CHAPTER XIII. _STRUGGLES WITH WHISKEY, AND THE RAVAGES OF FIRE-WATER.

“Mourn for the lost,--but pray, Pray to our God above, To break the fell destroyer’s sway, And show His saving love.”

For hundreds of years the natives of the Pacific Coast of British Columbia have been exposed to the temptations of the white man’s whiskey. The traders on ships in those early years thought it to their advantage to take a good supply of rum with them in the traffic for furs, and the poor people became so infatuated with it that while it lasted they would not even go out after the pelts. Whether it was the awful effects of the whiskey traffic upon the natives, or the risk that the Company’s servants ran in dealing with drunken Indians, or the loss to the Company’s business due to the condition of the natives, we cannot say--perhaps it was all of these--but finally Sir George Simpson, the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, forbade the sale of liquor at any of the trading posts.

Strong drink has been the greatest enemy to the Indians of the Coast and one of the greatest difficulties in the way of Christianizing and civilizing them.

At our first mission station, history has it, a coal mine was sold for a bottle of rum. We are not sure just how this occurred, but it is stated that an old Indian who made discovery of the first vein of coal was promised a bottle of rum and repairs to his old flint-lock musket if he would bring to Victoria, seventy-five miles away, a sample of the mineral, and afterwards show where the vein was located. The old man loaded his canoe with coal and paddled away for days until he reached the place, and delivered it to the party, who gave him the bottle of rum as agreed. The Indian was always afterwards known as “Coal Tyee.”

In our first work among the natives hardly a day passed but they had liquor, procured either from the miners or sailors, or from those contemptible characters who spent their time in vending the accursed “fire-water” among these deluded people. Many a score of bottles of whiskey had to be destroyed in those days. Sometimes, of course, the owners became terribly exasperated at our action, and we were always, while living right among them, exposed to danger from wild, drunken men. Two men followed me one night for some distance, and said they were determined to break my head with a bottle. Sometimes for whole nights together it would seem as if all of the people of the village were intoxicated, and often I have been called up at the midnight hour to settle some trouble, or possibly to prevent bloodshed, due to the presence of whiskey.

On a trip along the coast, near where Ladysmith now stands, a young man under the frenzy of whiskey had shot down his own father. A council of the chiefs and people was being held, and I was called in to witness and hear the speeches and the talk of vengeance on the white man who had given them the liquor. One after another spoke, and finally one chief directed a most appealing address to me.

“Oh, Missionary,” he said, “you bring us good words, the Book tells of good things, but look at that dead chief. Are you not ashamed of your white brother? Why don’t you convert him? He has the Book, why don’t he stop making and selling whiskey? Why don’t you convert the man who gave the liquor to that man who shot his own father?” And as the old orator poured forth his eloquent address in his own language, I felt, for the first time, ashamed that I was a white man.

THE LAW IN OUR OWN HANDS.

More than once, realizing the awful effect of this dread traffic upon the natives, the Missionary felt impelled to take the law into his own hands in dealing with this illicit trade.

One fine day in Victoria, another preacher and myself, crossing the bay on the old ferry boat, saw a canoe coming from under a wharf with boxes in it. I said to my friend, “That looks like whiskey.” We hurried the ferryman up, watching at the same time where this canoe would land. Leaving my friend, I ran over the hill, shouting as I passed the chief’s house, in his own tongue, “Give me an axe, an axe I must have.” Jim, the chief, successor to old King Freezee, ran out of his house with an axe in his hand. Seizing it I ran towards the canoe, and just as the men landed their cases of “tangleleg,” as it was called at that time, I smashed them open with the axe, sending the blade through the five-gallon coal oil cans full of this terrible stuff. Much of the liquor then sold to the Indians was a vile combination of camphene, coal oil and other fiery material, which seemed to set the natives wild when they drank it. The men by this time had run away, one up the hillside and the other some distance down the beach, looking back to see what would be done. I do not know whether they thought I was an officer of the law or not, but at any rate we got rid of that much of the abominable stuff--“chain lightning” it was sometimes called--which might have caused much trouble and loss of life in the camp.

“OH, LET ME HAVE JUST A LITTLE, SIR!”

On a journey down the east coast of Vancouver Island my Indian boy, Charlie, and I, having travelled about twenty-five miles in a small canoe, touched at a little village on a beautiful island where I had often visited and preached before.

Just as our canoe struck the beach, on the north point of the island, a young man by the name of Jacob, who was already “half seas over,” called out, “Mr. Crosby, whiskey, whiskey!”

I jumped out and ran across the point of land, and here was a big fellow, named Comox Tom, with a large canoe, just pushing off.

Too late to reach them, as they paddled away as quickly as possible, I turned around through the village and found they had had a “whiskey feast.” And, oh! what a sight! nearly all drunk--men, women and children.

Seeing that I could do them no good, I turned and said to my boy Charlie, “Will you go with me, and we will overhaul that canoe, or they will do the same bad work at another place?”

“Yes, I’ll go, sir!” he replied.

Just then Jacob, the man who had called to me, came forward and jumped into the canoe, saying that he would go too.

Off we went, following the big canoe, which was now well over towards the other island, some three miles away. Our little craft, with three good paddles and plenty of elbow grease, fairly leaped over the water, and it was soon evident that we were catching up to them with their heavy canoe.

As we got near I saw the old man at the bow set his musket by his side and the man at the stern get his ready also, while the two women, who sat in midships, each armed herself with an axe. It looked as if they were getting everything ready for a fight.

I stopped paddling and called to the big fellow, Tom, who was steering the large canoe, to stop and listen to what I had to say.

“Tom, we have not come to fight,” I said, “but I must have the liquor.” And then to my helpers, “Pull up alongside, boys!”

As soon as we were alongside of their big canoe I seized hold of a five-gallon can of whiskey and began pouring it out. While I was doing this my boys in the bow of the canoe hauled on board a case of “Old Tom.” The big Indian, in the meanwhile, got hold of the can as I was pouring it out and claimed it as his own.

“Well, Tom, pour it out yourself,” I said. “Pour it out, I tell you!” I shouted.

Tom held it over the side, just near to me, and poured away until it was nearly all gone; then he stopped, and in a pleading voice said, “Oh! let me have just a little, sir!” But I kicked it out of his hand overboard and warned him not to sell liquor among the people along the coast any more.

I asked if we had got all the liquor, and Tom, feeling bad at losing his, nodded to me, pointing to the boxes on which the women sat, as much as to say, “There is more liquor there.” But try as we could, the women remained firm, sitting like statues, and we could not remove them.

Turning to Tom I said, “I might have had you put in the ‘skookum-house’” (as they call the jail), “but I want you to do better. Will you be a better Indian and stop this business?”

He readily promised. Then I called to the boys in my canoe to hand me the case of liquor, and taking the bottles two by two, I smashed them together until they were all destroyed. Just as the last two were going the young fellow, Jacob, who had worked so well and had evidently come with us in expectation of being able to secure a little more, reached to me and said, “Oh, do let us have a little, sir!” Poor fellows, how feebly they seemed to realize the awful effects upon themselves of strong drink.

UP TO MY NECK IN THE SEA.

A few days after this I had been preaching to settlers on Salt Spring Island, and while visiting a settler on the east side, a young Indian came rushing into the house crying out, “Mr. Crosby, Mr. Crosby, whiskey, whiskey!” and pointed to the beach, where he said there were some northern Indians selling liquor.

We started down to the shore. I ran some distance above where he said the canoe was, and got down on the beach, where I could now see them bartering away whiskey from their big canoe to parties camped on the shore. I made one straight bolt for them, jumped on board the canoe, and began throwing out their coal oil cans of whiskey. While I was doing this, four big fellows were pushing off their canoe from the shore and carrying me with them out to sea. In a moment I made a plunge for the shore, coming up to my neck in the water, and got to land. We destroyed the whiskey and shouted after the savages that they must stop their unlawful deeds.

My readers may wonder why the missionary took the risks he did, and interfered in matters that may seem to be outside of his regular evangelistic work. It was because he recognized this terrible traffic as the greatest enemy to the work in which he was engaged, and firmly believed that in fighting it he was taking the most practical method of preaching the Gospel to a people who were being destroyed, soul and body, by this trade in strong drink.

THE WHISKEY SYNAGOGUE.

At Departure Bay, near Nanaimo, there was a notorious resort, properly licensed, of course, but kept by a wretched fellow who made no pretence at keeping the law.

This place went by the name of “The Synagogue,” and was suspected of being the quarter from which many of the Indians, on their way north, secured their supply of liquor. Besides this, on an island near by, a quarry had been opened by a gentlemanly American, getting out stone for the new Mint Building in San Francisco. The nearness of this liquor joint resulted in continued drunkenness among the workmen at the quarry, and consequently the neglect of their work.

When it came time for renewing the licenses, I circulated a petition, in which I was strongly supported by the proprietor of the quarry, and which was signed by most of the respectable and leading men of the town, and presented it to the magistrate, praying that the license for “The Synagogue” should not be renewed, as we believed that liquor was sold to Indians at that place.

On the day appointed, when the case was under consideration, the magistrate read out my petition and said, “I can’t renew this license to-day.” Nevertheless, after a few days we learned that the license had been given.

It was in the afternoon of the same day that I met the proprietor of “The Synagogue,” with some others, on the street, and he swore he would slap my face, though he did not get at it.

Later on, emboldened by securing his license, he went to Victoria and got out summonses for twelve of the leading men of the town, whose names were on the petitions. He didn’t include Crosby, as he said, “He isn’t worth the powder and shot; he has no money!”

We met and engaged one of the best lawyers in the country to look after the case. He told us it would be wise for us to get evidence that this house had sold whiskey to Indians.

So one evening, shortly afterwards, I took two Indians in a small canoe, and we went up to “The Synagogue.” And while I stood in the dusk by the canoe, where I could see what went on, they purchased each a bottle of whiskey and brought it back to the canoe, and all the evidence needed was at hand.

Our friend, the proprietor of the house, soon discovered what had happened, and did not press the cases against the petitioners. The summonses all remained in the hands of the parties until the next spring, when our lawyer forced them to bring the matter into court. The fellow was fined, his license taken from him, and it cost him some two or three hundred dollars. He treated the poor Indian missionary as politely as a French dancing master after that.

IN A TIGHT BOX.

Those were wild times, and I had more than one unpleasant experience, among whites as well as Indians.

On my way to camp one evening, a party, composed of a big Indian and two women, all drunk, rushed out of the bush and seized me. I liberated myself from them by pushing one one way and the other another, smashed the whiskey bottle that the man held in his hand, and then ran as hard as I could.

On one occasion I was kindly invited to stay at a logging camp back of Oyster Bay. After supper I preached to the “boys,” and was listened to with respect and attention. When it came time to rest, they put me up in the top bunk in the bunk-house. And glad I was before morning that I was up aloft, for later on some of the boys came in the worse of liquor, passed around their bottles and had a most hilarious time. I don’t know how it commenced, but very soon a fight ensued; and, oh, how they did batter each other, while I lay in my blankets praying that God would, in some way, stop the quarrel. I did not get much rest that night, I assure you.

Next morning some of the poor fellows came and humbly apologized, and years afterwards one of them met me and asked if I recalled that night and its scene of turmoil and revelry.

“INDIAN PRAY ONE EYE OPEN AND ONE EYE SHUT.”

On one of my trips, very early in my missionary experience, we came to an Indian camp where a number of men and women were drinking whiskey in one of the large houses. The house having been pointed out to me, I rushed in without ceremony.

The man who had been serving the liquor to his friends around the fire, having heard my footsteps, was just in the act of putting a bottle away in a box. I rushed towards him, and seizing the bottle from him, I poured the contents upon the fire. The vile stuff blazed up with a blue blaze as if it had been coal oil.

I told the people I was not angry with them, and invited them to the service. The little bell was now ringing, and there gathered into a large house about thirty or forty persons, who sat around the fire, some on boxes and some on beds and mats.

We had sung in the native language, and were now singing in English, “There is a happy land, far, far away,” when in came a man crazed with the drink, all painted up, with only a blanket on, waving a scalping-knife in his hand and shouting at the top of his voice, “I’ll fix the white man! I don’t care for the white man!”

He jumped on a bed behind where Cushan, my assistant, and I were just in the act of kneeling down to prayer. Cushan, the interpreter, prayed, and I prayed, for the first time publicly in the Indian language, for God to have mercy upon the poor people, and especially upon the poor man who had the knife and was so angry. I had not prayed very long before he stepped down as stealthily and quietly as possible and walked out of the house.

After the service was over Cushan said to me, “Mr. Crosby, that man very angry. You not know Indian. He want to kill us. All the time when I pray I shut my eyes when I pray, but this time I shut one eye and open the other. I watch and pray.”

The episode was over, and the missionary smiled at the native shrewdness of his helper.

Poor Cushan himself had been a slave to the drink. In his early years, when a servant of the Company, he had acquired a taste for it, but becoming a Christian, he gave up the habit. There were those, though, who knew his old weakness, and were not pleased at the change in him. Some time after the incident above narrated, one night in Nanaimo, passing by a log cabin, he was entrapped. Two white men who knew him--shall I call them men? demons in human form--invited the poor fellow in, locked the door, and tried in every way to persuade him to drink. Failing this, one held him and the other poured into him the accursed stuff. Then, alas! poor fellow, the old desire was awakened, and he drank. It took him a long time to get over this. But by the grace of God he did finally overcome the enemy, and lived a good Christian life.

MURDER AND REPRISALS.

Oh, the horrors of the drink traffic! How many awful tragedies may be laid at its door!

The whole village of Nanaimo was aroused and terrified one morning when a canoe came round the point with the bodies of two dead chiefs who had been murdered about thirty miles to the north. Old Chief Quee-es-ton and a number of his party, who had been hunting on the island, were visited by some white men in a sloop laden with grog. Fired by the influence of what he had drunk, the chief demanded more. A quarrel ensued, and the white men shot the chiefs dead, put up their sails and sailed away, and were never heard of after.

The bodies of these poor victims were brought home to their people, which set the whole tribe in an uproar, and they swore vengeance on those who had murdered their friends, or any other white men.

In consequence, not long after this a white man by the name of John Brown, at Cowichan, was murdered, and poor innocent Robinson, a colored man, was shot in his cabin on Salt Spring Island, and about the same time Hamilton, another white man, was killed near Nanaimo.

In connection with the latter crime, Jim and Quin-num, Indian names with which we are already familiar, were arrested and put in jail.

Quin-num turned Queen’s evidence, and implicated poor Jim, who was afterwards hanged. I visited him in the prison, and was with him all night before his execution, and finally stood beside him on the scaffold.

I believe he was soundly converted while in prison. On the sad day of execution he said to the hundreds of spectators:

“I was with Quin-num when he shot the man. I did not do the deed. I go to the Great Judge who will do right. But I say to the young men, keep out of bad company. If I had not been drunk and gone with Quin-num, I should not have been here.”

Little wonder that the missionary acted at times the part of a detective, smashed up the barrels and coal oil cans and bottles, or brought to justice those unprincipled men who took advantage of the weakness of the natives.

“A LIFE FOR A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY.”

About the time of these thrilling experiences the Victoria papers reported a very sad incident, under the heading, “A Life for a Bottle of Whiskey,” which goes to show that the missionary’s concern for his people, and his hatred of the traffic in “fire-water,” were amply justified.

“The coroner’s inquest has decided,” so reads the report, “that William Bailey, the Songees Indian, who was shot on the reservation, came to his death by the discharge of S-- L--’s revolver. The whole trouble arose, as do most troubles with savage people, out of whiskey. In defiance of the law, someone had supplied the liquor, having no regard for the consequences of his unlawful act. A life for a bottle of whiskey, that is the total of the lamentable affair. Almost every day some serious trouble is reported from one or other of the reservations. In every case the trouble is directly traceable to whiskey.”

On one occasion, two white men were brought before the Honorable Chief Justice of the Colony, charged with assaulting each other.

The trial was completed, and his Honor was about to pronounce sentence. Turning to one of the men, who had lost his nose in the fray of the night before, he said, “For twenty-five years I have sat on the bench of this colony, and I have invariably found liquor to be the chief cause of all trouble and serious infringement of the law. If an Indian shoots a white man, it’s been whiskey that has done it. If a white man shoots an Indian, whiskey is at the bottom of it. You, my friend, have lost your nose; your brother white man became a cannibal under the influence of whiskey and bit off your nose.” And, giving his sentence, “You will have to bear the penalty, and in the future I advise you to let the whiskey alone.”

Don’t wonder if the missionary, above every other man, should be a strong total abstainer and hate the very sight of liquor or its trade.