Kitabı oku: «The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company», sayfa 33
Mr. Evans, the superintendent of these missions, became very celebrated by the invention of a syllabic system of writing introduced among the Crees. The plan is simple, and an intelligent Indian who has never seen the system4 can in a short time learn to read and write the syllabic. The syllabic has spread widely over Rupert's Land, and the different Churches use, especially among the Crees, this ingenious invention in printing the Bible and service books. When Lord Dufferin, a number of years ago, visited the North-West as Governor-General of Canada, on hearing of Evans' invention he remarked, "The nation has given many a man a title and a pension and a resting-place in Westminster Abbey who never did half so much for his fellow-creatures."
Some claim has been made for Mason as being the inventor of this character, but there seems to be no ground for the claim.
John Ryerson, a Canadian Methodist divine, in 1854 visited Rupert's Land from Canada, and after seeing the missions on Lake Winnipeg, went from York Factory to England. The taking over of the mission by the Canadian Methodist Church resulted from this visit.
These are the main movements of a religious kind that took place within the borders of Rupert's Land and the territories east of the Rocky Mountains up to the end of the Hudson's Bay Company's régime. A great service was rendered to the whites and Indians alike, to the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Kildonan settlers, and all the native people by the patient work of the four churches named. The best feeling, and in many cases active co-operation, were given by these churches to each other. The work done by these churches laid the foundation for the general morality and advanced social life which prevailed in Red River and in the regions beyond.
On the Pacific slope the Hudson's Bay Company took an immediate control of the religious and educational instruction of the people, upon the organization of Vancouver Island as a colony (1849). The Rev. Robert Staines was sent as chaplain and teacher to Fort Victoria, and was given a salary and an allowance for carrying on a boarding-school in which he was assisted by his wife. Mr. Staines did not agree with the Company, went to Britain as a delegate from the dissatisfied employés, but died of injuries received on his homeward voyage.
Mr. Staines' successor was the Rev. Edward Cridge. The new chaplain was well provided for by the Company, being secured a parsonage and glebe of one hundred acres, and three hundred pounds a year, one hundred pounds annually being as chaplain of the Company. Mr. Cridge became a prominent clergyman of the colony, but in later years left his mother Church to become bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church. In 1859 Bishop Hills was made first bishop of the united colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Twenty years afterward the diocese was divided into (1) Vancouver Island and the islands, as Diocese of Columbia, (2) the southern mainland as Diocese of New Westminster, and (3) the northern mainland as Diocese of New Caledonia. The Church of England in British Columbia has enjoyed large gifts from the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
One of the most remarkable missions of modern times is that of Metlakahtla, begun under the auspices of the Church of England by William Duncan. The village he founded became an example of civilization among the Indians, as well as a handmaid to the Christian work done. Unfortunately, the model Indian village has been largely broken up by a misunderstanding between Mr. Duncan and his bishop.
The first missionary of note of the Roman Catholic Church on the coast was Father Demers, who became Bishop of Vancouver Island and New Caledonia. The Oblate Fathers were early on the ground in British Columbia, the first of the Order having baptized upwards of three thousand men, women, and children of Indian tribes, the Songhies, Saanechs, and Cowichins, near Victoria. Many churches, schools, and hospitals have been founded by the energetic and self-denying Roman Catholics who have made British Columbia their home. Bishop Seghers succeeded the venerable Bishop Demers in his diocese.
Ten years after the formation of Vancouver Island as a Crown colony, Revs. Dr. Evans, L. Robson, and two other ministers undertook work for the Methodist Church on the coast. Good foundations were laid by the clergymen named, and still better by Rev. Thomas Crosby, who joined them after a few years' service, and entered heartily into efforts to evangelize the Indians. He had great success among the Flathead Indians.
In 1861 the first Presbyterian minister arrived – Rev. John Hall, from Ireland, and he undertook work in Victoria. In the year following, Rev. Robert Jamieson came from Canada as a representative of the Canadian Presbyterian Church and settled at New Westminster. Churches were soon built in Victoria, Nanaimo, and New Westminster, that now contain strong and vigorous congregations.
All of the churches were under deep obligations to the Hudson's Bay Company for protection, assistance, and sympathy in their undertakings on the coast. The inrush of gold seekers threw a great responsibility upon all the churches, and it was well that the Company, merely for motives of self-interest, should regard the influence of the missionaries among the fierce tribes of the mountains, of both island and mainland, as of the greatest importance. The record of self-denying missionaries of the churches has justified all the patronage and favour rendered them by the Hudson's Bay Company.
CHAPTER XLII
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AND THE INDIANS
The Company's Indian policy – Character of officers – A race of hunters – Plan of advances – Charges against the Company – Liquor restriction – Capital punishment – Starving Indians – Diseased and helpless – Education and religion – The age of missions – Sturdy Saulteaux – The Muskegons – Wood Crees – Wandering Plain Crees – The Chipewyans – Wild Assiniboines – Blackfeet Indians – Polyglot coast tribes – Eskimos – No Indian war – No police – Pliable and docile – Success of the Company.
From time to time the opponents of the Company have sought to find grounds for the overthrow of the licence to trade granted by the Government of Britain over the Indian territories. One of the most frequent lines of attack was in regard to the treatment of the Indians by the fur traders. It may be readily conceded that the ideal of the Company's officials was in many cases not the highest. The aim of Governor Simpson in his long reign of forty years was that of a keen trader. A politic man, the leader of the traders when in Montreal conformed to the sentiment of the city, abroad in the wilds he did very little to encourage his subordinates to cultivate higher aims among the natives. Often the missionary was found raising questions very disturbing to the monopoly, and this brought the Company officers into a hostile attitude to him. Undoubtedly in some cases the missionaries were officious and unfair in their criticisms.
But, on the other hand, the men and officers of the Company were generally moral. Men of education and reading the officers usually were, and their sentiment was likely to be in the right direction. The spirit of the monopoly – the golden character of silence, and the need of being secretive and uncommunicative – was instilled into every clerk, trapper, and trader.
INDIANS OF THE PLAINS
But the tradition of the Company was to keep the Indian a hunter. There was no effort to encourage the native to agriculture or to any industry. To make a good collector of fur was the chief aim. For this the Indian required no education, for this the wandering habit needed to be cultivated rather than discouraged, and for this it was well to have the home ties as brittle as possible. Hence the tent and teepee were favoured for the Indian hunter more than the log cottage or village house.
It was one of the most common charges against the Company that in order to keep the Indian in subjection advances were made on the catch of furs of the coming season, in order that, being in debt, he might be less independent. The experience of the writer in Red River settlement in former days leads him to doubt this, and certainly the fur traders deny the allegation. The improvident or half-breed Indian went to the Company's store to obtain all that he could. The traders at the forts had difficulty in checking the extravagance of their wards. Frequently the storekeeper refused to make advances lest he should fail in recovering the value of the articles advanced. Fitzgerald, a writer who took part in the agitation of 1849, makes the assertion in the most flippant manner that to keep the Indians in debt was the invariable policy of the Company. No evidence is cited to support this statement, and it would seem to be very hard to prove.
The same writer undertakes, along the line of destructive criticism, to show that the Hudson's Bay Company does not deserve the credit given it of discouraging the traffic in strong drink, and asserts that "a beaver skin was never lost to the Company for want of a pint of rum." This is a very grave charge, and in the opinion of the writer cannot be substantiated. The Bishop of Montreal, R. M. Ballantyne, and the agents of the missionary societies are said either to have little experience or to be unwilling to tell on this subject what they knew. This critic then quotes various statements of writers, extending back in some cases thirty or forty years, to show that spirituous liquors were sold by the Company. It is undoubted that at times in the history of the fur trade, especially at the beginning of the century, when the three Companies were engaged in a most exacting competition, as we have fully shown, in several cases much damage was done. On the Pacific Coast, too, eight or ten years before this critic wrote, there was, as we have seen, excess. At other times, also, at points in the wide field of operations, over half a continent, intoxicating liquor was plentiful and very injurious, but no feeling was stronger in a Hudson's Bay Company trader's mind than that he was in a country without police, without military, without laws, and that his own and his people's lives were in danger should drunkenness prevail. Self-preservation inclined every trader to prevent the use of spirits among the Indians. The writer is of opinion that while there may have been many violations of sobriety, yet the record of the Hudson's Bay Company has been on the whole creditable in this matter.
The charges of executing capital punishment and of neglecting the Indians in years of starvation may be taken together. The criticism of the people of Red River was that the Company was weak in the execution of the penalties of the law. They complained that the Company was uncertain of its powers and that the hand of justice was chained. The marvel to an unprejudiced observer is that the Company succeeded in ruling so vast a territory with so few reprisals or executions. In the matter of assisting the Indians in years of scarcity, it was the interest of the fur company to save the lives of its trappers and workers. But those unacquainted with the vast wastes of Rupert's Land and the Far North little know the difficulties of at times obtaining food. The readers of Milton and Cheadle's graphic story or our account of Robert Campbell's adventures on the Stikine, know the hardships and the near approach to starvation of these travellers. Dr. Cheadle, on a visit to Winnipeg a few years ago, said to the writer that on his first visit the greatest difficulty his party had was to secure supplies. There are years in which game and fish are so scarce that in remote northern districts death is inevitable for many. The conditions make it impossible for the Company to save the lives of the natives. Relief for the diseased and aged is at times hard to obtain. Smallpox and other epidemics have the most deadly effect upon the semi-civilized people of the far-off hunter's territory.
The charge made up to 1849 that the Hudson's Bay Company had done little for the education and religious training of the Indians was probably true enough. Outside of Red River and British Columbia they did not sufficiently realize their responsibility as a company. Since that time, with the approval and co-operation in many ways of the Company, the various missionary societies have grappled with the problem. The Indians about Hudson Bay, on Lake Winnipeg, in the Mackenzie River, throughout British Columbia, and on the great prairies of Assiniboia, are to-day largely Christianized and receiving education.
The Saulteaux, or Indians who formerly lived at Sault Ste. Marie, but wandered west along the shore of Lake Superior and even up to Lake Winnipeg, are a branch of the Algonquin Ojibways. Hardy and persevering, most conservative in preserving old customs, hard to influence by religious ideas, they have been pensioners of the Hudson's Bay Company, but their country is very barren, and they have advanced but little.
Very interesting, among their relations of Algonquin origin, are the Muskegons, or Swampy Crees, who have long occupied the region around Hudson Bay and have extended inland to Lake Winnipeg. Docile and peaceful, they have been largely influenced by Christianity. Under missionary and Company guidance they have gathered around the posts, and find a living on the game of the country and in trapping the wild animals.
Related to the Muskegons are the Wood Crees, who live along the rivers and on the belts of wood which skirt lakes and hills. They cling to the birch-bark wigwam, use the bark canoe, and are nomadic in habit. They may be called the gipsies of the West, and being in scattered families have been little reached by better influences.
Another branch of the Algonquin stock is the Plain Crees. These Indians are a most adventurous and energetic people. Leaving behind their canoes and Huskie dogs, they obtained horses and cayuses and hied them over the prairies. Birch-bark being unobtainable, they made their tents, better fitted for protecting them from the searching winds of the prairies and the cold of winter, from tanned skins of the buffalo and moose-deer. For seven hundred miles from the mouth of the Saskatchewan they extend to the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains. Meeting in their great camps, seemingly untameable as a race of plain hunters, they were, up to the time of the transfer to Canada, almost untouched by missionary influence, but in the last thirty years they have been placed on reserves by the Canadian Government and are in almost all cases yielding to Christianizing agencies.
North of the country of the Crees live tribes with very wide connections. They call themselves "Tinné" or "People," but to others they are known as Chipewyans, or Athabascans. They seem to be less copper-coloured than the other Indians, and are docile in disposition. This nation stretches from Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay, along the English River, up to Lake Athabasca, along the Peace River into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, and even beyond to the coast. They have proved teachable and yield to ameliorating influences.
Probably the oldest and best known name of the interior of Rupert's Land, the name after which Lord Selkirk called his Colony of Assiniboia, is that belonging to the Wild Assiniboines or Stony River Sioux. The river at the mouth of which stands the city of Winnipeg was their northern boundary, and they extended southward toward the great Indian confederacy of the Sioux natives or Dakotas, of which indeed they were at one time a branch. Tall, handsome, with firmly formed faces, agile and revengeful, they are an intelligent and capable race. These Indians, known familiarly as the "Stonies," have greatly diminished in numbers since the time of Alexander Henry, jun., who describes them fully. In later years they have been cut down with pulmonary and other diseases, and are to-day but the fragment of a great tribe. They have long been friendly with the Plain Crees, but are not very open to Christianity, though there are one or two small communities which are exceptions in this respect.
Very little under Hudson's Bay Company control were the Blackfoot nation, along the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains, near the national boundary. Ethnically they are related to the Crees, but they have always been difficult to approach. Living in large camps during Hudson's Bay Company days, they spent a wild, happy, comfortable life among the herds of wandering buffalo of their district. Since the beginning of the Canadian régime they have become more susceptible to civilizing agencies, and live in great reserves in the south-west of their old hunting grounds.
A perfect chaos of races meets us among the Indians of British Columbia and Alaska, and their language is polyglot. Seemingly the result of innumerable immigrations from Malayan and Mongolian sources in Asia, they have come at different times. One of the best known tribes of the coast is the Haidas, numbering some six thousand souls. The Nutka Indians occupy Vancouver Island, and have many tribal divisions. To the Selish or Flatheads belong many of the tribes of the Lower Fraser River, while the Shushwaps hold the country on the Columbia and Okanagan Rivers. Mention has been made already of the small but influential tribe of Chinooks near the mouth of the Columbia River.
While differing in many ways from each other, the Indians of the Pacific Coast have always been turbulent and excitable. From first to last more murders and riots have taken place among them than throughout all the vast territory held by the Hudson's Bay Company east of the Rocky Mountains. While missionary zeal has accomplished much among the Western Coast Indians, yet the "bad Indian" element has been a recognized and appreciable quantity among them so far as the Company is concerned.
Last among the natives who have been under Hudson's Bay Company influence are the Eskimos or Innuits of the Far North. They are found on the Labrador Coast, on Coppermine River, on the shore of the Arctic Sea, and on the Alaskan peninsula. Dressed in sealskin clothing and dwelling in huts of snow, hastening from place to place in their sledges drawn by wolf-like dogs called "Eskies" or "Huskies," these people have found themselves comparatively independent of Hudson's Bay Company assistance. Living largely on the products of the sea, they have shown great ingenuity in manufacturing articles and implements for themselves. The usual experience of the Company from Ungava, through the Mackenzie River posts, and the trading houses in Alaska has been that they were starved out and were compelled to give up their trading houses among them. Little has been done, unless in the Yukon country, to evangelize the Eskimos.
The marvel to the historian, as he surveys the two centuries and a quarter of the history of the Hudson's Bay Company, is their successful management of the Indian tribes. There has never been an Indian war in Rupert's Land or the Indian territories – nothing beyond a temporary émeute or incidental outbreak. Thousands of miles from the nearest British garrison or soldier, trade has been carried on in scores and scores of forts and factories with perfect confidence. The Indians have always respected the "Kingchauch man." He was to them the representative of superior ability and financial strength, but more than this, he was the embodiment of civilization and of fair and just dealing. High prices may have been imposed on the Indians, but the Company's expenses were enormous. There are points among the most remote trading posts from which the returns in money were not possible in less than nine years from the time the goods left the Fenchurch Street or Lime Street warehouses. With all his keen bargaining and his so-called exacting motto, "Pro pelle cutem," the trader was looked upon by the Indians as a benefactor, bringing into his barren, remote, inhospitable home the commodities to supply his wants and make his life happier. While the Indians came to recognize this in their docile and pliable acceptance of the trader's decisions, the trader also became fond of the Red man, and many an old fur trader freely declares his affection for his Indian ward, so faithful to his promise, unswerving in his attachment, and celebrated for never forgetting a kindness shown him.
The success of the Company was largely due to honourable, capable, and patient officers, clerks, and employés, who with tact and justice managed their Indian dependents, many of whom rejoiced in the title of "A Hudson's Bay Company Indian."
