John Black, the Apostle of the Red River / Or, How the Blue Banner Was Unfurled on Manitoba Prairies

by George Bryce

While not quite prepared to undertake the mission the church went so far in 1862 as to send to Mr. Black's assistance at Red River, one of its ministers who should be engaged in learning the Indian language, and otherwise preparing himself for the Indian work resolved on. This agent was Rev. James Nisbet, minister of Oakville, Upper Canada. James Nisbet was of a missionary family, his brother, Dr. Nisbet, who paid a visit to Canada, more than a quarter of a century ago, having been honored to take a leading place in the South Sea mission of the Free Church of Scotland. James Nisbet had come out to Canada from Scotland full of the fervor of the period of the disruption and though a skillful tradesman, had thrown in his lot with the first band of students which entered Knox College. The minister of Kildonan and he had been fellow students and co-workers, and now that James Nisbet had been appointed to Red River, John Black found in him a kindred spirit.

On his arrival in 1862, being an unmarried man, he became a resident at the Kildonan Manse, and we find frequent reference, in the collection of letters, to the hearty co-operation of the two ministers, and the spirit of rejoicing that now they could overtake Kildonan, Little Britain, Headingly, and the new station to which the Governor had given an invitation at Fort Garry. Mr. Nisbet while an earnest preacher, and as Mr. Black writes, "working diligently and acceptably," yet had a remarkable liking for building. At Kildonan there is still pointed out the parish schoolhouse, a stone building, much of the woodwork of which was done by Mr. Nisbet personally. Mr. Nisbet very readily fell into the ways of the Red River people, and two or three years after his arrival was married to Mary McBeth, a member of one of the best known Kildonan families, and sister of the present minister of Augustine Church, Winnipeg.

HEATHEN INDIANS.

The question of how and where to begin work among the Indians was a difficult one, and on Mr. Black largely fell the responsibility of determining the question. He had the confidence of the committee in the east, and he was the friend of the Hudson's Bay Company in the far west. The Church of England and Roman Catholics were carrying on work among the Swampy Crees, Saulteaux, and other Ojibways about Lake of the Woods and Lake Manitoba, as well as in the far off Mackenzie River district, while the former had almost a monopoly of the missions around Hudson Bay. The English Wesleyans had for years carried on missions among the Indians near Norway House and the north end of Lake Winnipeg, and after the visit of John Ryerson, whose letters about the region were published, the work was taken over by the Methodist Church in Canada. It was manifest that the call sent the Presbyterian Church was to the Indians of the western prairies, who had only seen the passing missionary and were still in absolute heathenism. After much deliberation it was decided to undertake work among the Crees of the plains, of whom there were said to be from ten to fifteen thousand largely without the gospel.

These Indians are among the finest physically and mentally of the Canadian Indians. They are of the same race as the Ojibways, belonging to the great Algonquin family known on the Atlantic sea-board and continuing along the Laurentian country to the north of our Canadian lake chain. Leaving behind the rocky regions where the birch-bark canoe and wigwam, and the fish of the streams, with the game of the forest, had been their chief dependence, the Crees of the Plains used horses, of which they had numerous bands, chased the buffalo to obtain a bountiful subsistence, and lived in leathern teepees. The language of the Crees, while the same in structure as that of the Ojibways, has yet its vocabulary much modified from that of the parent tongue. While the Crees, in their love of the buffalo and fondness for following the herds over the plains, were thoroughly nomadic and likely to be difficult to evangelize, yet the task was undertaken cheerfully. Their great camps were the scenes of the wildest excitement and greatest excesses, and yet they were a brave, self-reliant, and able people. The cut given of four of their chiefs who visited Brantford at the time of the unveiling of the Brant statue in 1886, gives a good illustration of the appearance of staidness and solidity found among them.

THE TASK BEGUN.

In 1865 Mr. Nisbet was recommended to the synod for a mission among this uncivilized but interesting people. The gravity of the enterprise is to be borne in mind. Hudson's Bay Company traders had for many years ventured among the tribes of the plains. The Hudson's Bay Company trader, however, had the Union Jack flying over him; he was housed in a strong fort; in his hands were weapons, and the power of the company was felt over the whole land; but the missionary came with a message of peace; he had no emblem of force about him, he preached the doctrine, "If one cheek was smitten to turn the other also," and so to proceed 500 miles from Red River and break ground on the Saskatchewan, to be largely dependent on the locality for sustenance, and to trust to the good-will of the Indians, required courage and resource. And these qualities James Nisbet had. He was not a man of display, was a man of quiet, undemonstrative manner, but had no cowardice or surrender in him. Like his countryman, the Highland piper, who was asked to play the "retreat," he could reply that he had never learned that tune. Mr. Nisbet's theology was of a very exact kind. He was in the habit of advising complete reliance in God, perhaps there was a strain of the severe, even of the stoical, in it; but in the case of our pioneer Indian missionary, he lived out and exemplified it as well as preached it.

FOR CHRIST AND COUNTRY.

A journey from the Red River to the Saskatchewan by the Canadian Pacific Railway to-day is a comparatively trifling matter, taking twenty-five or thirty hours; but thirty years ago it meant much. It required an outfit that could serve the purpose for forty or fifty days. The sending of a missionary, known to the people of Kildonan and by marriage one of themselves, profoundly stirred the Highland parish. In one of Mr. Black's letters he states that the people of the parish had raised between £80 and £100 sterling for the purpose of making a suitable send-off for the man who had become so popular among them.

Mr. Nisbet's plan, in so far as we can gather, was from the first to be practical and industrial. His effort was to induce the nomadic Indians to settle, to cultivate the land, and to make the Indian independent of the precarious results of the chase. In order to accomplish his ideal it was necessary to provide himself with a considerable establishment, so that the mission party, inclusive of his wife and little child and two other children, numbered ten persons. They were provided with the necessary outfit for hunting, fishing, building, and farming. The day of departure was the 6th of June, 1866, and it was a day of great moment for Kildonan. The Saskatchewan was being looked to as the land of promise. Gold had been discovered in its sands, and one of Mr. Black's letters mentions that a number of Kildonan young men had been among the fortunate explorers. The establishment had about it the air of a Kildonan enterprise, and these elements added wider interest to the Christian effort to evangelize the heathen, which was so dear to Mr. Nisbet's heart. It was a high day for John Black, for he had felt it a scandal that his church should be the only one of the four churches at work in Rupert's Land not doing something for the aborigines of the country.