[BURWASH] GIFT TO A NATION 15 
apart from this personal effort and occasional assistance, he commenced 
at an early period to gather around him a band of helpers with special 
reference to the work of teaching, printing and translating. There was 
abundant evidence that the printed page could outstrip the missionary 
himself in reaching the more distant tribes, and that with the aid of 
the printing press and the writing more rapid progress could be made 
in mission work. So there was gathered at Norway House, around 
the school and printing press, Henry B. Steinhauer, Thomas Hassell, 
John Sinclair, and later William Mason to superintend the work while 
Evans was absent on his distant journeys. Hassell and Steinhauer 
were Indians. Hassell was a Chippewayan who had been educated 
sufficiently to become a successful teacher and could “speak Cree, 
French and English fluently.” Steinhauer had been thoroughly 
educated in Upper Canada at the Mission School, at Cazenovia Semi- 
nary and at Victoria College, where he had obtained some knowledge 
of Greek and Hebrew as well as a very thorough English education. 
From nine years of age until twenty his whole time had been spent at 
school excepting two years passed in teaching. His very superior 
natural gifts had thus been thoroughly cultivated by educational 
advantages, and Archdeacon Kirby was very much mistaken when in 
later years he spoke of him as “not” an “educated man.” His accuracy 
of scholarship was such that Dr. Richey, principal of the college, en- 
trusted him with the proof reading of a work published during his last 
year in college. John Sinclair was the son of a Hudson Bay officer 
and his mother was a Cree woman, and his education such that he 
also was able not only to translate into his mother tongue the Cree, 
but also to take part as interpreter. In 1843 Mr. Mason married the 
daughter of a Hudson Bay officer by a Cree mother. Mrs. Mason had 
also the advantage of a good education and of Cree as her mother 
tongue. At an early period of his work Mr. Evans was thus surrounded 
by an efficient band of helpers in the work of teaching, translating and 
preaching. Steimhauer was the first of these brought from Lac la Pluie 
to assist Evans. As early as August 1840, while he was still at Lac la 
Pluie with Mason, Mr. Mason thus writes of him, “Mr. Steinhauer is 
exceedingly useful to the Mission as translator, interpreter and school- 
master. He has translated the Liturgy which we use twice a day. I 
sincerely hope that we shall have ere long the Scriptures and some 
elementary books translated and printed in good Indian, not for English- 
men, but for the Indians.”’ This work was not in Cree, but in his native 
tongue the Ojibway. But at some date in 1843, he was transferred to 
Norway House, there to assist Evans in the work of teaching and 
translating, and in 1844 he was followed by Mason and his wife. 
