A fortnight was devoted to the chase; and between two and three thousand buffaloes having been killed, and the carts fully laden, the party returned to St. Bonifice. The settlement of St. Bonifice was founded by Lord Selkirk, who sent out a number of his Scotch dependents as colonists, and induced some Canadian families to join them. It was originally intended as a model Protestant colony; but the demoralization and vice which broke out in the new settlement brought it to the verge of temporal ruin. Lord Selkirk then called Catholics to his aid, [{565}] and three priests were sent there. Religion took the place of fanaticism, and ever since this epoch the colony has never ceased to flourish and increase, and has become the centre of numerous settlements in the neighborhood of friendly Indians converted to the faith. This is one of many instances which might be quoted in which the noxious weed of heresy has failed to transplant itself beyond the soil which gave it birth. St. Boniface has been the residence of a bishop since 1818, and is now the resting-place and point of departure for all missioners bound for the northern deserts of America. It was here that Mgr. Faraud spent eighteen months studying the languages of the northern tribes of Indians. Lord Bacon says that "he that goeth into a strange laud without knowledge of the language goeth to learn and not to travel." This, which is true of the traveller, is much more true of the missioner, as Mgr. Faraud soon found by experience. He made several essays at intercourse with neighboring tribes, like a young soldier burning with zeal and the desire to flesh his sword in missionary work. But the reception he met with was most mortifying, being generally told "not to think of teaching men as long as he spoke like a child." He applied himself with renewed energy to acquire the native language.
The dialects of most of the tribes of the extreme north of America (with the exception of the Esquimaux) are modifications of two parent languages, the Montaignais and the Cree. By acquiring these Mgr. Faraud was able to make himself understood by almost any of these tribes after a short residence among them. Eighteen months spent at St. Boniface served as a novitiate for his missionary work, at the end of which time he received orders to start, early in the following month, for Isle de la Crosse, a fort on the Beaver river, about 350 leagues to the N.W. of St. Boniface. On his way thither he was the guest of the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, at Norway House, where he was most hospitably entertained. Mgr. Faraud bears witness to the liberal and enlightened spirit in which the authorities of the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the government officials in Canada, render every aid and encouragement in their power to the Catholic missioners; and he quotes a speech made to him by Sir Edmund Head (then Governor of Canada) showing the high estimation, and even favor, in which the Catholic missioners are held by them. Whatever permanence and stability our missions possess in these vast deserts is owing to the protection and kind assistance rendered to them by the British authorities; while, on the other hand, it would be hardly possible for this powerful company of traders to maintain their present friendly relations with Indian tribes, upon which their trade depends, without the aid of the Catholic missioners.
After five months spent at Isle de la Crosse, and three years after his departure from Europe, Mgr. Faraud left for Atthabaska, one of the most northerly establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company, whither the various tribes of Indians, spread over an immense circuit 400 leagues in diameter, come twice in the year, early in spring and late in the autumn, to barter their furs, the produce of their winter and summer hunting. This was his final destinatibn and field of apostolical labor, it is often said that it is the happiness of the Red Indian to be totally ignorant of money; and this, in a certain sense is true. But money has no necessary connection with the precious metals or bank-notes; and any medium of circulation which by common agreement can be made to represent a determined value becomes money, in fact, if not in name. Thus the market value of a beaver's skin in British America varies little, and is nearly equivalent to an American dollar. The Hudson's Bay Company have adopted this as the unit of their currency, and the value of other furs [{566}] is reckoned in relation to this standard. The following are some of the prices given to the Indians for the furs ordinarily offered by them for sale:
The skin of a black bear values from six to ten beavers; the skin of a black fox, about six beavers; the skin of a silver fox, about five beavers; the skin of an otter, from two to three beavers; the skin of a pecari, from one to four beavers; the skin of a martin, from one to four beavers; the skin of a red or white fox, about one beaver, and so forth.
Twice in the year the steamers and canoes of the company, laden with merchandise, work their way up the lakes and rivers to these stations, where the Indians assemble to meet them, and receive an equivalent for their furs in arms, ammunition, articles for clothing, hardware, and trinkets.
Two of our countrymen, Viscount Milton, and Dr. Cheadle, have lately published an account of their travels in British America, of which we give a notice in another part of this number. [Footnote 124] The description they give of the privations they endured and the difficulties they had to overcome in merely traversing the country as travellers, furnished as they were with all the resources which wealth could command, while it reflects credit on their British pluck and perseverance in attaining the object they had in view, gives us some idea of the obstacles which present themselves to a missioner in these regions, who has to take up his abode wherever his duty may call him, and without any means of maintaining life beyond those which these districts supply. The object of these gentlemen was to explore a line of communication between Canada and British Columbia, with a view to suggesting an overland route through British territory connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic--a most important project in a political point of view, upon which the success of the rising colony of Columbia appears eventually to depend. The territory administered by the Hudson's Bay Company, reaching as it does from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the coasts of Labrador on the N.E., to Vancouver's Island on the S.W., contains an area nearly equal to that of the whole of Europe.
[Footnote 124: "The North-West Passage by Land." By Viscount Milton, M.P., and W. B. Cheadle, M.D. London. 1865.]
Mgr. Faraud remained fifteen years at Atthabaska. He found it a solitary station-house, in the midst of deserts inhabited by idolatrous savages; it is now a flourishing mission, with a vast Christian population advancing in civilization, the capital of the district to which it gives its name, and a centre of operation from which missioners may act upon the whole north of British America, over which he now has episcopal jurisdiction. Such results, as may be supposed, have not been attained without labor and suffering. In the commencement the mission was beset with difficulties and discouragements. His first step was to build himself a house with logs of wood, an act which was accepted by the savages as a pledge that he intended to remain with them. A savage whom he converted and baptized soon after his arrival, acted as his servant and hunted for him; while with nets and lines he procured a supply of fish for himself when his servant was unsuccessful in the chase. In this manner he for some time maintained a life alternately resembling that of Robinson Crusoe and St. Paul. He soon made a few conversions in his neighborhood, and in the second year, with the aid of his catechumens, built a wooden chapel, ninety feet long by thirty broad. He was now able, when the tribes assembled in the spring and autumn, to converse with them, and preach to them. They invited him to visit them in their own countries, often many hundreds of miles distant; and these visits involved long and perilous journeys, in which he several times nearly perished. In the fourth year he began building a large church, surmounted by a steeple, from which he swung a [{567}] large bell, which he procured from Europe through the agents of the company. It was regarded as a supernatural phenomenon by the savages when "the sound of the church-going bell" was heard for the first time to boom over their primeval forests. As soon as a savage became his catechumen, he taught him to read, at the same time that he instructed him in religion. The soil was gradually cultivated, crops were reared, and cows and sheep introduced. In the tenth year a second priest was sent to his aid, who was able to carry on his work for him at home while he was absent on distant missions.
There are thirteen distinct tribes inhabiting British America, and Mgr. Faraud devotes a chapter to the distinctive characteristics of each. But a general idea of these savages may be easily arrived at. Most of us are familiar with the lively descriptions of the red man in the attractive novels of Mr. Fenimore Cooper; and, though the stories are fiction, these portraits of the Indians are drawn to the life. We have most of us been struck by their taciturnity, their profound dissimulation, the perseverance with which they follow up their plans of revenge, the pride which prevents them from betraying the least curiosity, the stoical courage with which they brave their enemies in the midst of the most horrible sufferings, their caution, their cruelty, the extraordinary keenness and subtlety of their senses. The Indian savage is profoundly selfish; gratitude and sympathy for others do not seem to enter into the composition of his nature. The same stubborn fortitude with which he endures suffering seems to render him indifferent to it in others. Intellectually he is slow in his power of conception and process of reasoning, but is endowed with a marvellous power of memory and reflection. He has a great fluency of speech, which often rises to real eloquence; and there is a gravity and maturity in his actions which is the fruit of meditation and thought. Cases of apostasy in religion are very rare among the Indians. A savage visited Mgr. Faraud soon after his arrival at Atthabaska. He had come from the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where his tribe dwelt, a distance of above six hundred miles, and asked some questions on religious subjects. After listening to the priest's instruction on a few fundamental truths, "I shall come to you again," he said, "when you can talk like a man; at present you talk like a child." Three years afterward he kept his promise; and immediately on arriving he presented himself to the priest, and placed himself under instruction. On leaving after the first instruction, he assembled a number of heathen savages, at a short distance in the forest, and preached to them for several hours. This continued for many weeks. In the morning he came for instruction; in the afternoon he preached the truths he had learned in the morning to his countrymen. Mgr. Faraud had the curiosity to assist unseen at one of these sermons, and was surprised to hear his own instruction repeated with wonderful accuracy and in most eloquent language. In this way a great number of conversions were made; and the instructions given to one were faithfully communicated to the rest by this zealous savage. The name of this savage was Dénégonusyè. When the time arrived for his tribe to return to their own country, the priest proposed that he should receive baptism. "No," he said; "I have done nothing as yet for Almighty God. In a year you shall see me here again, and prepared for baptism." Punctual to his promise, he returned the following spring. In the mean time he had converted the greater portion of his tribe; he had taught them to recite the prayers the priest had taught him; and he brought the confessions of all the people who had died in the mean time among his own people, which he had received on their death-beds, and which his wonderful memory enabled him now to repeat word for word to the [{568}] priest, baking him to give them absolution. Dénégonusyè was now told to prepare for baptism; but he again insisted on preliminaries. First, that he was to take the name of Peter, and wait to receive his baptism on St. Peter's day--"Because," he said, "St. Peter holds the keys of heaven, and is more likely to open to one who bears his name and is baptized on his feast;" secondly, that he was to be allowed to fast before his baptism forty days and nights, as our Blessed Lord did. On the vigil of St. Peter's day he was so weak that he walked with difficulty to the church; but on the feast, before daybreak, he knocked loudly at the priests door and demanded baptism. He was told to wait till the mass was finished. When mass was over, the priest was about to preach to the people; but Dénégonusyè stood up and cried out, "It is St. Peter's day; baptize me." The priest calmed the murmurs which arose from the congregation at this interruption, and the eyes of all were suddenly drawn to the figure of this wild neophyte of the woods standing before the altar to receive the waters of regeneration. A ray of light seemed to play round his head and rest upon him, as though the Holy Ghost were impatient to take up his abode in this new temple.
Cases are not unfrequent of "half-caste" Indians reared in the woods as savages claiming baptism from the priest as their "birthright." They have never met a priest before, nor ever seen their Catholic parent. They are not Christians, and do not know even the most elementary doctrines of the church. Yet they have this strange faith (as they say "by inheritance") through some mysterious transmission of which God alone knows the secret. One of these "half-castes" met Mgr. Faraud one day as he was travelling through the forest, and asked him to baptize him. "I have the faith of my father," he said, "and demand my birthright." Then, inviting him to his house, he added: "My wife also desires baptism." The priest accompanied him to his hunting-lodge, and was presented to his wife, a young savage lady of some twenty years. She was a veritable Amazon, a perfect model of symmetry of form and feminine grace; there was a savage majesty in her gestures and gait; she was a mighty huntress, tamed the wildest steeds, and was famed far and near for her prowess with the bow and spear. She welcomed the stranger with courtesy, and immediately presented him with a basket full of the tongues of elks which had been the spoil of her bow in the chase of the previous day. But as soon as she learned the errand on which he had come, her manner changed to profound reverence, and, throwing herself on her knees with hands clasped in the attitude of prayer, she asked him for a crucifix, "to help me in my prayers," she said. The Indians do not pray. Her husband did not know one article of the creed. Who taught her to pray?--to venerate a priest?--to adore the mystery of the cross?--to desire baptism, and yearn for admission to the unity of God's church?