While on their journeys, and indeed at all times, the men willingly aid in alleviating the hardships of the women, and are indulgent husbands. On all occasions they evince a steady and temperate disposition, and every action of their lives is more or less marked by intelligence and moderation.
Having now performed, however imperfectly, the task we had undertaken, and brought to a close our description of the Oakinacken nation, we shall proceed to make a few remarks on the moral and spiritual condition of these people, as a portion of the great family of mankind, as well as on the system generally pursued by missionaries in converting Indians to Christianity.
{331} The Oakinackens are a people that might soon, and with but very little trouble, be induced to throw off their savage habits altogether, as they are reforming fast, and exhibit on most occasions a strong desire and capacity for receiving moral and religious instruction. The last time I visited them was in 1825, and it was encouraging to witness their continued improvement.[[97]]
When we contemplate the wide field open before us for missionary labours, even between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, and the large sums yearly spent in various parts of the world for the purposes of instructing and converting the heathen, shall we not then hope and expect that at some future day those blessings may be extended to the Far West? Even a tithe of what is laid out in our country in England would, if rightly applied, be an inestimable blessing to these people. But the result would entirely depend on the manner in which the work of conversion was undertaken; and, with this impression on our minds, it seems to us expedient to make a few observations on the system generally followed in instructing and evangelizing the heathen in other parts of the world.
Where the rays of evangelical light beam forth, that light alone, if practically improved, will not only discover the errors of the past, but point out a remedy for the future. But the great evil is, hesitation takes the place of determination, and no person wishes to begin the work of reforming any great system which has been long in operation, and more particularly so if it be considered by its promoters {332} as working well; but in a case such as the present, in which the whole world is more or less concerned, others as well as the actual promoters ought to have a voice, and every voice inculcating improvement ought to be respected: yet I am not vain enough to suppose that any opinion or representation of mine, however correct, will either reform the old or perfect the new system, because such things are not the work of a day nor of an individual; but if the suggestions now presented draw the attention of abler writers to the subject, I shall be satisfied.
The pious and charitable world contribute with a liberal hand; the missionary is sent out to the wilderness to instruct and convert the heathen: so far all is well. The missionary reaches his destination, announces the gospel tidings, and commences his official duties; the young and the old are catechised, baptism is administered, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper follows—and all these different glimpses of evangelical light succeed each other in such rapid succession as to stamp the whole proceeding with the character of a miracle. The calm and reflecting observer is confounded, and the pious Christian is struck with astonishment at the hurried and precipitate manner in which the wild and untutored savage is thus washed from all his sins, and received into the bosom of the Christian church. In all this, however, there is nothing real; on the contrary, it is utterly impossible for the missionary, or any other man alive, to cultivate the soil, sow the seeds of gospel vegetation, and bring forth the matured fruits of regeneration in so short a time. {333} The missionary, in all this, no doubt follows his instructions.
But this is not all: the missionary’s journal goes home, more labourers are required for the vineyard, periodicals circulate the marvellous success, and all the world, except those on the spot, believe the report. Yet the picture is delusive: the savage is still a savage, and gross idolatry and barbarism have not yielded inwardly a hair’s breadth to the influence of civilization, far less is he made sensible of the obligations imposed upon him by his new creed. It is but a treacherous calm before a storm: the tree is known by its fruit.
These reports are no sooner laid before the public, than a pious interest is again excited, and the liberal hand of charity is again cheerfully held out to aid in civilizing mankind. Other missionaries are sent forth, who, to prove their own zeal and success, heighten if possible the colouring of the former picture, by the addition of still more marvellous reports; and in this manner they go on, as it were, at full gallop, according to the present system, without taking time to dispel that thick and heavy cloud of ignorance and barbarism so necessary to be removed from the savage mind before it is prepared to receive spiritual instruction, or appreciate the benefits of Christianity. The result is scarcely a form of godliness, the time allowed being insufficient for perfecting the work, or doing it as it ought to be done; and this very want of time is chiefly the rock on which the missionary bark universally founders.
Before concluding this part of our subject, we {334} might advert to another evil connected with the present system, and perhaps the worst of all evils, inasmuch as no effectual remedy can well be applied to it—that is, the interference of sects with one another; for no sooner does a missionary plant the standard of the Gospel in any foreign land, but others of different persuasions follow: and it is no uncommon thing to see, in many parts of the heathen world, Papists and Protestants, with all the different branches of the two great sects, like rivals in trade, huddled together, working confusion; not only distracting and corrupting their converts, but destroying in their obstinacy the fruits of each other’s labour—forgetting that they are all God’s husbandmen, labouring in the same vineyard, and for the same master.
Next to the British empire, few countries on the globe have pursued the present system with more success than the Americans have done; yet the Americans themselves have found from long experience, as they now declare, that the system is defective, that the results produced nowise correspond to the means employed: and the same observation may be applied to every other quarter of the earth.