HEROES OF THE LABRADOR.
All the world over—in Alaska, in Tibet, in Africa, in Nicaragua, in
Labrador, in the West Indies, and in many other lands—are set the
missionary outposts of the Moravian Church. Their converts outnumber
the members of the parent establishment in the proportion of five to
one, a record in which this “ancient episcopal sect” stand alone. Their
labours reach strange races, whose names are still to the world at large
only a whisper in the hush of romance. Tibetans, Eskimos and Indians,
hunters, tillers of the soil, shepherds and fishermen, swamp-dwellers and
mountaineers, all have been gathered in to the simple and earnest faith
of the Moravian Brethren, who, starting from Hernhutt, in Saxony, have
gained the goodwill and help of the Churches of so many countries.
Yet few really know or understand the work the Moravians are doing. At
the conclusion of close upon 200 years of missionary effort they remain
unadvertised to the general public, and even to their co-workers in
Christ almost unknown!—so much so that if you ask many a minister of
other Churches “Who are the Moravians?” he will answer: “They are a
missionary Church of German origin. I believe they do an immense amount
of good.” But where or how the good is being done he is often utterly
unable to tell you.
As these missionaries never advertise themselves, the very word
“Moravian” rarely finds its way into the newspapers; when it does it is
generally in connection with the notice of the return of some explorer
“who is at present recruiting at the Moravian mission-station at Leh,
in Tibet,” or, “who touched at the Moravian settlement of Killinek,
near Cape Chidley, before proceeding on his interesting voyage to Cape
Wolstenholme.” For far and wide on the shores of the sea of heathenism
are set these lighthouses of the Moravian Brethren.
Thus silently and steadily they do the work to which they have been
called—the extent and scope of which they alone know. Nowhere is this
work more interesting than on the Labrador, where at the six stations
scattered over some 500 miles of a coast, bitterly barren, they live a
life hardly to be matched in modern times.
I will touch but shortly on the history of the Labrador Mission, as,
however interesting events of the past may be, the events of the present,
which are happening to-day, must, in the nature of things, be more
interesting still.
In 1750 a Moravian, named Erhardt, having visited a successful Moravian
settlement in Greenland, petitioned his bishop to be allowed to found a
similar one on the Labrador. In his letter he writes: “I have also an
amazing affection for these countries, Indians and other barbarians; and
it would be a source of the greatest joy if the Saviour would discover
to me that He has chosen me, and would make me fit for His service.” The
end showed that John Erhardt, though not chosen for service, was given
the higher glory of martyrdom. Two years later he landed, with four other
Brethren, and some of the ship’s crew, near the present site of Nain,
or, as some maintain, at Ford’s Harbour, and, after building a house
for the mission, was treacherously murdered with six companions by the
hitherto apparently friendly Eskimo.
[Illustration: Rev. W. W. Perrett, House-father of Nain.]
[Illustration: Rev. B. Lenz, House-father of Hopedale.]
Indeed, at this time the Eskimo had a villainous reputation, the then
Governor of Newfoundland, Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, in a proclamation,
marked them with the brand of Barabbas; he writes “Hitherto the Eskimo
have been considered in no other light than as thieves and murderers.”
In another place he spoke of them as “the most savage race in the whole
continent of America.” And it certainly would appear that they richly
deserved this reputation, for their acts showed them to be a fierce and
treacherous people: they had cruelly slain many a shipwrecked crew, and
the fear of them was acknowledged all along the wild shores. Sailors who
passed through the Straits of Belle-isle told appalling stories of the
bloodthirsty doings of the beings who lurked among the rocks and ice of
the fiords and islands on the northern side, and unquestionably, many of
the stories were true. The Eskimo had lived at war with the Indians for
generations, and cruelty and treachery had been bred into their bones.
In fact, there is no room to doubt that at the time of the first Moravian
efforts matters had come to a crucial pass; peace or a sword was the
alternative which the British Government were forced to lay before the
Eskimo. If the mission had not taken the situation in hand, an expedition
must have gone in their place, and the Eskimo, instead of being converted
to gentler ways by teaching and example, would have been forced to learn
their value by musket and cutlass. For the tribes were becoming a menace
to the expansion of the fishing industry in the north; though it must be
admitted that they had only returned treachery by treachery. The early
voyagers to the Labrador, as elsewhere, certainly treated the natives
abominably. But adventurers never, and the powers behind them rarely,
make any allowances for the savage; and we can conceive that Sir Hugh
Palliser, whose attitude was always one of encouragement towards the
Moravians, embodied in that policy the intention of giving the Eskimo a
last chance before writing him down as incorrigible. And of course it is
certain that incorrigible races of savages who retard the advance of men
so-called civilised, are inevitably doomed.
In no wise deterred by the fate of Erhardt and his companions, within a
few years another devoted missionary pioneer, Jens Haven, having prepared
himself for the special work by acquiring the Greenland dialect of the
Eskimo tongue, set out for the Labrador. It is interesting to learn
that the famous Captain Cook, who was at that time engaged in the first
Admiralty survey of those waters, received him on board of his ship and
aided him forward on his travels. The Labrador was not easy of access in
those days, but at length Haven met with the Eskimo; and landing amongst
them alone was accepted as a friend, because, to quote from his own
journal:—
“I called out to him (_an Eskimo_) in Greenlandish.... He was
astonished at my speech and answered in broken French; but I
begged him to speak in his own language, which I understood,
and to bring his countrymen as I wished to speak to them also;
on which he went to them and cried with a loud voice ‘Our
friend is come.’”
Thus in due course of time the Mission was established. And here comes
the point I would make—that from the very outset, the Mission has
stood between this people and partial if not entire annihilation. In
1773, we find a naval officer who had been sent to Nain to report on
the Mission, writing:—“By means of this laudable Society, a herd of
barbarous savages are in a fair way to become useful subjects.” Of the
missionaries, he declares: “Shielded by virtue, they find the protection
of arms unnecessary.” Such was the first service rendered to the Eskimo
by the Moravians. Slowly the savages became tamed; and war, cruelty, and
murderous reprisals passed away for ever from the Labrador. It is to-day,
thanks to the Moravians and the Deep-Sea Mission, the most God-fearing
coast the writer has ever visited.
Then followed halcyon days; but as the years went on, the Brethren had
to face a more insidious enemy of their people than war could have been.
Fishermen and traders began to push further up the coast, and the evil
influences which civilisation of any kind carries with it threatened the
settlements. Once more, the Missionaries arose to save the Eskimo. They
demanded grants of land in the vicinity of their stations. This request
was looked upon with immense and idiotic suspicion, but the Society stood
firm, and finally gained the day. The plea put forward by the Moravian
historian Hutton (“History of the Moravian Church,” Moravian Publication
Office, 32 Fetter Lane) on this question is so conclusive that I
reproduce it below.
“It would be better to leave them (_the Eskimo_) ignorant of
the Gospel than that by means of spirituous liquors, quarrels,
brutal lusts, or bad neighbourhood, they should draw back from
the Gospel. The only way to prevent quarrelling and violence
would be to grant us absolute property in the land upon which
none should be allowed to stay except on good behaviour.”
From Haven’s time to the present day the work has not been allowed to
languish. And now, all along the bleak and forbidding coasts of northerly
Labrador, the traveller, on rounding some barren headland, or after
threading a hundred miles of narrow channels between a maze of islands
and the sea, comes upon a Moravian station built among the rocks of some
little bay, lipped by the Arctic current and backed by huge bluffs. A
wooden church with a pointed spire; a long dwelling house, two stories
high, mostly white-faced and red roofed, for the Brethren, their wives
and children: and gathered about this nucleus a scattering of Eskimo
huts, which grow ever ruder in build and material the nearer one advances
towards the Pole, make up the scene which meets the eye.
The three southerly stations, Makkovik, Hopedale, and Nain, are framed
during the brief summer in a hundred vivid hues of luxuriant mosses, and
in stunted, hard-grown woods of spruce and juniper; but Okak with its
church and hospital lies exposed under dark mountains with little relief
of vegetation; Hebron is beyond the timber limit, as is also, of course,
the most northerly of all the stations, Killinek. This last settlement
of the Moravian Brethren is, in spite of its neat church, mission-house,
and store, a dreary spot with an average temperature well below freezing
point: a very home of clouds, squalls and sunless days. The buildings
seem tossed down at random in the mouth of a deep gully of naked rocks.
Yet the spot is the resort of numbers of Eskimo, many of them heathens,
who find it a good fishing place for walrus, white whale, and seal.
[Illustration: Eskimo Band at Nain.]
[Illustration: New Church built by Missionaries and Eskimo at Nain.]
The natives at Killinek have a superstition that death or any calamity
is foretold by the appearance of the Blood-bird, as they call it. When
three brothers died up there some few years ago, the Eskimo assured Mr.
Perrett—the Moravian Brother who was in charge at the time—that they
had seen the bird flying across the Bay. One can sympathise with the
imagination of crimson wings hovering in the dim light over the waters
between those ice-clad shores.
Killinek is the last founded settlement of the Moravian Brethren; but
they had there a predecessor, the Rev. Mr. Stewart, of the Colonial and
Continental Missions, of whom I shall have a few words to say later.
At each of the Moravian stations there is a missionary, the House-father,
as he is called, with his wife and young children; and if the number of
the Eskimo make it necessary, a second ordained assistant; also, except
at Makkovik (where there are few people), a storekeeper, who is a layman,
attends to the industrial business of the store. The trade done in
this way by the Mission is of great value to the Eskimo, though to the
missionaries themselves it brings many a troublesome hour. Then why, it
has been asked, should sale and barter be connected with the salvation of
souls? That any thinking man or woman could ask such a question argues
entire ignorance of the country, its inhabitants, and the conditions
under which they live. The settlers and Eskimo bring their fish, furs,
sealskin boots, or other articles of barter many miles by sea or sledge
to the Mission store, and can there provide themselves with barrels of
salt, different kinds of necessary gear for fishing or hunting as may be,
provisions, garments, in fact all the supplies that they need. If the
Missions possessed no stores, these same people would be obliged to go
perhaps double or treble the distance to some private trader, with the
added temptation of finding it possible to buy undesirable things.
The Eskimo is, of course, an absolutely free agent and can trade where he
pleases, no pressure whatever being put upon him. Even in extreme cases
where a man who is heavily in debt to the Mission store, takes his fur
or fish to some outside trader, no word is said to hinder his doing so.
Yet, during the winter, that same individual and his family may—indeed,
invariably do—become chargeable upon the Mission funds. For the Eskimo is
a far from thrifty person.
The prices paid by the Mission are fair and liberal, and in the case of
valuable pelts such as silver and black fox, the Mission storekeeper pays
a deposit at once, and when the skin has been disposed of in the London
market, he passes over the whole amount of the sum obtained, after the
deduction of a small percentage, to the hunter. But the possession of a
round sum of money is of no permanent use to the Eskimo. He knows nothing
of a bank account, and as long as he has a cent he spends it—not by any
means at the Mission store, but probably in making many useless and worse
than useless purchases from the schooner-men who come in summer to trade
along the coast. Thus, a man who has perhaps drawn 300 to 600 dollars in
one haul, often applies to the Mission funds as a starving pauper two
or three months later. It must be remembered that the Mission, from the
very nature of their calling, undertake to feed the poor, to aid those
who are sick or helpless, as well as to teach them the Way of Life. Thus
their trade always assumes the aspect of the game “Heads you win, tails I
lose.” Theoretically, there should be no bad debts, and the store should
pay its way if no more; but unless the dictum of Ruskin which would
empower the wise minority to compel the foolish majority comes into force
throughout the world, that happy state of things is not even remotely in
prospect.
Furthermore, throughout the year the Mission provides work for most of
the people, and the rate of wages is certainly in excess of that at which
passing ships value their aid. The scale runs from 40 to 50 cents per day
for a man and 25 to 35 cents for a woman.
As a matter of fact the Eskimo is not usually an enthusiastic worker. Dr.
Grenfell, of the Deep Sea Mission, in his book on the Labrador, says:
“They (_the Eskimo_) are not able to persevere. Regular work is certainly
not to their taste.” I paid the Eskimo I hired to accompany my party into
the interior, at a rate of one dollar-fifty a day. This man came to me at
the end of a week, as I have narrated in another chapter, and demanded a
rise in wage. Not receiving it, he decamped, preferring the gamble of the
cod-fishing season, during which he could daily choose to work or idle as
he liked.
There is no doubt that the trade holds the Eskimo together, and to a
great degree prevents their getting into bad hands. The missionaries
never sell anything on their own behalf; the rules of the Society forbid
it. For instance, when I wished to add to my stock of fish-hooks and
flies and asked a brother who had a small supply to allow me to purchase
some from him, he could only say “Take what you want,” but he would
receive no payment whatever. The Mission trade is undertaken purely in
the interest of the Eskimo. Without its supplies, the conditions of life
in the Labrador would bring about the inevitable—the Eskimo, forced to
become the dependants of the few stores which exist at immense intervals
on the coast, would crowd together in their vicinity; the most insanitary
conditions would result: in a bad season disease and starvation would
fasten upon the close-herded families, with the natural outcome of a
generation of misery followed by final extinction.
And then you must not imagine the missionaries to be merely preachers
and men of sanctified life. That they are, but in addition every one of
them is master of some useful trade or handicraft. Mr. Jannasch, whom I
met on my first visit in 1903, was a builder of boats and dwellings; Dr.
Hettasch has studied medicine; Bishop Martin is a gardener and architect;
others are skilled in carpentry, tailoring, baking and mechanics. They
can mend a motor-launch, fashion a boat, indeed turn their hands to most
things with success.
Only last year a new church was consecrated at Nain, of which the
architects and builders were the resident Brethren, Bishop Martin and
Mr. Perrett, assisted by Mr. Schmitt, the superintendent of all Moravian
stores upon the coast. Most of the material was brought down by the
_Harmony_ during the previous season from Zoar, a settlement that has
been abandoned. A carpenter from Newfoundland came up to help them for
a few weeks, but beyond that they had no skilled assistance. The Eskimo
were quite willing to lend a hand; they hauled stones from the beach for
the foundation and carried the timbers from the wharf, but after that
there was little they could do. A photograph of the church speaks for
itself as to the capabilities of its constructors.
[Illustration: Snow-hut Camp of Moravian Missionaries on a journey.]
The missionaries are to a great extent self-supporting; they catch and
salt or preserve sea-trout and cod, can bear meat and deer meat which
they buy from the Eskimo or the settlers, besides shooting birds for the
same purpose. And all this is done most efficiently. There is not much
waste of time among the Moravians. Their wives, the Moravian Sisters,
not only help in the schools and teach the women to clean, cook, and do
various kinds of work; but they tend the sick, not shrinking from the
dressing of ghastly wounds or from nursing those suffering from loathsome
imported—mark that _imported_—disease. And it must be remembered these
ladies have busy days, for the attainments of the Eskimo servant are of
the most limited kind. But for all that, they are ready to forego restful
evenings and to join with their husbands in teaching the settlers’
children when the work of the day is over.
And it must not be forgotten that this life of devotion and exile has but
few breaks, the missionaries returning to visit their homes in England or
in Germany on an average only once in about ten years—unless, of course,
in the rare cases of sick leave. The salaries paid to the Brothers used
to range from £15 to £17 per annum; but this has now been somewhat
increased owing to alterations in the routine life of the Mission-houses,
whereby the parent Society sends out less provision at its own cost, but
permits each family to order and enables it to pay for its own share.
The Sisters, with the exception of one unmarried lady who is nurse in
the hospital at Okak, receive no return for their many labours; though
undoubtedly the life is far more trying for them than for their husbands.
To begin with, their children must be sent home to the Mission schools
at seven years of age. No one who has witnessed these partings can
ever forget them; they often mean the practical separation of parents
and children for a life-time—for after ten years of absence, how can
father or mother hope to find their old place in their child’s love and
confidence? Moreover, even communication with home is restricted at most
of the stations to one or two mails a year.
These noble ladies bear their children and tend them through illnesses
usually without medical aid, doctors’ visits being few and never to
be counted upon. Dr. Grenfell, who is looked for and welcomed at the
settlements, goes north generally once a year, usually as far as Nain
or Okak, and he places his medical knowledge at the service of white
and Eskimo alike. The depth of winter brings another Deep Sea doctor by
dog-sledge, and the Moravians have usually a doctor of their own on the
coast, who makes his head-quarters at Okak, where the Moravian hospital
is situated. But when it is borne in mind that the coast line of the
Labrador means some 600 miles of deeply indented fiords, and if these
distances as well as the difficulties of travel, whether by trap-boat in
summer or among the frosts and snows of winter, be even faintly realised,
it will be understood how much the Moravian ladies are thrown upon their
own resources at times of the gravest and most sickening anxiety.
Nor must the large amount of physical suffering be overlooked. Chloroform
is often absent when it is most needed, and of course there are many
cases in which patients must wait for weeks, or it may be months, before
help or alleviation can arrive. Think of the high courage demanded
of the women who undertake that life! And it cannot be said that they
undertake it blindfold, for the daughters of missionaries born on the
Labrador return in later life to join in the work there. As an instance,
I may mention Mrs. Lenz, of Hopedale, who is a daughter of Mr. Jannasch.
Epidemics attack the settlements in a wholesale fashion, probably because
the Eskimo shut themselves up in their huts for the sake of warmth, and
have but a poor opinion of the uses of ventilation. During a period of
influenza, the whole population of a station seem to catch it at the same
time; the paths about the village and the beach and wharf are practically
empty and deserted—only now and then a muffled and dismal figure moves
along to the Mission-house to ask for treatment and medicine from the
House-father. Most of the Brethren have more or less medical knowledge of
simple ailments and doctor their people when necessary.
The severity of the climate falls most heavily on the women. During
the months of snow the missionaries travel many scores of miles by
_komatik_ to visit the outlying settlers and Eskimo, and they have also
to superintend such outdoor work as the weather permits. But their wives
must fulfil their duties in the close and stove-warmed houses, and though
some of the Sisters are energetic enough to take long walks in the crisp
snow, others are unable or unwilling to make the effort.
The effect of the Labrador life is even more marked among the settler
women. In the north at any rate, nearly all the men are athletic-looking,
wiry, and strong, and they spend the greater part of their time fishing,
hunting and trapping. The young girls have the same appearance of health
and activity, but when they grow a little older the cares of a household
tell quickly on them and they soon lose their air of vigour. For the
tasks in the settlers’ homes are very arduous. In addition to cooking,
house-work, and looking after the children, there are seal skins to
scrape and clean, and afterwards make into the long boots that are, as I
have said, the currency of the country. And all this hard labour goes on
for months in the hot and exhausted atmosphere of their houses.
The children are hardy little folk, and play a good deal in the open air
whatever the season may be.
But in spite of the cold, many, indeed most of the Moravian ladies
prefer winter to summer; for though the summer brings a certain amount
of warmth, it also awakens the curse of the Labrador, the innumerable
mosquitoes and black-flies, which makes sitting out of doors quite
impossible; for the swarms gather and intolerably harass the unfortunate
human being who stands still even for a moment. Walking when enveloped in
a veil thick enough to keep out the tiny wriggling black-fly, cannot be
accounted among the pleasures of life. Thus the long and lovely summer
evenings, steeped in the pure intense colours that belong to the earth
and sky of the Labrador, can seldom be fully enjoyed, for the flies are
always present. A smut in the eye will destroy for the loftiest artistic
nature all delight in the most beautiful view in the world, and the
Labrador mosquito is far more destructive of appreciation than any smut.
One story which the traveller is always told of the Moravians, touching
the marriages between the young missionaries and brides whom they have
never seen, but who are chosen for them by the Committee in Hernhutt or
England, has in it only a small share of truth. It used to be a fact
that if a missionary in a remote spot desired to be married—and all must
marry within a certain time of entering upon their ministry—he wrote home
to that effect, and his letter was read aloud in the Moravian Church of
the locality where he had been brought up, and where, therefore, not
only was he well known, but he himself was acquainted with most of the
girl members of that congregation. Consequently, the chances were that
the young woman who accepted the offer and her future husband were not
altogether strangers to each other. Nowadays, however, the young men
invariably come home and choose for themselves. But I heard it said by
one who knew, that the arranged marriages were in the bulk as happy as,
if not happier than, those resulting from personal selection in more
favoured climes.
To live among savage rocks, enduring bitter winter cold, the long
bleakness of spring, the pest of mosquitoes and flies which destroy the
pleasure of summer; to remain cut off from the world for the greater
part of the year, visited, as in Killinek, by but one ship annually; to
give of strength and time generously to the ignorant and the ailing; to
remain far from home and children for intervals of ten to fifteen years
until the memory of the father-lands must surely be as a dream; to meet
with ingratitude and—still worse—with misrepresentation; such are heavy
crosses. But all these things count as nothing, all are included in the
splendid self-sacrifice of the missionary life. Can any other show a
finer record?
There is a side of missionary life of which we, in the midst of the
thousand distractions of ordinary existence, take little count; and yet
it is a side that must loom large in these uttermost parts of the earth.
I allude to the many disappointments and discouragements that inevitably
accompany any such heart-whole effort as that which I am trying to
describe. Such hours of discouragement they must know; yet one finds out
there a cheery community, seeing much in life to content them, losing
themselves in the absorbing interest of their work, and ever ready with
sympathy for the shortcomings and sorrows of their people.
Many of the brethren and sisters lie buried in the graveyards under the
bare bluffs of the coast, a row of white wooden squares bearing on one
side of the separating path the names of the men, and on the other those
of the women who have died at their post. For the rigid separation of the
sexes in their quiet church services lasts beyond the end of life, and in
their graves mothers and sons, wives and husbands, lie apart, while dust
returns to dust.
Before I close this chapter I must add a few words about the Rev. S. M.
Stewart, of the Colonial and Continental Missions, who is at present
working in the most remote districts of the Labrador. He spent some years
at Killinek, and later moved on to Chimo, in Ungava Bay, where he has
a small house near the Hudson Bay Company’s post, but he is seldom in
residence. Every year he travels over a thousand miles round the eastern
and western shores of Ungava Bay, following his nomadic parishioners,
the Eskimo, who are for the most part still heathens, or paying visits
to groups of families that have made a settled camp for a short time. He
also occasionally meets with Indian tribes from the far interior, when
they travel out to barter at the Hudson’s Bay post.
One would imagine that an existence, led under such conditions which
indeed mean constant real discomfort and loneliness in an unsparing
climate, could not hold many attractions; but when I met Mr. Stewart
at Nain, on his way from a short leave in England back to Ungava, his
eagerness to be again upon the scene of his labours was evident.
Any mention of the Labrador from this point of view would not be complete
without including the name of Dr. Grenfell. His many years of varied work
in connection with the Deep Sea Mission, and, indeed, in connection with
much of the coast life, are widely known, and I will speak only of that
part of it of which I myself have knowledge. He usually sails north once
or twice during the summer months, and his arrival in Nain or Hopedale
is welcomed by many a sufferer. When he goes ashore he spends most of
his time passing from one house to another visiting the sick in need of
his skill—and there are always many. Further, he sometimes takes the
sufferers in his steam launch to the Moravian hospital at Okak, where
they can receive the trained nursing required. To his direct labours in
the cause of the Deep Sea Mission may be added those innumerable acts of
kindness and of help which makes the appearance of the _Strathcona_ a
source of thankfulness and joy in many a lonely harbour.
I have dwelt upon the Moravian Mission because they belong more
particularly to the Labrador, passing both summer and the protracted
winter upon its shores. Like the race for whom they care, they have no
other home, and I think it is impossible not to feel the glory and the
pathos of the gentle courage which, for so many generations, has endured
to stand between the Eskimo and destruction.