Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

SUN DANCE OF BLACKFEET INDIANS

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.