Oowikapun, or, How the Gospel reached the Nelson River Indians

by Egerton Ryerson Young

But nothing equals a first-class field night of the mysterious aurora borealis. No other phenomenon of nature in magnitude of display, in varied brilliancy of colour, in bewildering rapidity of movement, in grandeur so celestial, in its very existence so unaccountable, is calculated to lift man up and away from things earthly, into the very realm and presence of the spiritual, as does a first-class display of the northern lights, as seen in the far north-land. While they are generally more frequent in the winter months than at other times of the year, yet they are very uncertain in their comings, and sometimes burst upon the world and illuminate and fill up with celestial glory the brief hours of some of the short summer nights.

To Oowikapun, in his mental darkness and disquietude, there came one of these more than earthly visions of entrancing beauty. If in any one of nature’s phenomena she could speak to a troubled soul, surely it would be in this. For while to Elijah the answer was in the still small voice, yet man unaided by divine revelation prefers the earthquake and the fire, or some other grand, overwhelming manifestation of nature’s power, which appeals to the sensuous rather than to the spiritual.

To these Northern Indians the auroras have ever been associated with the ghostly or spiritual. In some of the tribes the literal translation of the northern lights is the “spirits of their forefathers going out to battle.”

The display that Oowikapun gazed upon was one of more than ordinary sublimity. He had left his little wigwam which nestled among the balsams, and had gone out from the forest gloom and had seated himself on the shore of the lake where the little waves made soothing music as they played among the pebbles at his feet. The sun had gone down in splendour, leaving a glorious radiance of sapphire and crimson on hills and waves. Quietly and imperceptibly the shadows of night mantled the long twilight gloaming, and then one by one the stars came out from their hiding places, until the whole high dome of heaven was bright. The milky way brightened into wondrous distinctness, until it seemed to Oowikapun like a great pathway, and he wondered, as held in the tradition of his people, if on it, by and by, he should travel to the happy hunting grounds of his fathers.

After a time a brightness began to dawn in the northern sky, and then from it some brilliant streamers of light suddenly shot up to the heavens above. Then wavy ribbons of light quickly followed, and rapidly unrolling themselves parallel with the horizon, quivered and danced in rhythmic movements, blazing out at times in varied vivid colours as they gracefully undulated from east to west. Often had Oowikapun seen these displays, but up to this time he had only gazed with languid interest upon these nightly visitants. This night, however, there was a display so glorious that he stood as one entranced.

With a suddenness that can be shown only by electrical phenomena, there almost instantaneously shot up from below the eastern horizon a dazzling blaze of gorgeous electrical light, which in successive bounds rushed on and on until, like a brilliant meteor a million times magnified, it spanned the heavens, and for a time in purest white it seemed to hang an arch of truce from heaven to earth. For a little while it quivered in its dazzling whiteness, and then from it flashed out streamers in all the colours of the rainbow. With one end holding on to the arch of snowy whiteness they danced and scintillated and blazed until the whole heavens seemed aglow. Then breaking loose they seemed to form themselves into whole battalions of soldiers, and advanced and fought and retreated until the heavens seemed to be the battlefield of the ages, and stained with the blood of millions slain. During all the apparent carnage, great streamers waved continuously above the contending armies, and seemed like great battle flags leading on the forces to greater deeds of valour. Sometimes they seemed to change into great fiery swords, ready to add to the apparent carnage and destruction that seemed so intensely real.

Thus in ever-changing glories the vision of the heavens above continued, while Oowikapun, awed and subdued in spirit, felt thankful that he was only a spectator upon such scenes of ghostly carnage and blood. But impressive and glorious as what had already been revealed, the auroras had yet in reserve the climax of their display, and when it came it nearly froze his blood in his veins, and threw him trembling and terrified on his face upon the ground. Suddenly did the change come. With, the rapidity of a lightning flash, the great quivering arch of light transformed itself, into a corona of such dazzling splendour that no words can describe it. From purest white the multitudes of streamers, of which it was now composed, suddenly changed to pink and blue, and green and yellow, all the time flitting and scintillating so rapidly that the eyes were pained in their vain efforts to follow the rapid flights.

Then in a twinkling of an eye the whole changed to a deep, blood-red crimson—so bloodlike, so terrible, so dazzling, so awful, that the brave man was crushed down, terrified and subdued before this blinding display of the omnipotent power of the Great Spirit.

The dauntless courage that had made him exult at the prospect of meeting the fiercest bear in the forest, with no other weapon than his trusty hunting knife, or the most hostile foe of his tribe, was of no avail here, and so, a crushed and vanquished man, as soon as he could, he cowered back to his wigwam, where, wrapping himself in his blanket, he long remained. He trembled at the thought of having been in such apparent contact with the spirit land, while his unhappy soul chided him with a sense of his unfitness for that unknown life beyond.

Poor Oowikapun, he was like many who, although they live under happier influences and amid the blaze of Gospel day, yet foolishly think that if some heavenly manifestation of the glory beyond, some glimpse of the land that is afar off, or some sight of its celestial inhabitants, were given them to enjoy, very quickly would they be convinced and converted.