CHAPTER XIIIYORK FACTORY
Leaving the station in charge of the Rev. J. Keen, the bishop started, in June 1879, on the long contemplated visit to York Factory, in the northern part of his diocese. ‘I left Moose,’ he says, ‘on June 30, having made every necessary arrangement for the management of the mission during my absence. At Michipicoton, close to the mighty Lake Superior, kind friends were my hosts for four days, days full of work, and then a steamer carried me to Sault St. Marie, a long way out of my course, where I was obliged to remain a week, during which I was the guest of another missionary bishop, the Bishop of Algoma, whose diocese is rapidly filling up from England and the well-peopled parts of Canada.
‘I went through Lake Superior. Four-and-twenty hours of railroad followed, and fourteen hours more of steamer, and the second stage was completed. A month was spent with my kind friend the Bishop of Rupertsland. I was in the centre of the civilisation of the country, in the neighbourhood of Winnipeg, only a few years ago a waste, now a populous town, with splendid schools, churches, banks, colleges, townhall, &c. I was constantly at work, preaching in the various churches, sometimes in Cree, sometimes in English, added to which to my lot fell the duty of preaching the sermon at the opening of the synod, at which the clergy were collected from various parts of the country. I need not say how thoroughly this month was enjoyed; it gave me the largest amount of Christian intercourse I have had for several years.
‘When the steamer which was to convey me through Lake Winnipeg was ready to start I went on board, and in her had a journey of three hundred miles to Old Fort, from which I was conveyed to Norfolk House by boat. I was far enough away from civilisation now, and had before me five hundred miles of dreary and desolate country. There were some immense lakes to cross, and some rough rapids to descend; but we saw no bold falls, such as I have been accustomed to find in other parts of the country.
‘On September 19 I found myself at my journey’s end, at York Factory, a spot I had longed to visit for many, many years, a spot at which several devoted missionaries have laboured, where Christ has been faithfully preached, and where many precious souls have been gathered into His garner.’
The Rev. J. Winter had arrived at the station to take the place of Archdeacon Kirkby, who had quitted York by the annual ship just a week before. Mr. Winter had heard the archdeacon’s farewell sermon. The latter had faithfully toiled there for twenty-seven years, and there was scarcely a dry eye. The interpreterwas the first to break down, then followed the archdeacon himself, together with the congregation. For a few moments there was a pause; it was with difficulty that he finished his discourse. ‘I had wished,’ wrote the bishop, ‘to express to him personally my sense of the praiseworthy manner in which he had, single-handed, managed this large district. It needs more labourers—one at Churchill, and another at Trout Lake. One great difficulty is the number of languages spoken. At York and Severn, Cree; at Trout Lake, a mixture of Cree and Saulteaux; and at Churchill, Chipwyan and Eskimo, which have no resemblance either to each other or to the Cree or Saulteaux. I have been busy ever since coming here, for besides the Indian there is a somewhat large English congregation, York having ever been a place of great importance in the country, although it is now much less so than formerly. I conduct an English school daily, give lessons in Cree to Mr. Winter, and twice a week I give lessons to the European and native servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Altogether I am as fully employed as I have ever been at Moose; but I cannot but know that with me the sun has passed the meridian, and that it behoves one to work while it is called to-day.
‘In January I go northward two hundred miles to Churchill, the most northerly inhabited spot in the diocese of Moosonee. It is a very dreary place. The wife of the gentleman in charge there, the sister of one of our missionaries, is often years without seeing the face of a civilised woman, while theintensity of the cold there is as great almost as in any spot on the earth’s surface. You may conceive with what joy a visitor is received. What a welcome I may expect on my arrival! The Indians there will be quite strange to me; with their language I am not at all acquainted. I had never seen one until I came here, and here only one—a poor girl, now a happy, comfortable, Christian lassie, with an English tongue, but who was cast out as an encumbrance by her unnatural relatives. In June I go on a tour to Trout Lake and Severn; this will occupy me nearly two months, and in August I once more set off for England.’
The voyage from York Factory in the autumn of 1880 was the most tedious and stormy on record, occupying ten weeks instead of five. It was the middle of November ere Bishop Horden reached England, when once more he had the joy of greeting his wife and children. And now followed a continual round of preaching, speaking, and travelling, with very heavy daily correspondence. At many a meeting the bishop held his audience in rapt attention with the story of the rise and progress of the Moose mission, with graphic descriptions of parts of the Moose diocese, with accounts of the work in the six several districts into which it was now divided, each under the care of an ordained clergyman. Charters had been granted to two companies for the construction of railways from the corn-growing provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the shores of Hudson’s Bay, one or both of which would run forthe greater part through the Moosonee diocese. The bishop pleaded for help, therefore, for a church extension fund. He would often close his address with an Indian’s account of the condition of his people when in a state of heathenism, giving it in the native Cree, with a literal translation.
NaspichVeryneIkewasmuchepimatisinbadwāskuchformerlynumanotkākwananythingneIkiskāletānknow itpikoonlyMuchemunetothe devilishpishas long askaIprimatiseyan;livedmisew ā ililewukall the IndiansneIke wapumowuksaw themmoshukalwaysā muchepima.they beingtisitchik,wickedā notenittochik,when they fight with each otherā keshkwāpāchik,when they get drunkā mukoshāchik,when they feastā mitāwitchik,when they conjureā kosapatutik,when they pretend to prophesyā kelaskitchik;when they liemuskumāö wewa,he takes from him by force his wifenutopowuk,they ask for liquornaspich,muchsaketowuk,they like itutawāwuk,they buy itkimotaskāwukthey rob (other) people’s landskisewahaöhe angers themweche ililewa,his fellow Indians,naspichverytapwātrulyke muhepimatisewuk.they were wicked.
These sentences will illustrate the peculiar structure of the Indian tongue, which, with its ‘sesquipedalian compounds,’ as Professor Max Müller calls them, might deter almost any student from the attempt to master it. Bishop Horden, with great patience, perseverance, and thoroughness, compiled a grammar of the Cree language, which appeared about this time, and in which we are, step by step, introduced to asystem complete in the mechanism of all its parts. Words that seem all confusion gradually assume their proper forms. Around the verb, which is the most important factor in the formation of those polysyllabic words, cluster all the other ideas. They are glued on to it, so to speak. That which with us would be a whole sentence is accumulated in the Cree into a long compound word; agent, action, object, with adverbial expletives, are all combined.
The bishop, in the midst of all his hard work when in England, now speaking for the Church Missionary Society, now pleading for his own diocese, in the midst of engagements and travel, in the midst even of his very journeyings to and fro, found time to write some of his graphic descriptive papers. We give the following true story of one of the former Coral School children, written by him in the waiting-room of a railway station, whilst expecting a train.
‘Amelia Davey was originally named Amelia Ward, and was one of the children of the Coral Fund. She got on with her learning very well, could read and write English creditably, and spoke English as well as if she had been an English girl, instead of a Cree. At the age of about nineteen she married a young Indian named James Okune Shesh; and, after about three years of married life, lost him through disease and starvation, she herself narrowly escaping death.
‘Some time afterwards she married another Indian, named Solomon Davey, a good steady man, who was to her an excellent husband. Last autumnthey left Moose Factory with their children, accompanied by Davey’s old father and mother, for their winter hunting-grounds. For a time all went well, fish and rabbits supplying the daily needs of the family; the food gradually, however, failed, until scarcely any was obtainable. Day after day Solomon went off to seek supplies; evening after evening he returned bringing little or nothing. The party now determined to make their way to Moose; there they knew their wants would be relieved, but Solomon’s strength entirely broke down, and they were obliged to place him on a sledge, which was hauled by his mother; thus they moved painfully forward. The poor fellow was covered up as well as possible. He seemed very quiet; his mother went to him to assure herself that all was right; but the spirit had fled. The brave good Indian, who had done his best to supply the wants of those dependent on him, had perished in the attempt. Fresh trouble came; Amelia’s time had come for the arrival of another baby; camp was made, and a little unsuspecting mortal was ushered into the world.
‘How they lived I know not; but two days after the child’s birth, Amelia, tying up her little one, and placing it on her back, and putting her snow-shoes on her feet, essayed to walk to Moose, still eighteen miles distant. Bravely she stepped out; her own life as well as the lives of those she left behind depended on her reaching it. She slept once; the bitter cold seemed anxious to make her its victim, but the morning still beheld the thin spare form alive, and,asking God to give her the strength she so sorely needed, she struggled on again.
‘Presently the houses of Moose make their appearance, but they are far, far off. Can they be reached? It seems scarcely possible, but the effort is made, the necessary strength is supplied, and she finds herself in a house, with Christian hands and Christian hearts to minister to her necessities.
‘But can this poor wrinkled old woman, apparently sixty years of age, be the bright, well-favoured, cheerful Amelia of thirty? The very same. What you see has been produced by the cold and want; and how about the babe? Well, the dear little baby was well and strong; the Christian mother had preserved it with the greatest imaginable care, and it was to her, doubtless, all the more dear from the terrible circumstances under which it was born.
‘Parties were at once sent off to those left behind, with food and other necessaries, and all were brought to Moose, where they were kindly and abundantly cared for. The last thing Solomon did last autumn was to go to the Rev. J. H. Keen, and purchase for himself a Cree New Testament to take with him to his hunting-grounds.’
Other stories the bishop told or wrote, too many for the size of the present volume. There was David Anderson, one of the many lambs of the Bishop of Rupertsland’s flock, whose arm was shattered by an accidental gunshot, and for whom a false arm was sent out from England. This arm for a time he would not use, because he thought it wrong thus tosupplement a limb of which ‘God had seen fit to deprive him!’ There was the devoted wife of the dying hunter (Jacob Matamashkum), who saved him in the last pangs of starvation by applying his lips to her own breast. There was the aged grandmother (good old Widow Charlotte), who took the dead daughter’s babe and nourished it at her bosom thirty years after her own last child had been born. There was Richard, son of the Widow Charlotte, who was ‘a famous fisherwoman’ even after she had become a great grandmother. The son was a delicate young man, who had largely depended on her for subsistence. He married and fell ill. The poor wife on the morning before he died ruptured a blood-vessel in driving in a tent-peg, and was carried to the grave just a month after him. There were the starving parents, who, having lost their two youngest children from hunger, set off with the remaining two for the nearest station, a hundred miles away, to get food. The wife drew the sledge on which the children lay, while the husband walked in front to break a road in the snow for her, till at last his strength failed, and he could go no further. She, however, set up a little tent for him, and hastened on. She might yet get help in time to save him. She reached Albany, and sank unconscious. But friends were at hand—the children, scarcely alive, were taken from the sledge. The mother recovered to say where her husband lay. A party went in search of him; he was dead, and the body was hard frozen.
Many of the school-children wrote to the bishopwhilst he was in England letters, that might favourably compare with those of children possessing far greater advantages than they. All spoke of deepest attachment to him, all longed for his return amongst them. ‘We shall be so happy to see you again,’ was the refrain of every letter. The elder sister of one of the girls had become the wife of the Rev. J. Saunders, native pastor of Matawakumma. Her letter addressed to Mrs. Horden is full of interest. It is dated August 13, 1881. She says:
‘We are pretty dull up here, but we enjoy good health, and we must feel thankful to Him who gives us health and life. Of course you know that we spent the first winter you were away at Moose, and I must say your absence was very much felt, and when, the bishop went away the following summer, Moose was quite deserted.‘I think the people at Moose will be very glad to see you back again. Sometimes I wish to see Moose and my friends living there, but, knowing the difficulty and expense of travelling, I put the subject out of my mind, and try to feel contented. If this place was not such a poor one for living I should certainly feel more settled. In the winter we do very well in the way of food, but my husband is obliged to occupy a good deal of his time in hunting; but in the summer we depend altogether on our nets, and if fish fails, then there is nothing at all; but I am glad to say that it is only sometimes that we get only enough for breakfast. I feel happy to say that our Heavenly Father never allows us to be without food altogether,and we bless the Bounteous Hand which can give us food even in this bleak and lonely wilderness. Many times while I was at Moose I thought it would be impossible to exist on fish alone, but experience teaches me that we can exist on fish, and fish alone. Many times I think how nice and helpful it would be if we had a cow.‘I feel rather surprised that my husband did not arrange with the bishop before this to have a cow; to my mind that should have been considered before now. The other missionaries have cattle, and I think we could keep a cow very nicely here. I am afraid I shall be tiring you, so I must conclude my letter, wishing you and yours every blessing.‘I remain yours very gratefully,‘Frances Saunders.’
‘We are pretty dull up here, but we enjoy good health, and we must feel thankful to Him who gives us health and life. Of course you know that we spent the first winter you were away at Moose, and I must say your absence was very much felt, and when, the bishop went away the following summer, Moose was quite deserted.
‘I think the people at Moose will be very glad to see you back again. Sometimes I wish to see Moose and my friends living there, but, knowing the difficulty and expense of travelling, I put the subject out of my mind, and try to feel contented. If this place was not such a poor one for living I should certainly feel more settled. In the winter we do very well in the way of food, but my husband is obliged to occupy a good deal of his time in hunting; but in the summer we depend altogether on our nets, and if fish fails, then there is nothing at all; but I am glad to say that it is only sometimes that we get only enough for breakfast. I feel happy to say that our Heavenly Father never allows us to be without food altogether,and we bless the Bounteous Hand which can give us food even in this bleak and lonely wilderness. Many times while I was at Moose I thought it would be impossible to exist on fish alone, but experience teaches me that we can exist on fish, and fish alone. Many times I think how nice and helpful it would be if we had a cow.
‘I feel rather surprised that my husband did not arrange with the bishop before this to have a cow; to my mind that should have been considered before now. The other missionaries have cattle, and I think we could keep a cow very nicely here. I am afraid I shall be tiring you, so I must conclude my letter, wishing you and yours every blessing.
‘I remain yours very gratefully,
‘Frances Saunders.’
The bishop did not return to Moose in the summer of 1881. He found much to do in England, and so the annual ship by which he was expected arrived without him. The Rev. Thomas Vincent visited Moose, taking the place of the Rev. J. Keen, in the course of the winter, which was a mild one. The summer had been dry, and there had been many forest fires—hundreds of young rabbits and partridges must have been roasted alive. A sad loss for the Indians, who largely depend on these for food.