Mr. MacMurray is the only missionary of the Church of England, and, with all his zeal, and his peculiar means of influence and success, it cannot be said that he is adequately aided and supported. "The English Church," said one of our most intelligent Indian agents, "either cannot or will not, certainly does not, sow; therefore cannot expect to reap." The zeal, activity, and benevolence of the travelling missionary Elliott are beyond all praise; but his ministry is devoted to the back settlers more than to the Indians. The Roman Catholic missions have been, of all, the most active and persevering; next to these the Methodists. The Presbyterian and the English Churches have been hitherto comparatively indifferent and negligent.
Information was brought to the superintendent, that a trader from Detroit, with a boat laden with whisky and rum, was lying concealed in a little cove near the entrance of the great bay, for the purpose of waylaying the Indians, and bartering the whisky for their new blankets, guns, and trinkets. I exclaimed with indignation!—but Mr. Jarvis did better than exclaim; he sent off the Blackbird, with a canoe full of stout men, to board the trader, and throw all the whisky into the lake, and then desire the owner to bring any complaint or claim for restitution down to Toronto; and this was done accordingly. The Blackbird is a Christian, and extremely noted for his general good conduct, and his declared enmity to the "dealers in fire-water."
INDIAN CIVILISATION.
Yet a word more before I leave my Indians.
There is one subject on which all travellers in these regions—all who have treated of the manners and modes of life of the north-west tribes, are accustomed to expatiate with great eloquence and indignation, which they think it incumbent on the gallantry and chivalry of Christendom to denounce, as constituting the true badge and distinction of barbarism and heathenism, opposed to civilisation and Christianity:—I mean the treatment and condition of their women. The women, they say, are "drudges," "slaves," "beasts of burthen," victims, martyrs, degraded, abject, oppressed; that not only the cares of the household and maternity, but the cares and labours proper to the men, fall upon them; and they seem to consider no expression of disapprobation, and even abhorrence, too strong for the occasion; and if there be any who should feel inclined to modify such objurgations, or speak in excuse or mitigation of the fact, he might well fear that the publication of such opinions would expose him, in every review, to the death of Orpheus or Pentheus.
Luckily I have no such risk to run. Let but my woman's wit bestead me here as much as my womanhood, and I will, as the Indians say, "tell you a piece of my mind," and place the matter before you in another point of view.
Under one aspect of the question, all these gentlemen travellers are right; they are right in their estimate of the condition of the Indian squaws—they are drudges, slaves: and they are right in the opinion, that the condition of the women in any community is a test of the advance of moral and intellectual cultivation in that community; but it is not a test of the virtue or civilisation of the man; in these Indian tribes, where the men are the noblest and bravest of their kind, the women are held of no account, are despised and oppressed. But it does appear to me that the woman among these Indians holds her true natural position relatively to the state of the man and the state of society; and this cannot be said of all societies.
Take into consideration, in the first place, that in these Indian communities the task of providing subsistence falls solely and entirely on the men. When it is said, in general terms, that the men do nothing but hunt all day, while the women are engaged in perpetual toil, I suppose this suggests to civilised readers the idea of a party of gentlemen at Melton, or a turn-out of Mr. Meynell's hounds; or at most a deer-stalking excursion to the Highlands—a holiday affair; while the women, poor souls! must sit at home and sew, and spin, and cook victuals. But what is really the life of an Indian hunter?—one of incessant, almost killing toil, and often danger.[50] A hunter goes out at dawn, knowing that, if he returns empty, his wife and his little ones must starve—no uncommon predicament! He comes home at sunset, spent with fatigue, and unable even to speak. His wife takes off his moccasins, places before him what food she has, or, if latterly the chase has failed, probably no food at all, or only a little parched wild rice. She then examines his hunting-pouch, and in it finds the claws, or beak, or tongue of the game, or other indications by which she knows what it is, and where to find it. She then goes for it, and drags it home. When he is refreshed, the hunter caresses his wife and children, relates the events of his chase, smokes his pipe, and goes to sleep—to begin the same life on the following day.