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

by Egerton Ryerson Young

Here they left their canoes, and after exchanging some furs for needed supplies they started southwest on the long trail of many days’ toilsome travelling, until at length the place of the fearful ordeal was reached.

Into the details of the scenes and events of the Indian ceremony of torture, I am not going to enter. Catlin has with pen and brush described it in a way to chill the blood and fill our sleeping hours with horrid dreams.

Suffice to say that Oowikapun put himself in the hands of the torturers, and, first of all, they kept him for four days and nights without allowing him a mouthful of food or drink. Neither did they permit him to have a moment’s sleep. Then they stripped off his upper garments, and, cutting long, parallel gashes in his breast down to the bone, they lifted up the flesh and there tied to the quivering flesh ends of horsehair ropes about three quarters of an inch in diameter. The other ends of these two ropes were fastened to a high pole about fifteen feet from the ground. At first the upper ends of these ropes were drawn through rude pulleys, and poor Oowikapun was dragged up six or eight feet from the ground and held there for several minutes by the bleeding, lacerated, distended muscles of his breast. Then the ropes were suddenly loosened from above, and he fell with a sickening thud to the ground. Quickly they raised him up on his feet and made fast the ropes to the upper end of the pole, and left him to struggle and pull until the muscles rotted or were worn away, and he was free. Four days passed by ere he succeeded in breaking away, and during that time not a morsel of food or a drop of water was given him.

Weeks passed away ere Oowikapun recovered from those fearful wounds, and, after all, what did they accomplish for him? Nothing at all. He was, if possible, more wretched in mind than in body. No voice of comfort had he heard. No dispelling of the darkness, no lifting of the heavy loads, no assurance of pardon and forgiveness. Is it any wonder that he was discouraged, and that his sharp-eyed neighbours looked at him at times with suspicion, and said one to another that something must be wrong in his head?

To convince them that his mind was not disordered or his reason affected, Oowikapun attended the councils of the tribe, and ever showed himself clear-headed in discussion and debate. He applied himself with renewed diligence to his work as a hunter, and remembering Memotas’s love for his household, strove to imitate him in his conduct toward his mother and the younger members of his family. Disgusted and annoyed that nothing but disappointment and suffering had come to him from following the advice of Mookoomis, he shunned his society and would have none of his counsel.

So passed the summer months, and when the winter came again there arose in the breast of Oowikapun a longing desire, doubtless it had been there before, to go and see Astumastao, the brave maiden who had been his real friend, and had told him words which had done him more good than anything else he had heard since he had parted from Memotas.

About her he had never spoken a word to anyone, but her bright eyes had buried themselves in his heart, while her brave words had fixed themselves in his memory.

So making up some excuse in reference to business with his relatives in the distant village where dwelt the fair maiden, he prepared for the journey. He arrayed himself in new and picturesque apparel, and with his little outfit on a light sled, and his gun in his hand, and his axe and knife in his belt, he set off for the village where he had made such a sad fall, after all his resolves to have nothing more to do with devil worship.

Is it surprising that, as he hurried along, he forgot much of his sorrow, and was filled with pleasurable excitement at the prospect of meeting Astumastao again? True, he would check himself and say he was acting or thinking foolishly, for Astumastao might be married or the bride selected, by her uncle, for some one else, for all he knew. Why, then, should he so think about her? True, she had been very kind to him in his sorrow, but then he had only met her once, and so why should he be continually thinking about her? Thus he reasoned with himself, but he kept hurrying along as never before, and he did not try very hard to banish her from his heart and memory. And fortunate it was for Astumastao that Oowikapun was on the way.

When Astumastao returned to the village after her conversation with Oowikapun she found the people excited by his story of the fire burning in his wigwam and the meal prepared and ready for him. How these things could have been done without anyone finding it out, when they were all so alert and quick-witted, amazed them. Then it was to them such a breach of the rules or usages of such occasions. Who, they said in their excitement, could have been so presumptuous as to break the long-established custom, and take in food and fire to one of the dancers?