A PICNIC AND AN INDIAN DANCE
The year 1874 was an eventful one at Moose; the breaking-up of the ice
brought with it a flood, and the bishop and his family had to be fetched
in a canoe to the house of the deputy-governor for safety. The moving
ice masses tore up the river bank, broke down the fences, snapped trees
as if they had been reeds; whilst an incessant roar was kept up as the
mile-wide river rushed madly on towards the sea. Crops were backward and
sparse that season.
In July the bishop started on his summer visitation tour to Rupert’s
House, East Main, and Fort George. Everywhere he was received with open
arms; everywhere the services were well attended; at each of the posts
visited many were baptized and confirmed.
By September the bishop was back again, busy amongst his Indians and
with the European sailors who had spent perforce a whole year in the
vicinity, the ship of 1873 having been ice-bound off Charlton Island;
there was no place nearer at hand at which she could winter in safety.
But the captain, mate, and some of the men had visited Moose during the
summer, and every opportunity of communication had been taken advantage
of. Now they were occupied in cleaning the ship and making ready for a
fresh start homewards. Late one night, just before she set sail, the
bishop and his wife accompanied their newly-married daughter on board,
their eldest—the child whom Bishop Anderson had baptized. All hands were
invited aft; a last solemn and affecting farewell service was held.
The annual ship came and went, and the good folks at Moose began to feel
at once that winter was at the door. The weather, though still warm,
could not be long depended upon. ‘We begin,’ wrote the bishop, ‘to take
up our potatoes; that done, we look well to our buildings, to prevent
as far as possible the entrance of frost; then we endeavour to lay in a
stock of fish for the winter, some of which are salted while others are
frozen—in which state they keep good almost all the winter; after that,
pigs and cattle are killed, and cut up, and allowed to freeze. Then the
great labour of the season begins—the cutting and hauling of firewood,
for we have no coals here. We send men armed with large axes into the
thick woods, and there they chop down tree after tree, strip off the
branches, cut them into billets about three feet long, split them and
pile them into a “cord.” A cord is a pile of billets eight feet long and
four feet high, one and a half of such being considered a fair day’s
work for a man. Then other men come with horses and oxen, harnessed to
sledges, and haul the wood to our respective houses, near which it is
replied. Then the men are sent further off to get logs for building
purposes, which are rafted down the river on the breaking-up of the ice.
‘My young son Bertie delights in chopping, and in winter both Bertie
and Beatrice delight in tobogganing, which gives them capital exercise.
A piece of wood about six feet long, ten inches broad, and a quarter
of an inch thick, is turned up a little in front, and is then called a
sled; this is brought to the edge of the river’s bank, which is in some
places very steep. Bertie sits down in front, armed with a short stick
to guide the sled; his sister sits down behind him, and down they rush
with amazing speed, the impetus carrying them far out on the frozen
river; then they trudge up the bank, bringing the sled with them, and
the process is repeated again and again. As this sort of exercise is a
little too violent for a person of middle age, I don’t engage in it now.
Then there is the fishing. Walking out two or three miles in snow-shoes,
a gipsy tent is made in the woods; holes are cut in the thick ice, a pile
of pine brush is brought from the woods; and then comes the sitting and
shivering at the hole, bobbing a baited hook up and down, perhaps the
pleasure of catching a fish, then the pleasure of cooking it, and then
the pleasure of eating it.’
During the cold of this year’s winter the bishop allowed himself a rare
holiday—the only one, indeed, with the exception of those connected with
Christmas-tree doings, ever recorded by him in his many letters to us.
Availing himself of an unusually fine warm day in February, he held a
grand picnic with his family and friends, driving out four or five miles
in dog and horse sleighs, taking dinner in a large comfortable tent, with
a fine fire in the centre, and then going down to the river and fishing
through holes cut in the ice. ‘Bobbing our hooks, baited with either a
piece of fat pork or rabbit, until a hungry trout made a dart at it, we
generally succeeded,’ he says, ‘in drawing it through the thick ice on
to the snow, where in a short time he became frozen hard; for when I say
that we had a warm day, I mean the thermometer stood but a little below
zero.’ Yes, there sat the bishop and his children and friends on pine
brush on the ice, quite enjoying themselves!
‘We got home very nicely in the evening, but the cold was then becoming
severe, and as the wind was high we should have been very uncomfortable
indeed had we been out much later. With all the drawbacks, I am very
happy here at Moose. I have no time for _kushkaletumowin_, or “thinking
long.” Were the day thirty hours instead of twenty-four, I should still
find it too short. Each year finds me busier than its predecessor, and
so I suppose it will continue to the end. The happiest man is he who is
most diligently employed about his Master’s business. I have before me
for next summer a most extensive journey; I go to Red River to attend
the first meeting of our provincial synod, and then to York Factory,
travelling over four thousand miles.’
The school, under the bishop’s own immediate superintendence, was going
on well, the scholars making good progress. One boy, out of school
hours, was employed in chopping wood for the school fire. Another had
accompanied the bishop in all his last summer journeyings, behaving in
an exemplary manner. A third, Edward Richards, was already very useful,
assisting as a master in the school. The Indians are very fond of their
children, and perhaps a little over-indulgent. The spoilt children
are sometimes disobedient. The bishop gives an amusing description of
parental admonition on one occasion at a distant camp. ‘I had been,’ he
says, ‘away from home for some time, and hoped before night to arrive at
East Main. I had reached a part of the coast opposite the large island
Wepechenite, “the Walrus,” when I observed a body of Indians standing
on a rock, watching us. Here was an opportunity not to be missed; those
Indians might not hear the Gospel again for years. I at once directed
my men to look out for a good landing-place, and I got ashore. My men
also came ashore, and began collecting wood for the purpose of cooking
breakfast. In the meantime the Indians, seeing our movements, got their
canoes into the water; they did not come empty-handed, but brought a
large number of fine white fish, called by them Atikamakwuk—“deer of the
sea,” some dried, others fresh, just taken from the nets. I collected all
our visitors to a service, at which many children were to be baptized.
The deepest attention was paid. The morning hymn was heartily sung, for
these Indians are all Christians. The discourse is being delivered when
there is a great stir among the congregation; faces look excited, voices
are raised, apparently in anger. For a moment I was at a loss to account
for this; then I saw that it was my address that was taking effect,
although not quite in the way I had intended. I was speaking to the young
people, telling them their duty to their parents. The mothers thought
this an opportunity not to be passed over, so, raising their voices, they
cried out to their daughters, “Do you hear? Isn’t this what we are always
telling you?” Then, rushing at them, they brought them to the front,
saying, “Come here, that he may see you; let him see how ashamed you
look, you disobedient children!” Turning to me they said, “Yes, they are
disobedient, they will not listen; perhaps now they have heard you they
will behave better.” The young people promised better conduct for the
future. The service over, we once more took to our canoe, and paddled on
under the hottest sun, I think, I have ever experienced.’
It was during this summer trip that the bishop witnessed an Indian dance.
‘I had travelled far,’ he says. ‘I had visited the stations on the
East Main coast, and had been some time at Little Whale River. It is a
dreary place, and the mighty, frowning, rocky portals of the river seem
fitted for the entrance to other regions, to another world. I had spent
much time preaching the Gospel to Europeans, half-castes, Indians, and
Eskimo, and I was intending almost immediately to turn the bow of my
canoe southwards, and speed back as fast as possible to my home at Moose
Factory.
‘Walking out one evening with the gentleman in charge of the post, we
were somewhat startled by a great noise proceeding from an encampment
of Indians a quarter of a mile distant, on the top of a high hill. “A
conjuring, a conjuring extraordinary!” said we. We ascended the hill
quietly, and quite unobserved. Having attained the summit, we walked
rapidly towards a large tent from which the noise was proceeding, and
looked in, but at first could make out nothing distinctly. We entered,
and found six or seven men standing as closely together as possible
around a very small fire, dancing, or rather shuffling up and down,
without in the least changing their position; the women and children were
sitting around, admiring and applauding spectators of the doings of their
lords and masters. There was music, too, both vocal and instrumental.
The player was likewise the vocalist; he was an old man, who sat among
the women and children; his instrument an old kettle, over which a
piece of deer-skin had been tightly drawn, and this he beat with a
stick, accompanying with his cracked voice, raised to its highest pitch.
The dancing and music continued for some hours, but about every five
minutes there was a momentary cessation, when all in the tent joined in
a prolonged howl. All seemed to thoroughly enjoy the sport, and I was
myself glad to see it, for it was no conjuring after all, only a little
simple amusement, and it was the first sign of animation I had witnessed
among those Indians, who are not of a very high type of humanity. They
are now all Christians, but the standard of Christianity is low—how can
it be otherwise? I am the nearest clergyman to them, and I am six hundred
miles distant. The difficulty of reaching them is very great, for the
sea in their vicinity is open but for a short time in the whole year.
This summer I had hoped to see a labourer stationed among them and the
teachable Eskimo, but for the present I have been disappointed.’
The bishop’s thoughts were much occupied with the need for more churches
and schools, more pastors and teachers, in his extensive diocese. In 1875
he writes: ‘At present there are three clergymen in the diocese besides
myself, and the work we have to do is very great and onerous. I have
given, God’s grace enabling me to do so, more than twenty years of my
life to the cause which is so close to my heart, and I long to see the
whole of the country under my charge not only free from superstition, but
likewise entirely under the sway of Christ, that there shall not be a
tribe, either among the Crees, Ojibbeways, or Eskimo, which has not its
well-instructed and fully-accredited teacher. Many of the tribes do not
see a minister’s face for years.’
Bishop Horden had now been actively engaged in the mission field nearly
a quarter of a century. On January 6, 1876, he writes: ‘During the whole
of that time I have not been laid up with any serious illness whatever,
and I am thankful to add that I still feel as strong in body and as
capable of work as when I first landed here; truly God has surrounded me
with loving-kindness and tender mercy; but in the course of last year He
taught me, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that the threads of my
life are held in His hand, for He plucked me from the very jaws of death.
‘With a large number of fellow-passengers I was on board the steamship
Manitoba, on Lake Superior, on my way to Michipicoton, when late in the
evening we came into collision with the American steamship the Comet, a
vessel more than twice the size of our own, laden with a heavy cargo of
silver ore and pig-iron. That we escaped without material injury seemed
quite miraculous, for the Comet sank immediately, and with her, I am
grieved to add, eleven of her crew of twenty-one men. I trust that this
nearness to death, showing me how uncertain is life, is causing me to
value it more highly, and to labour more earnestly in the vineyard before
the night cometh in which no man can work.’