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The Indian Mission at Prince Albert,
on the Saskatchewan (where there are now several thriving churches) was an
overflow from the religious and educational life of Kildonan. In 1861 the
Rev. James Nisbet came from Oakville, Ontario, to help Dr. Black in the
growing work of the West, and after five years in and about the colony,
where he is still affectionately remembered, went 500 miles north-westward
and founded a mission, to which he gave the name of the Prince Consort.
With that mission the old home of the writer was closely connected, for to
it there went at that time two sisters and a brother: Mary, the wife of
Mr. Nisbet, the missionary; Christina, the wife of John McKay, then the
interpreter; and Adam, who was to teach the school, together with other
relatives and connections. When the whites had settled around Prince
Albert, John McKay went farther afield as an Indian missionary, and a few
personal recollections of James Nisbet and John McKay may fittingly close
the present volume.
My earliest recollection of Mr.
Nisbet is on the day of my mother’s funeral, which took place
on my fifth birthday, but some scenes
of which are indelibly photographed on my memory. I can see yet the old
house crowded, and then the long procession that carried out with it the
dust of her whose death made a blank in my life, whose greatness I
realized, not then, but more and more as the years have flown. My father,
who was heart-broken, was not able to go to the churchyard, but as the
funeral procession passed out he went down a little way on the field to
have a last look at the coffin borne away on the shrouded bier. I can see
him returning bent and in tears. With
him was Mr. Nisbet, and as they walked Mr. Nisbet took
the Scotch plaid he himself wore (for it was early winter) and placed it
around the stooping shoulders of my father. Even then it impressed itself
on my mind as a thoughtful, kind act, but as I grew in years and knew Mr.
Nisbet more intimately, I feel that it was a pre-eminently
spontaneous deed,
and thoroughly characteristic of one who to the end of his days was a "son
of consolation."
I next remember him
at the carpenter’s bench, engaged in making the desks for the present
Kildonan school, one day on which I was sent for him from his home,
failing an elder messenger. I can see him, hatless and coatless, with the
beads of perspiration on his brow, doing his own work and directing the
other workmen how to follow the plans he had prepared. Next I can remember
vaguely (for all these intermittent photographs are not equally distinct)
the preparation for the outgoing to the Indian mission, and on the day of
the departure I recall seeing my sister, Mrs. Nisbet, in the old home,
giving a glass of milk to their eldest born, little more than an infant,
with whom they were setting out on a wagon and cart journey they knew not
whither.
There, in that Indian
mission, Mr. Nisbet toiled, erecting buildings with his own hands,
teaching and preaching as he had opportunity, struggling amidst the lights
and shadows of a difficult life, till he and his wife returned to my
father’s house utterly broken down by the strain of their labors, and died
there only a few days apart. During the years at Prince Albert they made
several trips home, and one winter was spent in Oakville, where his
sisters lived, and where he left two of his children at school; but the
journeys across the great plains were more wearing almost than the work at
the mission. It would appear from the experience of Mr. Nisbet that the
best people in the world are liable to be misunderstood—the servant is not
greater than his Lord—for even when his life was being slowly worn away by
his missionary toil, certain people, in the press and elsewhere, made
attacks on his method of work at the mission. I remember well how heavily
this lay upon him, and with what warmth of conscious innocence he publicly
and privately defended his course and the action of those associated with
him. Next I recall, his coming back to my father’s house for the last
time, both he and his wife worn out and run down as those who had worked
beyond their strength and time. They had both been ill before they left
Prince Albert, and the long trip of 300 miles across the prairie in the
jolting canvas-covered wagons was a trying one even to people who were
strong.
When they arrived,
Mr. Nisbet, though weaker than any one knew, was riding slowly in front on
horseback, while his wife was in the wagon just behind. He rode up to the
door and dismounted, and I remember well how he tried to engage my
father’s attention, and stood between him and the wagon when my brother
went and carried from it the frail
body of my sister, who was scarcely able to put
her arms about his neck as he lifted her from that poor bed and carried
her into the old home to die. For her the end was not long delayed, and
after she had lost consciousness I remember how calmly, to outward
appearance, her husband waited for the end, counting her feeble pulsebeats
with his watch in hand, while all the while the sword of a great sorrow
was slowly piercing through his heart. When all was over the husband rose,
and as he and my father stood together I remember how Mr. Nisbet said, "I
hope you all feel that I acted for the best when I brought Mary back
home," and the answer of my father, whose heart had yearned to see her ere
he died, need not be recorded. Long years before he too, had stood beside
a Mary (that was my mother’s name), and had watched the passing of her
spirit into the unseen, where his gaze was fixed with a growing
home-sickness as the shadows were lengthening around him and the ties of
earth were being broken one by one.
Not many days
after that Mr. Nisbet gave way before the brief illness that carried his
frail life out also. His room was in one end of the big farm-house, and
when he fell ill at night no one knew of it till the daybreak, for all had
thought that he but needed rest to restore him to full strength. In the
morning, as he came out to the dining-room, I recall how he told of
suffering during the night, and how he, who always looked for
opportunities to enforce the teaching of the Word, said, "I can understand
now what the Psalmist meant when he said, ‘My soul waiteth for the Lord
more than they that watch for the morning, yea, more than they that watch
for the morning.’" A few days later he died of a diphtheritic trouble,
which his weakened system could not resist, and iu the newly-covered grave
of his wife his dust was laid to rest. Over them the General Assembly of
1887 erected a granite column, such as their relatives, poor in worldly
goods, had never hoped to see, but in the immeasurable influence they
exerted on many whose lives have been consecrated to the service of God,
in the noble record of their selfdenying labors, and in the enduring work
at Prince Albert, we see their grandest and divinest monument.
Beside Mr. Nisbet, as we look back
along the line of our church history in the West, we see the figure of the
late Rev. John McKay, at one time the interpreter and general provider at
Prince Albert, and latterly the missionary on the Mistawasis Reserve, near
Fort Carleton. From my earliest childhood I remember his physical
appearance and the characteristics which made him so successful in the
Indian work. A powerfully-built man, with great breadth of shoulder and
immense depth of chest, muscular and athletic, dark-skinned and
raven-haired, with aquiline nose and piercing black eyes—his whole
physical make-up commended him to the Indians, who adore physical strength
and prowess. Moreover, he was of the half-blood—his father Scotch, his
mother a pure Cree—and united in himself the courage and energy of the
white with the skill and endurance of the Indian. This made him one of the
class whose presence in this country has been invaluable as, standing
midway between the white and the red man, they constituted a medium of
communication and a guarantee of good faith that led to peaceful solutions
of the questions that arose between them.
In the case of John McKay himself,
every one who is familiar with the history of this country knows how he
assisted the late Governor Morris in arranging the Indian treaties in the
West, and in securing a peace and good-will that would have been
impossible without his help and the help of men of his class. Down to the
time of death he retained an unrivalled influence over the Indians, as
witnessed by the fact that in 1885, though the rebellion broke out at Duck
Lake, not far from the Reserve, the old chief Mistawasia not only resisted
the incitement of Riel's runners and remained loyal, but with a picked
band of men escorted the missionary’s family to Prince Albert, and there
offered his services to the Government. When John McKay first went to
Prince Albert his main duty was to supply the mission with the products of
the chase, and since he had been used to the prairie from his childhood he
found this a congenial task. He was an experienced buffalo hunter and a
dead shot, though I often heard him express his abhorrence of the way in
which the buffalo were slaughtered for the love of gain by hunters, who
simply took the tongue and hide of the slain animal. All these qualities,
with his intimate acquaintance with the language and customs of the
Indians, gave him unbounded control over them in ways which proved of
great service in all lines of his work. The possession of courage is
always a sure passport to the respect of the Indians, and that John McKay
had that courage, they were taught in a great many ways. In the earlier
days of Prince Albert, roving bands of strange Indians used frequently to
come to the mission and make heavy and peremptory demands for food on the
meagre supply, with threats of extermination if they were not satisfied.
One spring, when preparations were on hand for the sowing season, and the
oxen were tied in the hay-yard, a large crowd of Indjans from a distance
came and demanded an ox for a feast. One young animal was given them, but
after a while they came back, and indicating a certain ox, the choicest
and biggest of all, and hence the most prized for the spring work, they
requested that he be given them. The demand was refused—for to give way
there meant, to any one who knows the Indian, a giving way all around—and
explanation made that this ox could not be spared. But the Indians
"uncoated" their guns, strung
their bows, and with violent demonstrations (such as they calculate will
frighten people), said they were going to take the ox in any case. McKay
reasoned with them as long as he could, but in vain, and when further
parley was useless, he stepped
within his door and returned rifle in hand. Indicating a certain post
between the Indians and the coveted ox, he spoke to them as follows:
"I have your blood in my veins and
you are my brothers; but I have also the blood of the white, and therefore
I am more prudent than you are. We must have food here for our families,
and cannot give away all our animals, or we cannot sow our fields. We have
always done, and will always do our best for you; but now, I have drawn a
line at that post; you know my rifle never misses, and I tell you that the
first man who crosses that line will drop." None of them made the attempt,
and from that time onward McKay had more influence over them than ever
before.
Some years afterwards, when Prince
Albert became largely a white settlement, he moved out to the Mistawasis
Reserve (for his heart was in the Indian work), was ordained by permission
of the Assembly a minister of the Gospel, and ministered there till his
death with great success. He was a natural-born orator, and had all the
dramatic eloquence of the Indian with the fire and intenseness of the
Colt. The old chief Mistawasis was his sworn friend, and the work done on
the reserve has on it the stamp of enduring reality. An incident I heard
him relate on his last visit to Kildonan has always seemed to me a
striking instance of the way in which the psalmody and hymnology
of the Church attests its oneness. After the 1885 rebellion a number
of the loyal chiefs, amongst them Mistawasis and his old friend Star
Blanket, were taken to the East, and were greatly impressed with the
evidences of power and progress they saw in the haunts of the white man.
On his return, Mistawasis met John McKay at Qu’Appelle, and they spent the
night together. Mainly, their talk was on religious work, and Mistawasis
told the missionary how they had attended some great meeting and
afterwards were invited to a reception in the home of one of the Christian
workers, The chief said there were many ladies and gentlemen present who
sang and played on "singing machines" (pianos). and that finally they
asked him and Star Blanket to sing. "I thought," said Mistawasis, "I
should have sunk into the ground for bashfulness, but I said to Star
Blanket that we must sing after all their kindness to us. I told him we
would sing the church song the missionary taught us, and so we began, but
what do you think? I had scarcely begun when one of the ladies ran, to the
singing machine and began to play, and all the people joined in the same
song, but I was leading the whole band. Now what puzzles me is how these
people there knew the same church song we sing away out on the prairie."
The explanation the missionary gave, and which greatly delighted the
chief, was that God’s children are everywhere a singing. people, because
their hearts are glad, and that the song was the 100th psalm which they
had learned in Cree to the old tune, and which the people in the East had
learned in English to the same.
John McKay died a few years since as
the result of exposure to the great
hardships of his life on the plains, but his
influence for good lives on amongst the dusky tribes of the Saskatchewan. |
