We must set them the example in improving the surroundings of the little church and the mission house, which had been built adjoining the church. Hence we commenced to clear off the stumps and roots from the church lot, and made it ready for cultivation. I took the boys and men and went to the woods and got out posts and rails and pickets, and thus showed them how to fence and cultivate a garden.
The old heathen house, from its very character, was the hot-bed of vice. Fancy a great barn-like building, sometimes one hundred feet long by thirty wide, made of split cedar boards fastened together with poles and withes and strips of strong bark, and occupied by as many as a dozen families, only separated from each other by low partitions.
Picture such a building, with no floor other than the ground, no entrance for light except the door, when open, and the cracks in the walls and the roof. Around the inside of such a building were ranged the beds, built up on rude platforms. In the corners were piles of mats and fishing-tackle and rubbish. Each family had their own fire, and these were built all along through the house, the smoke circulating generally through the building and finally finding its way out as best it could by cracks and other openings. Under the bunks and overhead and hanging from the poles were the family stores of dried fish and berries. In the midst were many miserable dogs and cats, and, later, chickens as well. This picture multiplied a dozen or more times, according to the population, went to make up the “rancheree,” as the Indian village was sometimes called.
Is it any wonder that disease and vice flourished under such favorable surroundings?
With the example of the little mission-house and its garden before them, a number were inspired to have individual plots marked out for themselves. They cleared off their lots and had their houses built and neatly whitewashed, their gardens planted with fruit trees and bordered with shade trees, thus presenting a striking contrast to the heathen houses which they had left.
In time a street was cleared and graded in front of these houses, and the contrast with the heathen village which faced the beach was complete.
In a speech before the English Conference made after his visit to British Columbia, Dr. Wm. Morley Punshon said “that he had seen the powerful influences of the Gospel far away on the Pacific Coast, near Nanaimo, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, where he saw the heathen street and the Christian street side by side. As the people became converted they moved to the Christian street.”
Later on I followed up this work of education among the tribes on the Nanaimo and Fraser Rivers, teaching them not only how to improve their homes, but to till their ground and plant their orchards, and in every way take their places among their white brethren. To-day the Indians of these districts have their little farms, cultivate their own grain and hay and roots, and raise their own cattle.
To show the influence of this early teaching, more than one of our young men, who had earned considerable money and were urged by their friends to throw it away in the potlatch, chose rather to purchase cattle and horses with which to stock their little farms.
But not only did we teach them the gospel of self-help. They were encouraged to undertake the local improvements on their own church and school-house, and to help spread the Gospel of the blessed Christ by contributing to the funds of the Missionary Society.