YORK FACTORY
Leaving the station in charge of the Rev. J. Keen, the bishop started,
in June 1879, on the long contemplated visit to York Factory, in the
northern part of his diocese. ‘I left Moose,’ he says, ‘on June 30,
having made every necessary arrangement for the management of the mission
during my absence. At Michipicoton, close to the mighty Lake Superior,
kind friends were my hosts for four days, days full of work, and then a
steamer carried me to Sault St. Marie, a long way out of my course, where
I was obliged to remain a week, during which I was the guest of another
missionary bishop, the Bishop of Algoma, whose diocese is rapidly filling
up from England and the well-peopled parts of Canada.
‘I went through Lake Superior. Four-and-twenty hours of railroad
followed, and fourteen hours more of steamer, and the second stage
was completed. A month was spent with my kind friend the Bishop of
Rupertsland. I was in the centre of the civilisation of the country,
in the neighbourhood of Winnipeg, only a few years ago a waste, now a
populous town, with splendid schools, churches, banks, colleges, town
hall, &c. I was constantly at work, preaching in the various churches,
sometimes in Cree, sometimes in English, added to which to my lot fell
the duty of preaching the sermon at the opening of the synod, at which
the clergy were collected from various parts of the country. I need not
say how thoroughly this month was enjoyed; it gave me the largest amount
of Christian intercourse I have had for several years.
‘When the steamer which was to convey me through Lake Winnipeg was ready
to start I went on board, and in her had a journey of three hundred miles
to Old Fort, from which I was conveyed to Norfolk House by boat. I was
far enough away from civilisation now, and had before me five hundred
miles of dreary and desolate country. There were some immense lakes to
cross, and some rough rapids to descend; but we saw no bold falls, such
as I have been accustomed to find in other parts of the country.
‘On September 19 I found myself at my journey’s end, at York Factory, a
spot I had longed to visit for many, many years, a spot at which several
devoted missionaries have laboured, where Christ has been faithfully
preached, and where many precious souls have been gathered into His
garner.’
The Rev. J. Winter had arrived at the station to take the place of
Archdeacon Kirkby, who had quitted York by the annual ship just a week
before. Mr. Winter had heard the archdeacon’s farewell sermon. The
latter had faithfully toiled there for twenty-seven years, and there
was scarcely a dry eye. The interpreter was the first to break down,
then followed the archdeacon himself, together with the congregation.
For a few moments there was a pause; it was with difficulty that he
finished his discourse. ‘I had wished,’ wrote the bishop, ‘to express
to him personally my sense of the praiseworthy manner in which he had,
single-handed, managed this large district. It needs more labourers—one
at Churchill, and another at Trout Lake. One great difficulty is the
number of languages spoken. At York and Severn, Cree; at Trout Lake, a
mixture of Cree and Saulteaux; and at Churchill, Chipwyan and Eskimo,
which have no resemblance either to each other or to the Cree or
Saulteaux. I have been busy ever since coming here, for besides the
Indian there is a somewhat large English congregation, York having ever
been a place of great importance in the country, although it is now much
less so than formerly. I conduct an English school daily, give lessons
in Cree to Mr. Winter, and twice a week I give lessons to the European
and native servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Altogether I am as fully
employed as I have ever been at Moose; but I cannot but know that with me
the sun has passed the meridian, and that it behoves one to work while it
is called to-day.
‘In January I go northward two hundred miles to Churchill, the most
northerly inhabited spot in the diocese of Moosonee. It is a very dreary
place. The wife of the gentleman in charge there, the sister of one of
our missionaries, is often years without seeing the face of a civilised
woman, while the intensity of the cold there is as great almost as
in any spot on the earth’s surface. You may conceive with what joy a
visitor is received. What a welcome I may expect on my arrival! The
Indians there will be quite strange to me; with their language I am not
at all acquainted. I had never seen one until I came here, and here only
one—a poor girl, now a happy, comfortable, Christian lassie, with an
English tongue, but who was cast out as an encumbrance by her unnatural
relatives. In June I go on a tour to Trout Lake and Severn; this will
occupy me nearly two months, and in August I once more set off for
England.’
The voyage from York Factory in the autumn of 1880 was the most tedious
and stormy on record, occupying ten weeks instead of five. It was the
middle of November ere Bishop Horden reached England, when once more
he had the joy of greeting his wife and children. And now followed a
continual round of preaching, speaking, and travelling, with very heavy
daily correspondence. At many a meeting the bishop held his audience
in rapt attention with the story of the rise and progress of the Moose
mission, with graphic descriptions of parts of the Moose diocese, with
accounts of the work in the six several districts into which it was now
divided, each under the care of an ordained clergyman. Charters had
been granted to two companies for the construction of railways from
the corn-growing provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the shores
of Hudson’s Bay, one or both of which would run for the greater part
through the Moosonee diocese. The bishop pleaded for help, therefore,
for a church extension fund. He would often close his address with an
Indian’s account of the condition of his people when in a state of
heathenism, giving it in the native Cree, with a literal translation.
Naspich ne ke muchepimatisin wāskuch numa kākwan
Very I was bad formerly not anything
ne kiskāletān piko Muchemuneto ishpish ka primatiseyan;
I know it only the devil as long as I lived
misew ā ililewuk ne ke wapumowuk moshuk ā muchepima.
all the Indians I saw them always they being
tisitchik, ā notenittochik, ā keshkwāpāchik,
wicked when they fight with each other when they get drunk
ā mukoshāchik, ā mitāwitchik, ā kosapatutik,
when they feast when they conjure when they pretend to prophesy
ā kelaskitchik; muskumāö wewa, nutopowuk,
when they lie he takes from him by force his wife they ask for liquor
naspich, saketowuk, utawāwuk, kimotaskāwuk
much they like it they buy it they rob (other) people’s lands
kisewahaö weche ililewa, naspich tapwā
he angers them his fellow Indians, very truly
ke muhepimatisewuk.
they were wicked.
These sentences will illustrate the peculiar structure of the Indian
tongue, which, with its ‘sesquipedalian compounds,’ as Professor Max
Müller calls them, might deter almost any student from the attempt
to master it. Bishop Horden, with great patience, perseverance, and
thoroughness, compiled a grammar of the Cree language, which appeared
about this time, and in which we are, step by step, introduced to a
system complete in the mechanism of all its parts. Words that seem all
confusion gradually assume their proper forms. Around the verb, which is
the most important factor in the formation of those polysyllabic words,
cluster all the other ideas. They are glued on to it, so to speak. That
which with us would be a whole sentence is accumulated in the Cree into a
long compound word; agent, action, object, with adverbial expletives, are
all combined.
The bishop, in the midst of all his hard work when in England, now
speaking for the Church Missionary Society, now pleading for his own
diocese, in the midst of engagements and travel, in the midst even of
his very journeyings to and fro, found time to write some of his graphic
descriptive papers. We give the following true story of one of the former
Coral School children, written by him in the waiting-room of a railway
station, whilst expecting a train.
‘Amelia Davey was originally named Amelia Ward, and was one of the
children of the Coral Fund. She got on with her learning very well, could
read and write English creditably, and spoke English as well as if she
had been an English girl, instead of a Cree. At the age of about nineteen
she married a young Indian named James Okune Shesh; and, after about
three years of married life, lost him through disease and starvation, she
herself narrowly escaping death.
‘Some time afterwards she married another Indian, named Solomon Davey,
a good steady man, who was to her an excellent husband. Last autumn
they left Moose Factory with their children, accompanied by Davey’s old
father and mother, for their winter hunting-grounds. For a time all went
well, fish and rabbits supplying the daily needs of the family; the food
gradually, however, failed, until scarcely any was obtainable. Day after
day Solomon went off to seek supplies; evening after evening he returned
bringing little or nothing. The party now determined to make their way
to Moose; there they knew their wants would be relieved, but Solomon’s
strength entirely broke down, and they were obliged to place him on
a sledge, which was hauled by his mother; thus they moved painfully
forward. The poor fellow was covered up as well as possible. He seemed
very quiet; his mother went to him to assure herself that all was right;
but the spirit had fled. The brave good Indian, who had done his best to
supply the wants of those dependent on him, had perished in the attempt.
Fresh trouble came; Amelia’s time had come for the arrival of another
baby; camp was made, and a little unsuspecting mortal was ushered into
the world.
‘How they lived I know not; but two days after the child’s birth, Amelia,
tying up her little one, and placing it on her back, and putting her
snow-shoes on her feet, essayed to walk to Moose, still eighteen miles
distant. Bravely she stepped out; her own life as well as the lives
of those she left behind depended on her reaching it. She slept once;
the bitter cold seemed anxious to make her its victim, but the morning
still beheld the thin spare form alive, and, asking God to give her the
strength she so sorely needed, she struggled on again.
‘Presently the houses of Moose make their appearance, but they are far,
far off. Can they be reached? It seems scarcely possible, but the effort
is made, the necessary strength is supplied, and she finds herself in
a house, with Christian hands and Christian hearts to minister to her
necessities.
‘But can this poor wrinkled old woman, apparently sixty years of age, be
the bright, well-favoured, cheerful Amelia of thirty? The very same. What
you see has been produced by the cold and want; and how about the babe?
Well, the dear little baby was well and strong; the Christian mother
had preserved it with the greatest imaginable care, and it was to her,
doubtless, all the more dear from the terrible circumstances under which
it was born.
‘Parties were at once sent off to those left behind, with food and other
necessaries, and all were brought to Moose, where they were kindly and
abundantly cared for. The last thing Solomon did last autumn was to go
to the Rev. J. H. Keen, and purchase for himself a Cree New Testament to
take with him to his hunting-grounds.’
Other stories the bishop told or wrote, too many for the size of the
present volume. There was David Anderson, one of the many lambs of the
Bishop of Rupertsland’s flock, whose arm was shattered by an accidental
gunshot, and for whom a false arm was sent out from England. This arm for
a time he would not use, because he thought it wrong thus to supplement
a limb of which ‘God had seen fit to deprive him!’ There was the devoted
wife of the dying hunter (Jacob Matamashkum), who saved him in the last
pangs of starvation by applying his lips to her own breast. There was the
aged grandmother (good old Widow Charlotte), who took the dead daughter’s
babe and nourished it at her bosom thirty years after her own last child
had been born. There was Richard, son of the Widow Charlotte, who was
‘a famous fisherwoman’ even after she had become a great grandmother.
The son was a delicate young man, who had largely depended on her for
subsistence. He married and fell ill. The poor wife on the morning before
he died ruptured a blood-vessel in driving in a tent-peg, and was carried
to the grave just a month after him. There were the starving parents,
who, having lost their two youngest children from hunger, set off with
the remaining two for the nearest station, a hundred miles away, to get
food. The wife drew the sledge on which the children lay, while the
husband walked in front to break a road in the snow for her, till at last
his strength failed, and he could go no further. She, however, set up a
little tent for him, and hastened on. She might yet get help in time to
save him. She reached Albany, and sank unconscious. But friends were at
hand—the children, scarcely alive, were taken from the sledge. The mother
recovered to say where her husband lay. A party went in search of him; he
was dead, and the body was hard frozen.
Many of the school-children wrote to the bishop whilst he was in England
letters, that might favourably compare with those of children possessing
far greater advantages than they. All spoke of deepest attachment to him,
all longed for his return amongst them. ‘We shall be so happy to see
you again,’ was the refrain of every letter. The elder sister of one of
the girls had become the wife of the Rev. J. Saunders, native pastor of
Matawakumma. Her letter addressed to Mrs. Horden is full of interest. It
is dated August 13, 1881. She says:
‘We are pretty dull up here, but we enjoy good health, and we
must feel thankful to Him who gives us health and life. Of
course you know that we spent the first winter you were away
at Moose, and I must say your absence was very much felt, and
when, the bishop went away the following summer, Moose was
quite deserted.
‘I think the people at Moose will be very glad to see you back
again. Sometimes I wish to see Moose and my friends living
there, but, knowing the difficulty and expense of travelling,
I put the subject out of my mind, and try to feel contented.
If this place was not such a poor one for living I should
certainly feel more settled. In the winter we do very well
in the way of food, but my husband is obliged to occupy a
good deal of his time in hunting; but in the summer we depend
altogether on our nets, and if fish fails, then there is
nothing at all; but I am glad to say that it is only sometimes
that we get only enough for breakfast. I feel happy to say
that our Heavenly Father never allows us to be without food
altogether, and we bless the Bounteous Hand which can give
us food even in this bleak and lonely wilderness. Many times
while I was at Moose I thought it would be impossible to exist
on fish alone, but experience teaches me that we can exist on
fish, and fish alone. Many times I think how nice and helpful
it would be if we had a cow.
‘I feel rather surprised that my husband did not arrange with
the bishop before this to have a cow; to my mind that should
have been considered before now. The other missionaries have
cattle, and I think we could keep a cow very nicely here. I am
afraid I shall be tiring you, so I must conclude my letter,
wishing you and yours every blessing.
‘I remain yours very gratefully,
‘FRANCES SAUNDERS.’
The bishop did not return to Moose in the summer of 1881. He found much
to do in England, and so the annual ship by which he was expected arrived
without him. The Rev. Thomas Vincent visited Moose, taking the place of
the Rev. J. Keen, in the course of the winter, which was a mild one. The
summer had been dry, and there had been many forest fires—hundreds of
young rabbits and partridges must have been roasted alive. A sad loss for
the Indians, who largely depend on these for food.