Three Boys in the Wild North Land

by Egerton Ryerson Young

When the morning arrived for the visit, Mr Ross sent on a canoe well-loaded with supplies for a substantial lunch for the children when the examinations were over, and he gave a hint to the boys that if they had anything extra lying around that they did not specially need they would doubtless have an opportunity to make some little dark-eyed, swarthy-faced Indian children rejoice. So the hint was taken, and in due time they all embarked in their canoes, and, adding their own strokes to those of the strong Indians who had been secured by Mr Ross, they were at the mission village before nine o’clock. They met with a very cordial greeting from Mr and Mrs Evans, and also from Miss Adams.

It was a great pleasure to the boys to see the Indian children in the school. Very frequently when the weather was fine had Mr Ross brought his family and guests to church on Sabbath mornings, but, as up to the present time the young white gentlemen had not yet visited the mission on a week day, all they saw now was novel and interesting. It was arranged that the school examinations should take place in the forenoon; then, after they had partaken of the handsome lunch which Mr Ross had prepared for them, they were to have the usual games and sports in the afternoon.

A number of prizes were to be contended for by the young Indians. It is true that from a civilised standpoint these prizes would not be considered of much value, but by these young Indians they were much valued. And then the honour of being the winner is just as much prized by them as it has ever been in more highly favoured lands.

The missionary had the worthy idea in his mind that, as these native races have so little literature in their own language, the sooner they learned English the better for them. The result was that all the lessons were in the two languages, with a decided preference for the English as their studies advanced.

This was the first opportunity the boys had had of seeing the methods by which Mr Evans’s syllabic characters were taught to the Indians. With a home-made blackboard, and a very white kind of clay as a substitute for chalk, these syllabic characters were put down upon the board like the alphabet, and there to be studied like the A, B, C’s. It was committed to memory. The peculiarity about it, as the name “syllabic” implies, is that each character is a syllable, and so there is really no spelling in the language.

These are phonetic in character, and so, when the thirty-six characters are impressed upon the memory, all that remains to be done is to open the book, be it Bible, Testament, hymn book, prayer book, or catechism, and begin to read; no long, tedious efforts at learning to spell first words of one syllable, then words of two syllables, and so on. Each character is a syllable, and thus the method of learning to read is so simple that the intelligent boys and girls learn to read in their own language in a few weeks. Even many of the old people, when they renounce their pagan life and become Christians, readily get to understand these characters and learn to read.

With the mastery of English, and learning to read in the ordinary way, the work is very much slower. Still even here there is some progress, and the visitors were all pleased with the intelligence and aptitude of the scholars, both boys and girls. Mr Ross, who understood their language perfectly, at Mr Evans’s request conducted the examinations, and Mrs Ross presented the prizes.

After the hearty lunch, which was very much enjoyed by the youngsters—for Indians have glorious appetites—the sports and competitions for various prizes began.

The highest prize, a good gun, presented by Mr Ross for archery, was won by a son of Mamanowatum, “Big Tom,” and richly did he deserve it. At a hundred yards he sent every arrow of his well-filled quiver whizzing through a paper hoop not three feet in diameter. For this prize there were several competitors, and some of the lads did well; but only the winner sent every arrow through, so this one was easily decided.

The “many arrow” prize was not so easily decided, as there were many competitors and they were evenly matched. This was a competition among them to see who could get the greatest number of arrows into the air at the same time. The method is this. Only one competes at a time. He fills his quiver with arrows and places it on his back as he would to carry it in hunting. Then he steps out a few feet in front of the crowd, who to escape accident from falling arrows are all behind him. He is allowed to feather the first arrow in the bow string, and then at a given signal he instantly shoots. The object is to see how many arrows he can shoot into the air before the first one fired reaches the ground. It is a very interesting sight to watch a contest of this kind. The eye can hardly follow, not only the arrows, but the rapid movements of the archer, as he draws the arrows and shoots them with all his might up into the blue sky above. Eight, ten, yes, sometimes even a dozen arrows are thus sent with wondrous rapidity, sometimes following so closely that it seems at times to the eye as though some succeeding would catch up to the ones just on ahead. The greater rapidity of the arrow just leaving the bow than that of those some hundreds of feet up adds to this delusion.