CHAPTER XV

INDIANS AND THE MISSIONARY

The presence of the red man in Canada—and, for the matter of that, in the United States—has put the white man’s capacity and character to a searching test. I refer to the white man of the modern world, for the attitude of our ancestors towards the Indian was controlled by different contemporary conditions.

Here were some belated representatives of prehistoric man—human beings without culture or conscience, and who, but for a superior resourcefulness, seemed on a plane with the brutes of the field. By arms this wild people had easily been tamed. But from that moment they became a political and social problem with which, though it well might prove insoluble, obligations of humanity compelled the Government of Canada to grapple, without stint of effort, money or patience.

Could these quelled savages be civilised?

Worldly wisdom shook its head, and hope had nothing but faith to rest upon. The Red Indian had inherited no higher ideal of conduct than the slaughtering and scalping of tribal enemies—men, women and children—and self-mutilation as a stimulus to personal bravery. True, those practices were now prohibited by the whites—by that mysterious, masterful race who had brought fire-arms and fire-water into the Red Indian’s life.

Vaguely I knew of the missionaries who labour among the Indians and Eskimos, their lives consecrated to the work which holds them, from year to year and decade to decade, outside the range of public knowledge and recognition. I sought through the mind of one of those missionaries to peer into the Red Indian heart, so that my readers might be able to judge, from definite testimony on crucial points of human character, whether Canada’s aborigines are fitted to survive.

My visit was to the Rev. Canon H. W. G. Stocken (of the Church Missionary Society), at the Blackfoot Reserve near Gleichen, Alberta.

“Archdeacon Tims came out here in 1883,” said Canon Stocken, “and I came out in 1885. I was under Archdeacon Tims until 1888, and since 1895 I have been in charge of this mission. In the early years the outlook was dark. We sowed, and there was no visible harvest. It was difficult to reach the hearts of the Blackfeet. They had been fearless, fierce and successful fighters, and there seemed no room in their minds for beautiful and holy thoughts. Unlike other Indians, they even had no hope of ‘Happy Hunting-Grounds.’ Their barren imaginations only pictured aimless, restless wanderings on adjacent sand-hills after death. With dread and in a spirit of propitiation, they worshipped the sun, the moon, the earth, and the water. For them the weasel, the eagle, the crow, the otter, and the beaver were sacred, and they wore the skins and feathers of those creatures as charms. Thefts, murders, and crimes of all sorts were lauded if the penalty were escaped; and preservation from the penalty was invariably attributed to the protecting influence of some charm. Unlike Indians of the north and the east, the Blackfeet knew of no Great Spirit. There was no hope in life, no hope in death, for that poor, unhappy people, whose God was their belly, whose glory was in their shame, who minded earthly things.

“Of course, through the schools, it proved possible to make some progress with the Blackfeet children. But I felt that, here as elsewhere, the work of reaching the adults was of supreme importance. Hoping against hope, we took all opportunities to try and illumine the minds of the chiefs, the braves and the squaws. For fifteen years with heavy hearts we laboured. Then on a sudden came our abundant reward. It was in the early spring of 1898. The schools, the hospital, the preaching, the conversations from time to time—all those influences yielded fruit in the day of blessing when we witnessed the birth of the Spirit among the Blackfeet. I will tell you what happened.

“For some time we had succeeded in attracting a few Indians to our Sunday services—merely a handful, among whom the only regular attendant was a young man named Kaksakin, which means ‘An Axe.’ One Sunday I was walking from the schoolroom, where the service had been held, and proceeding slowly towards the mission-house. I had been discoursing on the life of St. Paul, which had been the theme of my sermons for several months past. The old, old question was running in my mind—when would the great change come to my people? As I walked a hand was placed on my shoulder, and, turning, I found that three members of my congregation had followed me. Young Axe was one, Pukapinni (‘Little Eyes’) was another, and Pukapinni’s brother Matsenamaka (‘Handsome Gun’) was the third. Young Axe was the first to speak. He told me of his desire to become a child of God and to be baptised. Then the others said the same: and my heart leapt when I saw the eager sincerity on their faces.

“Those two brothers had come originally to our services at the eager persuasion of Axe. Curiosity and ridicule clearly engaged their thoughts at first. But the satirical smiles had gradually died away, and of late they had listened as earnestly as Axe himself. But of what was passing in their hearts I had no knowledge until that ever-memorable Sunday afternoon. Little Eyes poured forth the story of a dream he had had. In that dream he entered the school porch, and was standing by my side as I rang the bell for the morning service. Suddenly he saw a spiral staircase passing up far out of sight. I asked him to come with me up the staircase, and he consented, so that presently we ascended far above the earth, and came at last to the top, where a lovely country spread in every direction. In that dream I asked what he thought of the sight before him, and he said it was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen before. I urged him in the dream never to forget what he had seen, and then I bade him to descend again. ‘I did so,’ he said, ‘trembling very much, but reached the earth in safety.’ That was the end of the dream. He said God had sent it to him, and he wanted to obey His voice and be baptised.”

That, Canon Stocken told me, was but the beginning. A great spiritual awakening had come to the Blackfeet, and for some time the reserve was in a state of strange unrest. Many had dreams, which were deeply impressive as told to the missionary by those awed and child-like Indians. For some time he lived amid marvels and mysteries, not knowing what new wonder the hour would bring forth. At first, indeed, he was frightened and in a great uncertainty, scarce daring to hold to the hopes those manifestations put into his mind. Yet it did not seem incredible that matters should shape themselves thus, and not otherwise, when into the darkness of heathendom there first came spiritual light, leaving the Indian dazzled, bewildered, exalted.

“Following those first conversions,” said Canon Stocken, “we had about twelve weeks of careful, individual preparation, and on March 27th, 1898, the first five adults were baptised, receiving the names of Paul, Daniel, Timothy, Thomas, and Ruth. From that time there were crowded congregations at the services. I can never forget those wide-open, straining eyes. No more impressive sight can any man see than the faces of heathen who begin to realise that there is something outside of themselves. The most solemn and wonderful time I think I ever experienced was on the evening of Easter Sunday. In the morning I had said, in dismissing my congregation, ‘Now, to-night I’m going to have a special service in the mission-room for those Christians who want to understand more about the Resurrection, and I’ll tell you of all the appearances of Christ that are mentioned in Scripture.’ Every one of the Christians came, besides some heathen, among whom was the wife of our Axe. She was very angry with him for becoming a Christian. She had refused to go to the service. But he made her come. Thinking of Constantine’s method, he was going to put the sword into force, so she yielded. Neyer shall I forget the awful, death-like stillness as those men and women strained their whole being, so to speak, to take in the subject of the Resurrection. You could positively have heard a pin drop on the floor. I was trembling all over at the responsibility of telling them those things which now they heard for the first time. I concluded with a short prayer, and then I went out to put my surplice in an adjoining room. Before, however, I had taken it off that woman came rushing in—the wife of Axe, I mean—and cried aloud: ‘Mokuyomakin, I do believe! I very much believe! I believe the teaching of God. I want you to baptise me also.’ The upshot was that she became a most earnest Christian. My poor wife used to say that, apart from Naomi (and I will tell you about Naomi later), there was no one in her women’s class upon whom she could lean more confidently than upon Esther, which was the name given in baptism to Axe’s wife.”

I asked Canon Stocken to elucidate the Indian name by which Esther had addressed him. “Mokuyomakin means Running Wolf,” he explained. “The Indians christen everybody, you know. It was an old chief who dubbed me Running Wolf soon after I arrived. The words have no personal application to myself. The old chief said it was the name of a friend of his who had lately died, and for whose loss his heart was heavy. I considered he was paying me a real compliment, and I have always felt very proud of my name.”

Canon Stocken next told me about Little Eyes, who figures on the Government list as Paul Little Walker. His father, it appeared, was Bull Backfat, who was head chief of the Blood Indians and a famous warrior and hunter. “When Little Eyes was only four years old,” said the canon, “Bull Backfat was killed, accidentally or otherwise, by an Indian. The boy was then brought here by his mother, whose name was Little Walker, and he became one of the most conspicuous lads on the reservation. I have told you of the dream that led to his conversion. He was thirty-one years of age at that time. He received the name of Paul at his baptism.

“It will be difficult for me,” continued Canon Stocken, pondering his words, “to make you realise the simple earnestness and sincere devotion that have characterised that man’s life down to the present day. I would like first to say that many and many a time he has helped me spiritually. There have been occasions of stress and sorrow when, following a long and exhausting day, I have sat alone at my desk in such an extremity of physical weariness that, when a knock has come at the door, I have been tempted to disregard the summons rather than have my rest disturbed. Sometimes Paul has proved to be the visitor, and each time, in a little while, his words and thoughts have lifted my oppression and renewed my strength, leaving me very grateful.

“Soon after his conversion he was going among the heathen Indians one Sunday morning, as came to be his custom, and trying to persuade them to attend the service. Among those to whom he spoke was the wife of one of his uncles—a woman bitterly hostile to Christianity. ‘No, no,’ she indignantly replied, ‘I won’t be seen inside your church. I don’t believe in your God,’ and she jumped up and got her tanning knife and started to tan. Paul said: ‘This is God’s day. It is not the will of God that we should work seven days. Our bodies need a rest, and to-day it is our duty to worship.’ Then he walked away. But he had not gone many steps when he heard a scream, and, turning round, he saw the woman lying in convulsions on the ground. ‘Go away,’ she cried, when he stepped up to her; ‘your God has done this.’ ‘Done what?’ he asked. ‘Broken my knife in half,’ she replied. And then he saw that the blade of the tanning knife had snapped. ‘I do not know if God did this,’ Paul quietly rejoined, ‘but you had better learn a lesson from it.’ And, as a matter of fact, though that woman never became a Christian, she was ever afterwards respectful about Christianity.

“Paul, you will notice, is not superstitious. One day, soon after his conversion, we were talking about Indian charms, some specimens lying before us. ‘If there was anything in them,’ Paul said simply, ‘they would jump up and help me to have a better temper.’ He was a little hasty and liable to fits of anger, I should mention, until he learnt to conquer the weakness. Indeed, several people told me that he had been, as they put it, a very tough sort of fellow. How different to the later Paul—the present Paul!

“He devises his own ways of doing good, but always with modest diffidence. One day he came to me in anxious sorrow and said: ‘What is right? What ought I to do? There is Owl Voice over there, and he is angry with his wife. Some Indians have gone to him and said she has behaved as a bad woman, and I fear he will take her life before sunset. The chiefs are there, and the camp is quite excited. What I want you to tell me is—What is my duty? May I not go and try to bring peace? ‘I said ‘Yes—what else could you do?’ Paul looked relieved; but he showed me how the uncertainty had come into his mind. ‘I asked Axe first,’ he explained, ‘and at once Axe said: “We believe in Christ and God, and we do what is right. But those heathen people are different. Let them alone.” But I then said to Axe: “By what we hear about Jesus Christ, I think He would go and try to make peace.”’ I said to Paul: ‘Go, please, by all means; and I do hope you will be successful!’ He went; and the sequel I heard next day from one of the chiefs who was present—Big Road, who became a Christian later on. Big Road came to me and said: ‘This young man of yours is a wonderful fellow.’ I said: ‘Why?’ He said: ‘We have never seen anything the same as this in our lives. We all like him.’ I said: ‘Tell me of it.’ Big Road said: ‘He came into the tent yesterday, and went up to Owl Voice and held out his hand. Then he stepped up to Owl Voice and kissed him, and said “My brother, I’ve come to you as a friend, as a servant of the God above us, because I believe that Jesus Christ would do what I am trying to do if He were here. I want to restore peace between you and your wife. I want to tell you that I don’t believe one word of what you have been told about your wife. I want you to say you will forgive your wife what you thought was wrong, and that you will let her come to you, and you will kiss her in the presence of these chiefs, and say it is all right.” Owl Voice looked on the ground and was silent a long time. Paul continued to speak to him, and said: “Well, my brother, you will do what I ask? Let me bring your wife to you that you may kiss her.” At last Owl Voice looked up in your young man’s face, and said: “Well, I believe you are right.” Then the young man went and took the girl by the hand and brought her to Owl Voice, and said: “Now, kiss her.” Owl Voice looked up and kissed his wife, and said: “It is all right.” Then he turned to the chiefs and said: “You can all go,” and they went.’ ”

Canon Stocken told me next about Old Wolf Collar, the veteran who once was a mighty warrior, a great hunter of the buffalo, and the “medicine man” of paramount fame and influence in the tribe. “When he became a Christian, in March, 1899,” the missionary related, “Old Wolf Collar was nearly sixty years of age—older than any other man I had baptised. At that time, as I afterwards found, he had not given his whole heart to Christianity. He had been impressed by religion as the power that made white men lead good lives. He had become a Christian for the sake of material advantages. Well, one day I was trying to make my congregation see that if Christianity were anything at all to a man, it went right down into his inmost life, and he must cherish no evil thoughts and attempt to keep no secrets from God. That caught Old Wolf Collar; and he came to me in sorrow, bringing a collection of the charms that had been part and parcel of his former distinction as a medicine-man. At his conversion he had surrendered a number of such things into my hands, and I had not suspected that he was keeping some back. Full of penitence, he now said he did not know the religion of God was so searching. ‘I’ve still got these things,’ he said. ‘Take the whole business,’ and he handed me all those charms, some of which I afterwards sent to the museum at Banff, others going to England. Having unburdened his conscience in that way, the dear old fellow breathed more freely. ‘Now, go ahead,’ he said, ‘and tell me all the things you know about God.’ From that time Old Wolf Collar has been full of zeal. You will have heard that the one trouble with the Indians is that they are lazy. But Old Wolf Collar is not lazy. In those days we had Miss Collings with us, and at his eager request she taught him to play the auto-harp, and she taught him the syllabic system. I ought to tell you that these Indians had no literature of their own. They had to depend solely upon memory for their knowledge—a fact, by the way, that made the missionary’s responsibility a very heavy one, since, if there were any laxity on his part in presenting a truth, the consequent misconception in their minds went uncorrected by the printed Word. That danger has largely passed away with the dissemination of the syllabic system, whereby the Blackfoot language is reduced to terms that the hand can write and the eye can read.

“Old Wolf Collar proved a quick pupil, and as soon as he had obtained a tolerable mastery of the system he got together of an evening some ten or twelve young Indians, to whom he imparted his new knowledge by writing the characters again and again on a large sheet of paper. It was good work well begun; and to-day, I think, there isn’t a single family on the reservation that has not at least one member who can read and write the syllabic. With the aid of the system, Old Wolf Collar taught, and partly prepared for baptism, several men to whom I had seldom, if ever, spoken personally; and when he thought their preliminary instruction was sufficient, he sent them up to me.

“I will give you an idea of what the old man’s faith was like. But first you must know that originally he had two wives, and when he became converted he put one away, providing for her, and married the other by Christian rites. He won all his family to Christianity; and then a series of terrible bereavements befell him. First, one of his two daughters died, then his only son, after that his second daughter, and finally his wife, so that the old man was bereft of all who were near and dear to him; though, presently, with my concurrence, he married the wife he had put away, and she is still spared to him. What I was going to tell you was this: At the time of his heavy bereavement I visited him one day, when he took his pipe from his mouth and said: ‘Why is it, do you think, that a man, when he becomes a Christian, should have sorrow and trouble which he never had before? Before I became a Christian I had all my family complete, and I had no sadness. Now I have all this trouble to bear. What is the reason?’ I said: ‘You are not the only one who has asked that question. There are lots of problems that we cannot solve. But do you remember what I was teaching you about Abraham?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you mean about offering up Isaac? Ah, do you think that’s it?’ I replied: ‘I’m not saying it is. I don’t know. I’m just asking you to bear it in mind.’ ‘If you think God is testing Old Wolf Collar,’ was his reply, ‘He won’t find I will go back on Him.’ Old Wolf Collar is a minor chief, and he exercises his authority wisely, like Running Rabbit, the gentle old fellow of seventy-four who at present occupies the supreme position.”

In the case of young men, Canon Stocken explained, the conferring of high tribal rank sometimes reacts prejudicially on character. In this connection he told me more about Axe, to whose personality he had already afforded some clues.

“Young Axe,” he said, “used to talk more than others about the Holy Spirit, but I could see he didn’t grasp it, and I wished he wouldn’t. He was constantly producing his copy of the Scriptures in the Blackfoot Roman characters, and saying, ‘I will read it. That is hard for us to do.’ He was very conceited, but very clever—in fact, he had learnt the book by rote. He used to get hold of the bishop, and say: ‘I want you to come here and sit down and hear me while I read this.’ And very soon he would begin dogmatising. I remember once the bishop made a very useful remark. Axe had said to him: ‘What do you think, Bishop—wouldn’t it be a good thing if I found out all the evil that is going on in this reserve, and let you know?’ ‘No, thank you—don’t,’ said the bishop. ‘But why not?’ persisted Axe. ‘How can we get rid of it unless we get to know about it?’ ‘Well,’ said the bishop, ‘did you ever happen to notice that you’ve got two parts to your eye—an eye and an eyelid? Did it ever occur to you that God gave you eyes and eyelids so that you should see some things, while others are shielded from your vision? We are not to go about and search for our brother’s faults. If they are discovered, we must help our brother.’

“Axe was of very powerful physique, and one day when he was engaged in carrying logs, he came to me and said: ‘Running Wolf, those of us who work very hard need whisky.’ I said I did not think God ever made any constitution that required whisky. ‘I know God does,’ insisted Axe; ‘and if you do the right thing you will keep whisky here and dole it out to me.’

“The Government offered a present of so many head of cattle to those Indians who cared to take them and commence ranching. Axe very promptly stated his readiness to accept as many as he could have; and I think the Government gave him twenty. The chiefs were in a great state, because they thought the Government would stop the rations, and would believe that the Indians, now they had accepted cattle, would be self-supporting. When the commissioner next visited the reserve he gave through me a message to Axe. It was that the Government were very pleased with him because he had taken cattle and given up gambling, and, therefore, the Government wished to make him a minor chief, and to give him a present of a cook’s stove. He was trying to patch up his old stove at the time. Axe said to me: ‘Why do the Government look among the boys’—he was about twenty-six at the time—‘to find a chief?’ I said: ‘Partly because you’ve done what they wish, and you’ve shown the sort of spirit that they desire to encourage; and partly because, being young, you are likely to be energetic in doing their wishes.’ He said: ‘I think it is a mistake looking to boys for chiefs.’

“A few months afterwards the commissioner came along and appointed two new minor chiefs—namely, Axe and Calf Bull, who was another young and progressive Indian. Axe very soon began to show his importance. He felt that, since the Government wanted him to carry out their wishes, it would, of course, be the right thing to suppress evil. He was anxious to use compulsion and violence in recruiting the Church membership, and he was so troublesome about it that someone from the south camp went to the Indian agent and said that Axe was trying to make people Christians by force, and at my instigation! His own attendances at church, I am sorry to say, have fallen off since he became a minor chief, and he has not been to Holy Communion for two years.”

Then the conversation reverted to Paul, who, I learnt, has preached the Gospel among his people with untiring zeal and remarkable success. He had an early trial, it seemed, in his young wife’s indifference to Christianity. “She fell grievously ill,” Canon Stocken related, “and we had her brought into our house, a parlour being turned to account as the sick-room, where Paul and the invalid’s mother took it in turns to watch by the bedside. One night the dying woman had a beautiful dream, and when she awoke in the morning she said: ‘Your changed life, Paul, and what God has shown me in a dream, have made Christianity real to me, and I’ve made up my mind to become a Christian.’ It was a great joy to Paul and to all of us; and on the following Sunday (May 20th, 1898) she was baptised. We had a solemn little baptism service in our sitting-room. My wife had a dear friend from Japan staying with us, and she helped. The poor invalid, though very weak, insisted on getting up. Her Indian name was Pretty Nose. We baptised her Sarah. When Paul was leading her back to bed, he stooped down—she was a short woman—and kissed her, and said: ‘Never mind; it won’t be for long; we shall meet again.’ She did not live long after that, and when the end came she spoke very cheerfully of her hope in Christ and her freedom from fear.

“About two months later Paul had a dream that deeply impressed him. He was sitting alone in his brother’s house, reading in the syllabic, when he must have fallen asleep, for a vision came to him of a figure standing in the open doorway. It was that of a young woman wearing a loose yellow garment, which was caught together at the neck with a brooch that sparkled like a star. Her hair fell over her shoulders, and her face was radiant. She smiled and said: ‘Paul, don’t you know me? Don’t you know your own wife?’ He jumped up to seize her hand, and she continued: ‘God has sent me to you because He loves you, and He bids you to persevere. Do not be in doubt about me, for I am very happy.’ Then she vanished.

“And now,” continued Canon Stocken, “I must tell you about Naomi, who is Paul’s present wife. She was the widow of Black Boy, who was Big Road’s brother. One day she said to me: ‘My husband, Black Boy, had wanted to become a Christian, but he was never asked by a missionary.’ It was sad to hear this when Black Boy was dead; but I had made it a rule never to ask any Indians to become Christians. There was always the fear in my mind that they might consent, not through any earnest desire on their own part, but because they wished to please. It has always seemed to me that one must teach them all one can, and point out the evil of sin, but that the actual request for baptism must come unprompted from their own hearts and lips.

“When Black Boy had been dead six months or so, Handsome Otter Woman—that was the name of his widow—said to me: ‘Running Wolf, if I marry again, I’m going to marry a Christian.’ Later, she said: ‘Paul is the man I want to marry.’ Paul had said: ‘I’m never going to marry again; I’m just going to work.’ She kept sending messages to Paul to say she would like to marry him; and Paul eventually agreed, because his brother Timothy was so keen for it. Indian marriages are usually arranged by relatives, the principals having very little voice in the matter. Thus, a mother or father will say to a chief: ‘My girl is old enough to be married. Whom do you suggest?’ The chief might say that So-and-So would make a good son-in-law. Then the question would arise: How many horses might the girl’s parents expect from the family of the suggested husband?

“After Paul and Handsome Otter Woman were married, their tempers rather clashed. Paul would come round to my house, and be very silent, and then say: ‘H’m! My wife has gone away.’ ‘What is the matter?’ I would ask. ‘She gets most dreadfully cross,’ he would tell me; and then take his departure. In a little while his wife would be sure to arrive, and explain: ‘Paul is so dreadfully cross, you know.’ ‘Yes,’ I would point out, ‘we all have our failings; but we must learn to control ourselves. You can do so if you try.’ After one or two little tiffs of that sort, they settled down to be a most affectionate couple. In the work of spreading Christianity among their people, they now labour hand in hand, helping and stimulating one another. After she was baptised—receiving the name of Naomi—it was her eager wish to become a Bible-woman. In those days she could not read the syllabic system; but she would not let that temporary disability stand in the way of her work. She got me every week to prepare brief notes of some truths, and these she caused to be read over and over to her until she had the words by heart. In that way she entered upon labours to which she has since devoted her life. Naomi’s teaching, sympathy, and self-sacrificing ministrations have indeed been a blessing to the Indian women on this reserve.”

* * * * *

What need of further evidence? The red man is revealed as in all essentials like unto the white man, with a conscience responsive to the knowledge of good and evil. Great profit has crowned the self-sacrifice of the men and women who have devoted their lives to Canada’s aborigines. To a triumphant end have the C.M.S. and other bodies endured anxieties and sustained the financial burden. Human blessings now reward the self-denial of their devoted subscribers. Already in the Indian reserves missionary effort is giving place to ministrations purely pastoral.

Concerning the present state of Fenimore Cooper’s scalping savage, two words remain to be spoken. The missionaries having made him a Christian, the Government is making him a farmer. It has been up-hill work, necessitating much thought and patience, a large staff, and heavy expenditure. But at last the red man is successfully growing fruit in British Columbia and raising grain and stock in the Prairie Provinces.

As to one matter, however, still his mind urgently needs enlightenment. He must be taught the paramount importance of thoroughly ventilating his dwelling, alike in the winter and the summer. For, alas! the tribes suffer a heavy mortality from consumption, whereof the preventive and cure is fresh air.