On the Indian Trail / Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians

by Egerton Ryerson Young

From east to west, through the Dominion runs the great Canada Pacific Railway, the longest in the world. This great road has not only broken the long silence of the wilderness and opened up the grandest route to the Orient, but it has also unsettled the Indians in their prairie and forest retreat; it has not only brought trade to their wigwam villages but also the missionary with the Bible to their very doors.

But north of these new provinces where the whistle of the iron horse is heard, are vast regions that are as free from the inroads of the adventurous pioneer as is the Desert of Sahara. This is a country of magnificent lakes and rivers with their untold wealth of fish. Its vast forests and morasses abound in fur-bearing animals of great value. Bears and wolves, reindeer and moose, and many other animals which the Indians love to hunt, exist in large numbers.

The Indian tribes of these northern regions live altogether by hunting and fishing. They are not warlike, as are the tribes of the great prairies, but in their pagan state have many vile and abominable practices, which show that they are just as bad as those who delight in war and as much in need of the Gospel.

Missionaries of the different denominations have gone into these remote regions, have lived amidst many privations, and have given their lives to the blessed work of Christianising, and then civilising these long neglected people. They have not toiled in vain. Thousands have renounced their paganism and become earnest, genuine Christians. The missionary life in such a land and among such a people is, as might be well imagined, very different from that in other countries.

As these mission fields are in such high latitudes the winter is very long and severe. Hence, the habitations to be at all comfortable must be very warmly built. There is no limestone in that land, and consequently, no lime. As a poor substitute, mud is used. The houses are built with a framework of squared timber which is well logged up, and the chinks well packed with moss and mud. When this is thoroughly dry, and made as air-tight as possible, the building is clapboarded, and lined with tongued and grooved boards. Double windows are used to help keep out the bitter cold. When well built and cared for, some of these homes are fairly comfortable; very different from the wretched, uncomfortable abodes some of the early missionaries were content to dwell in.

As great forests are everywhere in those regions, wood is used for fuel instead of coal. Great box stoves are kept red hot day and night from October until May.

The food used by the missionaries was the same as that on which the Indians lived. Flour was almost unknown. Fish and game afforded subsistence to nearly all. It is true that, many years ago, the great Saskatchewan, brigades of boats came to Norway house and York factory loaded down with vast quantities of pemmican and dried buffalo meat; but long since the great herds of buffalo have been exterminated, and the far-famed pemmican is now but a memory of the past. The last time I saw the wharves of the Hudson Bay Company’s post at Norway House piled up with bags of pemmican, was in 1871. This pemmican was pounded buffalo meat, mixed with the tallow and preserved in large bags made out of the green hides of the slaughtered animals, and was the food that for some months of each year gave variety to our fish diet. It was healthy and nourishing to persons of good appetites and unimpaired digestive organs; but to those not to the “manner born,” or unaccustomed to it all their days, it appeared, whether cooked or raw, as partaking more of the nature of soap grease, than of anything more inviting. Cut it has gone to return no more: much to the satisfaction of some, and to the regret of others.

I and my Indian fishermen used to catch about ten thousand white fish in gill nets every October and November. These we hung up on great stages where they froze as solid as stones. A few hundred we would pack away in the snow and ice for use in the following May, when those left on the stages began to suffer from the effects of the spring warmth. These ten thousand fish were needed by the missionary’s family and his dogs: the faithful dogs, from whom so much was required, lived on them all the time, while the missionary’s family had them on the table twenty-one times a week for six months.

During the winter we had certain varieties of game which I shot, or which the Indian hunters brought in and exchanged with us for tea, sugar, cotton, flannels, or other things. All trade was done by barter, as there was no money then in the land. During the spring and summer months, occasionally, a wild goose or some ducks were obtained, and proved acceptable additions to our bill of fare.

Once or twice during the summer the boats of the Hudson Bay Company—the great trading corporation of the country—brought us from civilisation, our yearly supplies. These consisted of: a few bags of flour, a keg of bolster, a can of coal oil, tea, sugar, soap, and medicines. They also brought an assortment of plain, but good, articles of clothing and dry goods which we required in our own household, and with which we also paid the Indians whom we had to hire, as fishermen, dog-drivers, canoemen or guides on my long journeys over the great mission field which was several hundreds of miles square.