will be an
injury to the congregation. Many will be rendered much less able to pay
their subscriptions for church building."
HOME AGAIN.
The pastor and his people reached their desolated homes in June. The
country presented a dreary aspect. Crops to a limited extent were sown
and yet the harvest, though the floods had done their worst, according
to the promise did not fail. The church building was again taken up. The
flood during its continuance had destroyed a considerable portion of the
lime prepared for the building. A quantity of lumber was drifted off,
and timbers for the couples had been floated away but were secured
again. The people resumed the work with great cheerfulness. During the
season following, the church was erected. Alexander Ross in his "Red
River Settlement," says: "It was finished in 1853; and though small, it
is considered the neatest and most complete church in the colony. It is
seated for 510 persons and is always well filled. Its cost was £1,050
stg. The manse is also completed; and it is pleasing to add that when it
was finished there was not a shilling due on either church or manse."
In 1853 Mr. Black returned to Canada, and spent the summer there. He was
induced to return to Red River, and had the pleasure of opening the new
church in January, 1854. His heart was gladdened.
[Illustration: KILDONAN PARISH CHURCH.]
"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."