In 1872-3 we reported 108 Indian members in British Columbia, of whom 18 were at Victoria, 36 at Nanaimo, 4 at New Westminster and 50 at Chilliwack. To-day we have, in our Indian work, 32 churches, 24 mission houses, 12 schools and 4 hospitals. There are 43 workers in the field, evangelists, doctors, nurses, teachers and other agents; and 1,645 members, among some six different nations, speaking numerous dialects. The total missionary givings of these recent converts from heathenism and their workers amounted in 1905-6 to $1,245.60. Out of a total Indian population of 25,000 in British Columbia, we are teaching by the Word about 7,000 people.
What has been accomplished is nothing to what might have been accomplished had the Church always been alive to its duty and privilege, and made haste to enter every open door.
To-day there is urgent need for more laborers in this department of missionary effort. Shall we listen to every other call, and close our ears to the cry of our Indian brothers and sisters, who appeal to us in the name of a common Saviour to help them into a noble Christian manhood and womanhood? Shall we?
A few closing personal references will be permitted. I have written of my promised furlough, and of the road leading me to “Home, sweet home.” Those who have spent years away from home and loved ones will understand the joy with which, after the twelve years of toils and triumphs which I have striven to describe, I once more turned my face to the East. I well knew the greetings which awaited me. But I found more than my beloved mother and brothers and sisters on my return to Ontario. It was during this visit, in the early months of 1874, that I found the faithful wife who did not hesitate to turn her back upon home and friends and the comfortable conditions to which she had been accustomed, and undertake with me the hardships and privations of a pioneer missionary life among the benighted Tsimpshean and other tribes of the far northern regions of our Pacific coast. She is the youngest daughter of the late Rev. John Douse, formerly a well-known figure in Canadian Methodism, and who, more than twenty years ago, went to his reward in the better land. During the next twenty-five years, in which I labored among the Indians, with headquarters at Port Simpson, she was a self-denying sharer in the toils and discouragements and the loneliness of that protracted period of missionary effort, and a delighted witness of the triumphs of the Gospel, as these poor benighted peoples gradually emerged from the darkness of heathenism and became sharers in the blessings of civilization and Christian hope. Of these trials and triumphs, and the wonderful experiences connected with that marvellous work, I hope to have the privilege of writing in another book.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dr. Hinds’ Life of Jason Lee.
[2] Some years later two Roman Catholic priests, one of whom was Father Demers, found their way to the Columbia River, and still later Demers journeyed into the Okanagan Valley, and commenced work among the Shuswaps.
[3] Alex. Peers, a devoted young classmate of the author, in Woodstock, Ont., who spent some time in Victoria College with a view to the ministry, in 1863 made his way to British Columbia, and took up land at Chilliwack. He was married to Miss Wells, sister of Mr. A. C. Wells, and after spending some time in the mission school at Nanaimo, finally settled in New Westminster, where he was very useful as a local preacher and class-leader, and secured the respect and esteem of all who knew him. Here the author again met him.