Improvements about home--Mr. Woolsey's departure--A zealous and
self-sacrificing missionary--A travelling college--I feel a twinge of
melancholy--A lesson in the luxury of happiness--Forest and prairie
fire--Father's visit to the Mountain Stoneys--Indians gathering about
our mission--Complications feared.
Part of that afternoon I spent at home with mother, and during part
of it hunted up our horses, and finding them, corralled them for the
night. I noted the new house was finished and that mother was
comfortably settled once more in a substantial home. True, it was
without any furniture or stoves, but Larsen was hard at work at the
former, and time and money would eventually bring the latter.
(Mother, of all women I know, is most strongly possessed of patience
and sublime resignation to the lot of the wife of a pioneer
missionary.) I saw, also, that the stockade around the mission-house
was finished; that another field had been fenced, broken and planted;
that the prospect of a garden crop was good, and that our chance of
barley for soup next winter was largely within the possibilities. I
saw, too, a number of garden patches that the Indians had fenced in,
hoed and planted with the small share of seeds the mission could give
them. With most of these aborigines, this was the very first effort
to till the land. In short, I saw that those at home had been at
work, and that things were beginning to look like permanent occupancy.
I missed the genial, kindly presence of my old friend, Mr. Woolsey.
He had returned to Ontario, following the route down the river in one
of the Hudson's Bay Company's boats, and thus I had failed to meet
him. Nine years on the Saskatchewan, from 1855 to 1864, in Hudson's
Bay fort, in Indian lodge, beside many a camp-fire, he had preached
the living gospel of a loving Saviour. In doing this work he had
undergone untold hardships, always and everywhere handicapped by
physical infirmities. Transplanted from the city of London, Eng.,
into the wildness and wilderness of the far west; having had no
experience or knowledge of the conditions of frontier life in a new
country; with no knowledge of the language of the Indians--indeed, I
venture to say he had seldom seen an Indian--in the presence of the
physical difficulties which were as legion everywhere around him in
his new field, he was altogether dependent on those around him.
This, too, in a country where the horseman and the hunter, and the
man ready in resource under every or all of the exigencies of real
pioneer life on the frontier, were tried to the utmost. If upon such
men as these there was the constant strain and burden of difficulty
and great hardship, what must have been the experience of Mr.
Woolsey, arriving there fresh from the comforts of English life.
For nearly a decade this devoted servant of God had journeyed
incessantly up and down through the length and breadth of the Upper
Saskatchewan and among the foot-hills of the Rockies. He had
alternately shivered and sweltered, starved and feasted. When
freezing he was given a camp-fire in the frozen snow and colder air
to thaw him. When scalding in the burning heat of the long midsummer
day on the treeless plains, he had to refresh him a cup of tepid
swamp water, in which any ordinary sight might behold extraordinary
life. When starving, even he, notwithstanding his strong
Sabbatarianism, was forced to travel on in quest of food.
[Illustration: REV. THOMAS WOOLSEY.
(_From a photograph taken soon after his return from the
North-West._)]
One cold winter day, he and his French half-breed guide and
dog-driver were within a hard day's travel of the Rocky Mountain
Fort. It was Sunday. They had food neither for dogs nor men. Mr.
Woolsey would fain have kept the Sabbath, and gone hungry in so
doing, but his materialistic guide and driver hitched up his dogs,
and making ready, said: "Well, Mr. Woolsey, you stop here and pray; I
will go to the Fort and eat." Mr. Woolsey then allowed himself to be
wrapped in the cariole and taken to the Fort, where he could both eat
and pray.
When he feasted, he might sup and dine and breakfast for days on
fish, another time on rabbits, another period on eggs, in all the
various stages of incubation; for change he would pass from eggs to
moulting ducks, and for days these would be his diet. Then would
come the longer intervals of buffalo diet. Tongues and marrow-bones,
and back fats and bosses both little and big, and dried meat and
pemmican, either straight or disguised in _rush-o_ or _rab-aboo_,
just as you please. Ah! then he was feasting indeed when he had
buffalo meat. It is true at times there would come to him the strong
craving of a true Englishman for slices of bread and butter, or
chunks of plum pudding, or even a potato; but what was the use, my
friend would heroically away with such longings, and content himself
with his hard grease pemmican.
He mastered the Syllabic system so that he could read and write in
it, and also teach to others the use of this wonderful invention
which God gave to James Evans. It was curious to listen to him
reading a chapter in the Cree Testament to a group of Indians,
himself not understanding ten words in the chapter, while his hearers
were intelligently grasping every word. Scores are now in heaven
whom he taught to read the words of the blessed Master. Under a
blanket-covered tripod on the plains, at the foot of a tree in the
woods, in the shade of a skin lodge, by the glare of a camp-fire, or
in his little room at a Hudson's Bay Company's Fort, he held school,
and the graduates in syllabic learning of his travelling college are
scattered all through this western country to-day.
He gained a smattering of the Cree, so as to make himself understood
at a pinch. For instance, he and Susa, Samson's brother, were once
camped in the woods near Pigeon Lake. When retiring for the night,
Mr. Woolsey wanted to arrange an early start next morning, and spoke
thus: "Susa, ke-yah ne-yah wa-buh-ke we-butch a-wass," (You me
to-morrow soon get out); and Susa understood, and acted accordingly.
Like my father, Mr. Woolsey never presumed on a knowledge of the
language, never gave the shortest or simplest kind of an address or
sermon without an interpreter, never made the too frequent mistake of
attempting to speak of sacred and important matters in an unknown
tongue. He was considerable of a medicine man, too, and many a poor
Indian was relieved and aided by his hearty help in this way. Among
the Hudson's Bay Company's employees he had quite a name as a kind
physician.
I have been Mr. Woolsey's interpreter, guide, and general
"roust-about," his confidante and friend, for the past two years, and
now he has gone into a far country; and as I look upon the valley,
the scene of our association under strange and sometimes exciting
circumstances, I feel a twinge of melancholy. But here are mother
and sisters four, and little brother, and the evening passes quickly
as we recount to each other the experiences of the summer.
The next day I started back with some fresh horses, and met our party
coming along famously. For picking a road Peter is a genius, and all
hands worked willingly in chopping out the road, brushing swamps, and
bridging creeks. Late in the evening of the next day we rolled down
the hill into the beautiful valley of the Saskatchewan at Victoria,
ours the first carts to ascend the north side of that great river so
far west as this point. Slowly the star of empire was moving in the
line of destiny.
Fifty-six travelling days from Fort Garry--stock all right, carts
sound, goods dry, and twenty-five pounds of flour still left in the
bag we began on when we left the Red River settlements--such was our
record, and father was pleased; and because he was pleased I was
happy. I took the flour in to mother, and she and the children and
Larsen luxuriated in hot rolls for supper. We unloaded the four
sacks I had brought with me, and everybody felt good, for this seemed
to us a great quantity at the time; though really, for our large
party, taking into consideration, too, the fact that our house was
the only one for miles, and that the Hudson's Bay Company officers
and men, and brother missionaries, as well as occasional travellers
and fur traders, stopped with us as they passed to and fro; that
sometimes we had from five hundred to fifteen hundred Indians beside
us, and more or less coming and going all the time, with many sick
among these,--I say, when one thought of all this, the item of four
hundred and nine pounds of flour for twelve months did not seem much.
It was, however, the first time in the history of the place and vast
surrounding country that so much breadstuff had been stored. Why,
when you arithmetically calculated it, there was actually one and
one-quarter pounds per day! No wonder mother saw a Christmas
pudding, and no end of cake for the many sick folks to whom she so
much delighted to minister. No wonder my sisters laughed, and the
little baby brother gleefully shouted, "Cake! plenty cake!" If some
of the pampered among men in centres of civilization, jaded with the
ennui of plenty, had visited that lone mission on the evening of our
arrival, they would have learned a lesson in the luxury of happiness
that comes from contentment with little.
The cows I had bought were also a great source of comfort to our
party. These assured us of milk and butter, and if other resources
failed, of beef also. Of those who came with me from Red River, the
Scotchman traded his cart and harness to father, and packing his
horse went on to Edmonton, thence taking the trail through the
Yellowhead Pass for British Columbia, never to be heard of by us
since; Mr. Connor and his son concluded to winter beside us, and went
to work putting up a shanty to live in. Thus our small
English-speaking company was augmented by two more, for which we were
very thankful.
One mishap had come upon us during my absence, in the burning of our
saw-pit and saws, together with considerable lumber, by a forest and
prairie fire which came in from the south "like the wolf on the
fold." This was quite a set-back, as the getting out of lumber by
hand is slow work.
I found that father and Mr. Steinhauer, with Peter, had made a long
trip among the Mountain Stoneys. Our visit of the last fall had
resulted in bringing about half of these down country, as far as the
upper crossing of Battle River. There father and party met them, and
spending a few days with that camp, continued their journey, and
found the rest of these "sons of the mountains and foot hills" in a
valley some forty miles north of where our mission at Morley now is.
Father was full of this visit to the Stoneys. Their hearty reception
of the missionaries, their earnest and joyous listening to the
teachings of the Gospel, their appearance and demeanor, had won his
ardent sympathy. Then the country they lived in--lovely valleys,
springs of water, beautiful hills, and in the background immense
ranges of majestic mountains--father declared the whole country was
one great revelation to him of Canada's rich heritage in this vast
North-West. He said he would do what he could to urge upon the
Mission Board the need of establishing a mission among these mountain
people.
Having more stock necessitated the making of more hay and providing
more stable room; then we went to work at replacing the timber and
lumber which had been burnt, for our purpose now was to build a
church as soon as possible.
The large one-roomed shanty we had lived in the previous winter was
our place of worship in the meantime, and when the weather permitted
and the Indians were in from the plains, some central spot out on the
prairie was chosen for open-air meetings. With the advance of autumn
our Indian friends began to gather in to the mission. Maskepetoon's
following of Wood Crees, or "mountain men," as they were called by
the other Indians, were followed by many of the Plain Crees, and for
days the river-banks and crossing in front of the mission-house were
alive with humanities, in all stages of growth. Horses there were in
many hundreds, of all colors and grades, and dogs, it would seem, by
the thousand. Shoutings and neighings and howlings incessant broke
the quiet of our valley, while the smoke of myriad lodges hung over
the scene.
During the summer a number of skirmishes had taken place between the
Crees and the Blackfeet. Scalps had been taken home and rejoiced
over by both contending camps. Warriors had gone straight from the
field of blood to the "Big Sand Hills," as the Blackfoot would say,
or to the "Happier Spirit Land," and many a young fellow who had no
horse last spring now rejoices in the ownership of a little band, the
successful stealing of which gives him a place among men. These
camps have been coming into the mission, while at the same time
several parties have left the south to look for horses and scalps.
As these return (if they ever do) they will follow straight into the
mission, which will in time complicate us, and bring retaliatory
measures to our very door; but as this is the condition of the times,
we must take our chance, all the while laboring and praying for a
better order of things.