“O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord,
Until my very heart o’erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word,
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.”
--_Havergal._
The work of evangelization went on side by side with that of the
teaching of the children. From the first we established regular
religious services, preaching and prayer-meeting, and, in time,
class-meeting.
Alternately with Rev. Edward White,[4] superintendent of the Mission,
I visited the different points on the east coast of Vancouver Island,
from Comox to Victoria, calling at Chemainus, Salt Spring Island,
Cowichan, Saanich, and many other points.
[Illustration: INDIAN HOUSES, WITH GROUP OF HEATHEN NATIVES.]
Numbers of the poor heathen were little by little led to give heed
to the message of truth and abandon their old ways of superstition
and sin. Still we felt that the education of these people would
not be complete unless they were taught habits of order and industry.
Their old houses and their surroundings were wretchedly filthy and
disorderly, and little calculated to help them in their efforts to rise.
We must set them the example in improving the surroundings of the
little church and the mission house, which had been built adjoining the
church. Hence we commenced to clear off the stumps and roots from the
church lot, and made it ready for cultivation. I took the boys and men
and went to the woods and got out posts and rails and pickets, and thus
showed them how to fence and cultivate a garden.
The old heathen house, from its very character, was the hot-bed of
vice. Fancy a great barn-like building, sometimes one hundred feet long
by thirty wide, made of split cedar boards fastened together with poles
and withes and strips of strong bark, and occupied by as many as a
dozen families, only separated from each other by low partitions.
Picture such a building, with no floor other than the ground, no
entrance for light except the door, when open, and the cracks in the
walls and the roof. Around the inside of such a building were ranged
the beds, built up on rude platforms. In the corners were piles of mats
and fishing-tackle and rubbish. Each family had their own fire, and
these were built all along through the house, the smoke circulating
generally through the building and finally finding its way out as best
it could by cracks and other openings. Under the bunks and overhead
and hanging from the poles were the family stores of dried fish and
berries. In the midst were many miserable dogs and cats, and, later,
chickens as well. This picture multiplied a dozen or more times,
according to the population, went to make up the “rancheree,” as the
Indian village was sometimes called.
Is it any wonder that disease and vice flourished under such favorable
surroundings?
With the example of the little mission-house and its garden before
them, a number were inspired to have individual plots marked out for
themselves. They cleared off their lots and had their houses built and
neatly whitewashed, their gardens planted with fruit trees and bordered
with shade trees, thus presenting a striking contrast to the heathen
houses which they had left.
In time a street was cleared and graded in front of these houses,
and the contrast with the heathen village which faced the beach was
complete.
In a speech before the English Conference made after his visit to
British Columbia, Dr. Wm. Morley Punshon said “that he had seen the
powerful influences of the Gospel far away on the Pacific Coast, near
Nanaimo, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, where he saw the
heathen street and the Christian street side by side. As the people
became converted they moved to the Christian street.”
Later on I followed up this work of education among the tribes on the
Nanaimo and Fraser Rivers, teaching them not only how to improve their
homes, but to till their ground and plant their orchards, and in every
way take their places among their white brethren. To-day the Indians
of these districts have their little farms, cultivate their own grain
and hay and roots, and raise their own cattle.
To show the influence of this early teaching, more than one of our
young men, who had earned considerable money and were urged by their
friends to throw it away in the potlatch, chose rather to purchase
cattle and horses with which to stock their little farms.
But not only did we teach them the gospel of self-help. They were
encouraged to undertake the local improvements on their own church and
school-house, and to help spread the Gospel of the blessed Christ by
contributing to the funds of the Missionary Society.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Rev. Edward White was one of our first missionaries to the Pacific
Coast, and during my earlier years at Nanaimo was my superintendent.
His son, the Rev. Dr. J. H. White, now local Superintendent of Missions
for British Columbia, is a worthy successor of a noble father. I still
gratefully recall the many kindnesses shown me by our brother and his
good wife while an inmate of the parsonage, before the little mission
house was built in the Indian village. Brother White’s words of counsel
and encouragement were always an inspiration to me.