Forty-two years amongst the Indians and Eskimo

by Beatrice Batty

‘On the third day we had forty miles of travel. The weather was colder and our dogs trotted on without much fatigue. About four o’clock in the afternoon we saw the settlement in the distance, and then the dogs, knowing that they were nearly home, put on extra speed, and we were soon in front of the factory. A steep bank had to be ascended, but there was no difficulty, for a number of men and boys ran down and gave their ready help, and I was soon in the middle of a large yard, receiving the warm welcome of all who had congregated there. One day at Albany, and then came Christmas Day, when I preached two sermons, one in English, the other in Indian; afterwards I had the examination of the candidates for confirmation belonging to the two congregations, Indian and English, with whom I was very well pleased; and the examination of the scholars in the school, who quite satisfied me, and I visited all the families in their respective houses. I also gave a feast to the Indians and another to the school children, and inspected some beautiful fox-skins. Quite a number of the silver fox came in during my visit. They are black, but the tips are white. They are too heavy for English wear, but are exported mostly to China. The late King George the Fourth had new coronation robes made for him, which were lined with the choicest parts of the silver fox skins, and for each skin forty guineas were paid; rather expensive robes, I should think.

‘I found time to correct the proofs of two of my Indian books, which are printing in England. The days were well filled up and fled swiftly, and it seemed but a short time before I was compelled to say good-bye to Albany, and on the third day after we once more ran up Moose River, and received the congratulations of all my people, who had lined the banks to see me as I passed.’

The end of February, 1892, came before the ‘packet’ of that year arrived. All hope of its coming had died away, and many who had travelled hundreds of miles to meet it had been forced to travel back again without getting a letter to tell of those far away, or even a paper. ‘Cruel, cruel!’ said the sympathising bishop, and yet he was sometimes inclined to feel grateful for the very absence of news himself. ‘Our outer door is opened,’ he wrote, ‘but twice or three times a year, and then we have a deluge of papers and a great number of letters, and we find the deluge almost as bad as the previous dearth.’

Moose was enjoying a mild winter, and food was plentiful, rabbits never more abundant, of pheasants there was no scarcity, and there was no sickness; the Moose doctor was enjoying quite a sinecure. Far otherwise was it with Rupert’s House. The weather there also had been very mild, but rain had fallen in torrents, and the swamps around were giving forth miasma, which brought disease and death to the little settlement. Influenza and dysentery attacked almost every individual.

When the Rupert’s House dogs brought the budget for the ‘packet,’ the bishop’s share of news was a sad and gloomy one. Mr. Broughton wrote that the Indians were dying out from disease, and his own little daughter had again been attacked with influenza. Saddest tidings of all, four children had been frozen to death, almost close to the station. The father of those children was Weyawastum; he had died, as did also his wife, some years ago. The grandmother and her husband took the children under their care, she being a kind old body, and speaking very good English. They were spending the winter at Pontax Creek, about seven miles distant from the station, coming in occasionally for provisions, which were never denied them. At New Year the husband, named Huskey, came in to spend a few days at the place, and was there attacked by the prevailing disease, so severely as to be unable to return home. His wife and the children remained at Pontax Creek, no one feeling the least anxiety about them. They had a good tent and a sufficiency of provisions, and should those be consumed more would be given them. But one morning, someone walking down the river during a terribly cold spell of weather came upon a child lying dead, and hard frozen, only a mile from the establishment. And still farther on lay another, and yet another, and still another was found in the same condition. The tent was entered, but it was cold and silent, and there lay the dead body of kind old Betsy, the faithful grandmother. All were taken to Rupert’s House, and buried in one grave. It must have been a terribly solemn event in that little settlement—five coffins entering the church in procession, four young lives passing away in such a manner. The full particulars will never be known, but it is supposed that while the grandmother was with the children in the tent she was suddenly taken ill, or being ill had become delirious, and the children being afraid, or wishing to obtain help for the old woman, had set off to get to the settlement, but the cold was too severe for them, and so all had perished.

If the winter at Moose had been late in coming, and mild when it came, it lasted long into the year 1892. On May 6 the bishop wrote:—

‘Day succeeds day, and there is the same cold biting air, the same dark leaden sky and heavy snowflakes, which have lately again and again thrown us back into apparent midwinter. I should be glad to write more cheerfully, but I must write what I see and know, and not give a picture from the imagination; what I write must be truth, and not romance. You can’t conceive how anxiously we are longing for spring; to see our noble river rushing by, carrying on its bosom the laden boat, the beautiful canoe, the majestic vessel. But it is still blocked up, heavily fettered with its icy chains. The surface is still white, and an oppressive silence hangs over it; the fluttering haze has not yet appeared into which the mighty magician of long ago changed himself, appearing yearly in the spring, just before the breaking-up of the river, that he may meet his beautiful sister, the lovely American robin. She has already come, and it was with joy which can be felt, but not described, that I heard her singing her sweet song this morning, as if she would thus hasten the steps of her loitering brother, and bring him to cheer both her own heart and the hearts of all others who are anxiously awaiting his arrival. Whilst you enjoy sweet May weather, feel deeply thankful for it, and think of those in this wild lone land who are fighting the great Christian battle as your substitutes; pray for them, that their spirits droop not on account of the hardness of their surroundings, and show your sympathy practically by making greater and yet greater exertions in supporting the missionary cause.

‘Now, looking out of my window, what can I see? Besides the cathedral and adjacent houses, I see the frozen surface of the river, dotted here and there with goose-stands, for this is the time for geese, and each goose-stand should be supplied with one or two smart hunters, whose decoy geese and their perfect imitation of the goose’s call generally succeed in alluring the silly birds to their destruction. But the stands are unoccupied, the decoy geese are lying in heaps, the weather is so unpropitious that no birds are flying. They are delaying their journey to the sea coast, and are feeding in the plains in the interior; and when they come they will make but a short stay, and hurry forward to where they lay their eggs and bring up their families.

‘But something exquisitely beautiful seems to enjoy the dreary waste—flocks of the snow bunting are constantly flitting by, alighting on the garden, the plain, and the dust heaps. When they first came they were white, but now they have begun to assume their summer garb, and clothe themselves in russet brown. They are not allowed to feed in peace. The fierce hawk hovers about, and occasionally swoops down and makes a capture; big boys and men are out with their guns, small boys are out with their bows and arrows, girls are out with their bird nets—all intent on business, for food is scarce, and those pretty birds are plump and fat, and said to be very good eating. And this is really all I can see from my window, except the dark distant pines, which fill up but do not enliven the landscape.

‘You must not think that because I have such surroundings I am therefore dull and melancholy; such is by no means the case. God has blessed me with a sanguine temperament, and a great capacity for love of work, and this being the case, hope for better days and their speedy appearance causes me to look, in dark days, more to the future than the present; it gives no time for repining, or, as the people here say, thinking long.