[BURWASH] GIFT TO A NATION 11 
His success with his school and the mission village was now com- 
plete. To read and write became as we have seen the common attain- 
ment of the great mass of the people. In fact so easy was this attain- 
ment that many could master it in a day and the average in a week. 
This was the first cause of success. But a still more potent influence 
was its appeal to the imagination and ambition of the people. Their 
curiosity was awakened by the fact that a piece of birch bark could 
“talk.” And the mystery was not, like that of the medicine man, a 
hidden thing forbidden to any but the chosen few. All were invited 
to understand how this new thing was done; and all became ambitious 
to know for themselves. By this time, too, the tribes in all directions 
were becoming anxious to know the white man’s religion. They had 
learned the superiority of the white man’s implements to those used 
by their fathers, and had availed themselves of them. Now they were 
carrying that conception of superiority back to his religion. The white 
man’s god had given him these better things, and hence they wished 
to know something of his religion. And the new books told of this. 
Again the music which accompanied the hymns was the discovery of 
a new faculty to the Indian mind. Their exquisite ear and their 
melodious voices were totally unknown even to themselves, and, like 
a little child taking its first few steps, the new exercise filled them with 
delight. Under these circumstances the new accomplishment of read- 
ing and writing spread with amazing rapidity. The people did not 
wait for teachers or for schools. They taught each other. Every man 
who acquired the new art imparted his knowledge to others, and in a 
short time we hear of men who could read and write as far north as 
Fort Churchill and as far west as the Rockies. Books were thus called 
for and the jack press and the home made type could not possibly supply 
the demand. 
At this time the brother of Mr. Evans was in England on business 
connected with the Canadian Mission and to him Mr. Evans sent speci- 
mens of his rude type and an account of his work and its needs, and he, 
Dr. Ephriam Evans, with Dr. Hoole, succeeded in gaining permission 
- from the authorities of the Company in London to send a printing 
press and type to the mission station in the Hudson’s Bay Territory. 
Thus another important step in advance was gained. 
The next and final step was the supply of a literature. Of native 
material for literature there was but little. Poetry and music, the two 
earliest arts by which history is transmitted, had not been developed. 
The medicine man contributed not to the intelligence but to the super- 
stition of the people. The orator sought not for the transmission of 
his words to coming generations, but for their effect in present action. 
Thus if we except a few myths, there was nothing to put into permanent 
