“For the road leads home,
Sweet, sweet home!
Oh, who would mind the journey,
When the road leads home?”
--_J. M. Gray._
It is less than a short lifetime since, in the year 1864, we received
into church membership, at our Nanaimo Mission, Kook-shin (Kicking
Foot) and his wife--our first Indian converts. Since then thousands
have heard the Gospel, vast numbers of whom have received the truth,
and many have lived devoted lives for years, while some have passed
away, leaving a bright testimony of a blessed hope of everlasting life.
Many hundreds still live, and prove by their sincerity and devotion,
and the zeal with which some of them endeavor to bring others into the
light, the reality of their Christian profession.
A glance at their villages will show the change which has taken place,
for there is a marked contrast between the old heathen lodges and their
new and neat Christian homes.
In 1872-3 we reported 108 Indian members in British Columbia, of
whom 18 were at Victoria, 36 at Nanaimo, 4 at New Westminster and 50
at Chilliwack. To-day we have, in our Indian work, 32 churches, 24
mission houses, 12 schools and 4 hospitals. There are 43 workers in
the field, evangelists, doctors, nurses, teachers and other agents;
and 1,645 members, among some six different nations, speaking numerous
dialects. The total missionary givings of these recent converts from
heathenism and their workers amounted in 1905-6 to $1,245.60. Out of a
total Indian population of 25,000 in British Columbia, we are teaching
by the Word about 7,000 people.
What has been accomplished is nothing to what might have been
accomplished had the Church always been alive to its duty and
privilege, and made haste to enter every open door.
To-day there is urgent need for more laborers in this department of
missionary effort. Shall we listen to every other call, and close our
ears to the cry of our Indian brothers and sisters, who appeal to us
in the name of a common Saviour to help them into a noble Christian
manhood and womanhood? Shall we?
* * * * *
A few closing personal references will be permitted. I have written
of my promised furlough, and of the road leading me to “Home, sweet
home.” Those who have spent years away from home and loved ones will
understand the joy with which, after the twelve years of toils and
triumphs which I have striven to describe, I once more turned my face
to the East. I well knew the greetings which awaited me. But I found
more than my beloved mother and brothers and sisters on my return
to Ontario. It was during this visit, in the early months of 1874,
that I found the faithful wife who did not hesitate to turn her back
upon home and friends and the comfortable conditions to which she had
been accustomed, and undertake with me the hardships and privations
of a pioneer missionary life among the benighted Tsimpshean and other
tribes of the far northern regions of our Pacific coast. She is the
youngest daughter of the late Rev. John Douse, formerly a well-known
figure in Canadian Methodism, and who, more than twenty years ago,
went to his reward in the better land. During the next twenty-five
years, in which I labored among the Indians, with headquarters at Port
Simpson, she was a self-denying sharer in the toils and discouragements
and the loneliness of that protracted period of missionary effort,
and a delighted witness of the triumphs of the Gospel, as these poor
benighted peoples gradually emerged from the darkness of heathenism and
became sharers in the blessings of civilization and Christian hope.
Of these trials and triumphs, and the wonderful experiences connected
with that marvellous work, I hope to have the privilege of writing in
another book.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following change was made:
p. 50: rancharee changed to rancheree (the “rancheree,” as)
End of Project Gutenberg's Among the An-ko-me-nums, by Thomas Crosby