BOLL. 30] 



MISSIONS 



905 



to a great gathering of the tribes on lower 

 Fraser r. In the following year, 1842, by 

 arrangement with the local Iludson's Bay 

 Co. officers, he accompanied the annual 

 supply caravan on its return from Ft 

 Vancouver, on the Columbia, to the re- 

 mote northern posts. On this trip, as- 

 cending the Columbia and passing over 

 to the Fraser, he visited successivelj' the 

 Okinagan, Kamloops, Shuswap, and 

 Takulli or Carriers, before arriving at 

 their destination at Ft St James on Stuart 

 lake. Return was made in the following 

 spring, and on descending the Fraser he 

 found that the Shuswap had already 

 erected a chapel. 



In the meantime de Smet and the Jes- 

 uits had arrived (see Colunibia Jiegioii and 

 Interior Slates — Flatlieails) in the (^olum- 

 bia region, and between 1841 and 1844 

 had established a chain of missions 

 throughout the territory, including three 

 in British Columbia, among the Kute- 

 nai, Shuswap, and Okinagan. De Smet 

 himself extended his visitations to the 

 headwaters of the Athabasca, while in 

 1845-47 Father John Nobili, laboring 

 among the upper tribes, penetrated to the 

 Babines on the lake of that name. In 

 1847 there were seven chajjcls or mission 

 stations in British Columl)ia, the north- 

 ernmost being that among the Carriers, 

 at Stuart Lake. In 1848 the first Hudson 

 Bay post had been establislied on Van- 

 couver id. at Camosnn, now Victoria, 

 and the beginning of missionary work 

 among the Songish and the Cowichan was 

 made by the secular priest, Father John 

 Bolduc, already well known among the 

 Sound tribes, who had for this reason 

 been brought over by the officers in 

 charge to assist in winning the good will 

 of their Indian neighbors. 



The Jesuit prosperity was short hved. 

 Owing to difficulty of communication and 

 pressing need in other fields, it was found 

 necessary to abandon the British Co- 

 lumbia missions, excei)t for an occasional 

 visiting priest, until the work was regu- 

 larly taken up l)y tlie Oblates in 1865 by 

 the estal)lishment of St Joseph mission 

 near Williams lake, on the upper Fraser, 

 by Rev. J. i\I. McGuckin, first missionary 

 to the Tsilkotin tril)e. Witliin the next 

 few years he extended his ministrations 

 to the remoter Sekani and Skeena. In 

 1873 the Stuart Lake mission was reestab- 

 lished by Fathers Lejacq and Blanchet, 

 and in 1885 was placed in charge of Father 

 A. G. Morice, 01)late, the distinguished 

 ethnologist and author, who had already 

 mastered the Tsilkotin language in three 

 years' labor in the tribe. Aside from his 

 missionary labor proper, which still con- 

 tinues, he is perhaps best known as the 

 inventor of the Dene syllabary, by means 

 of which nearly all the Canadian Indians 



of the great Athapascan stock are now 

 able to read and write in their own lan- 

 guage. His other works include a Tsil- 

 kotin dictionary, a Carrier grammar, nu- 

 merous religious and miscellaneous trans- 

 lations, an Indian journal, scientific 

 papers, 'Notes on the Western Denes' 

 (1898), and a 'History of the Northern 

 Interior of British Columbia' (1904). 

 Father J. M. Le Jeune, of the same order, 

 stationed among the Thompson River 

 and Shuswap Indians since 1880, is also 

 noted as the inventor of a successful 

 shorthand system, by means of which 

 those and other cognate tribes are now 

 able to read in their own languages. He 

 is also the author of a number of religious 

 and text books in the same languages and 

 editor of a weekly Indian journal, the 

 'Kamloops Wawa,' all of which are 

 printed on a copying jsress in his own 

 stenographic characters. Another dis- 

 tinguished veteran of the same order is 

 Bishop Paul Durieu, since 1854 until his 

 recent death, laboring successively among 

 the tribes of Washington, V'ancouver id. 

 (Ft Rupert, in Kwakiutl territory), and 

 Fraser r. 



Episcopal work began in 1857 with the 

 remarkable and successful missionary 

 enterprise undertaken by Mr William 

 Duncan among the Tsimshian at Metla- 

 katla, first in British Coluinl)ia and later 

 in x\laska. The Tsimshian at that time 

 were among the fiercest and most de- 

 graded savages of the N. W. coast, 

 slavery, liuman sacrifice, and cannibal- 

 ism being features of their tribal system, 

 to which they were rapidly adding all 

 the vices introduced by the most de- 

 praved white men from the coasting ves- 

 sels. Moved by reports of their miser- 

 able condition Mr Duncan voluntarily 

 resigned a remunerative position in Eng- 

 land to offer himself as a worker in their 

 behalf under the auspices of the London 

 Church Missionary Society. He arrived 

 at Ft Simpson, n. coast of British Colum- 

 bia, in Oct. 1857, and after some months 

 spent in learning the language and mak- 

 ing acquaintance with the tribe, then 

 numbering 2,800, opened his first school 

 in June, 1858. By courage and devotion 

 through danger and difficulty he built 

 up a civilized Cliristian body, which in 

 1860 he colonized to the numl)er of about 

 340 in a regular town established at I\Iet- 

 lakatla, an abandoned village site 16 m. 

 s. of Ft Simpson. By systematic im- 

 provement of every industrial oppor- 

 tunity for years the town had grown to a 

 prosperous, self-supporting community of 

 1,000 persons, when, by reason of dif- 

 ficulties with the local bishop, upheld 

 by the colonial government, Mr Duncan 

 and his Indians were compelled, in 1887, 

 to abandon their town and improvements 



