Forty-two years amongst the Indians and Eskimo

by Beatrice Batty

In 1861 Mr. Horden writes: ‘In May we were again threatened with a flood. On returning from church one Sunday evening the river presented an awful appearance. The strength of the current had broken up the ice, and formed it into a conical shape, which rose as high as the tops of the trees on the high bank of the river. We abandoned our house, having first taken every precaution to guard against the fury of the waters, but, although the threat was so formidable, we experienced no flood, and after spending a few pleasant days at the establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company we returned, and at once began our gardening. The children look upon a flood as a rare treat. To them it is something of a pleasant, exciting nature, after the dull monotony of a seven or eight months’ winter. It drives us from our house, but we take shelter in one equally good, where we ourselves enjoy pleasant company, and where the children have a large number of playmates. What we look upon as our greatest trial are the privations and sufferings to which the Indians are subjected.’

Nepin is very changeable, sometimes excessively warm, with plenty of mosquitoes and sand-flies, which are very troublesome; sometimes quite cold, and the transition is very rapid. It may be hot in the morning, and in the evening so cold that an overcoat may be worn with comfort.

‘This is the busy season,’ writes Mr. Horden, ‘when I take my journeys. Brigades of canoes from the various posts arrive, bringing the furs collected during the preceding winter; in fact, every person appears to have plenty to do.’ Just as summer is ending, the ship arrives, and it is very anxiously looked for, for on it almost everything depends—flour, tea, clothing, books, everything.

‘Tukwaukin is generally very boisterous, with occasional hail and snow storms. Then the Indians hunt geese, which are salted and put into barrels for our use, although they are not quite so good as a corned round of beef. Before the arrival of Pepooa, all of the Indians are gone off to their winter grounds, from which most of them do not return until the arrival of spring.’

Each point of Mr. Horden’s vast parish had to be reached by an arduous journey. Arduous is indeed but a mild expression for the troubles, trials, privations, and tremendous difficulties attendant on travel through the immense, trackless wastes lying between many of the posts—wastes intersected with rivers and rapids, varied only by tracts of pathless forest, swept by severe storms. ‘Last autumn,’ he writes, ‘I took a journey to Kevoogoonisse; it is 430 miles distant, and during the whole way I saw no tent or house, not even a human being, until I arrived within a short distance of the post. I appeared to be passing through a forgotten land; I saw trees by tens of thousands, living, decaying, and dead; I saw majestic waterfalls, and passed through fearful rapids; I walked over long and difficult places, and day after day struck my little tent, and felt grieved at seeing no new faces, none to whom I might impart some spiritual blessing. In the whole space of country over which I travelled, perhaps a dozen Indian families hunt during the winter. Sometimes even this tract is insufficient to supply their wants; animals become scarce, the lands are burnt by the forest fires, and they are reduced to the greatest distress. I have seen terrible cases of this kind. I have seen a man with an emaciated countenance, who in one winter lost six children, all he had; and, horrible to relate, nearly every one of them was killed for the purpose of satisfying the cravings of hunger. At the post to which he was attached, Kevoogoonisse, out of about 120 Indians, twenty died through starvation in one winter.’

The country may be said to be one vast forest, with very extensive plains, watered by large rivers and numerous lakes, inhabited by a few roving Indians, who are engaged in hunting wild animals to procure furs for the use of civilized man.

Sometimes sad things took place during the absence of the missionary on his journeyings to visit outlying stations. During the short summer of 1858, he set out with his wife and their little children to visit Whale River, in the country of the Eskimo. It was not his first journey to that post. ‘You will have need of all your courage,’ said he to his wife. Tempestuous seas, shelterless nights, and stormy days were vivid to his own memory, but wife and children were glad to see anything new, after the monotonous days and nights of the long Moose winter.

The family had not long been gone, when whooping-cough broke out at Moose. Young, old, and middle-aged were attacked alike, and numbers died. So terrible was the sickness that at one time there was but one man able to work, and his work was to make two coffins. The missionary returned to a sorrowing people. Out of five European families four had lost each a child, and ‘the sight of the grave-yard and the mothers weeping there is one I never shall forget. In ordinary years the average mortality was two. This year it was thirty-two.’ Amongst the children taken was dear little Susan, the orphan child of a heathen Indian, whom they had cared for from infancy, and whose little fingers had just before her illness traced upon a sampler the text: ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days’——Here the words had ceased—she was taken from all evil, and the evil days would not draw nigh her, the needle remained in the sampler at that spot. Amongst the aged taken were blind Koote, old blind Adam, and old blind Hannah, all of whom are specially mentioned in Mr. Horden’s account of the previous Christmas Day services.

‘Yesterday,’ he writes, speaking of Christmas 1857, ‘was a deeply interesting one to me. As usual, I met the Indians at seven, the English-speaking congregation at eleven, and Indians again at three. Among the communicants present were no less than three blind persons. Old Adam, over whose head have, I should think, passed a hundred winters. Old Koote, always at church, led with a string by a little boy, and poor old lame Hannah, whose seat is seldom empty, be the weather what it may. The day previous to our communion we had a meeting of the communicants. Old blind Koote said, “I thank God for having preserved me to this day. God is good! I pray to Him every night and morning. That does good to my soul. I think a great deal about heaven, I ask Jesus to wash away all my sins, and to take me there.”’