BULL. 30] 



MISSIONS 



905 



toiigreat j^athering of the tn))eson Iowht 

 Fmser r. In the following year, 1<S4'J, by 

 arrangement with the local JIudson'H P>ay 

 Co. oflicerH, he aeconipanii^d tiie annual 

 .sujjply caravan on itw return from Ft 

 Vancouver, on the {'(iluml)ia, to tiie re- 

 mote northern jtosts^. On this trip, as- 

 cending the Columbia and jjanning over 

 to the Franer, he visited successively the 

 Okinagan, Kamloops, Shuswap, and 

 Takulii or Carriers, l)efore arriving at 

 theii- destination at Ft St Jameson Stuart 

 lake. Return was made in th(> following 

 spring, and on di'scendiiig the Fraser he 

 found that the Shuswai) had already 

 erected a chapel. 



In the meantime de Smet and the Jes- 

 uits had arrived (see Columbia Region And 

 Interior^ Statfi^—Flathmds) in the Colum- 

 bia region, and between 1841 and 1844 

 had established a chain of missions 

 throughout the territory, including three 

 in British Colund)ia, 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 chapels or mission 

 stations in British Columbia, the north- 

 ernmost being that among the Carriers, 

 at Stuart Lake. In 1843 the first Hudson 

 Bay post had been established on Van- 

 couver id. at Camosun, 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 l^rought over by the officers in 

 charge to assist in winning the good will 

 of their Indian neighbors. 



The Jesuit prosperity was short lived. 

 Owing to difficulty of communication and 

 pressing need in other fields, it was found 

 necessary to abandon the British Co- 

 lumbia missions, exi-ej^t for an occasional 

 visiting priest, until the work was regu- 

 larly taken up by the ( )blates in 1865 by 

 the establishment of St Joseph mission 

 near Williams lake, on the upper Fraser, 

 by Rev. J. INI. ^IcCuckin, first missionary 

 to the Tsilkotin tribe. Within the next 

 few years he extended his ministrations 

 to the remoter Sekani and Skeena. In 

 187.3 the Stuart Lake mission was reestab- 

 lished by Fathers Lejacq and Blanchet, 

 and in 1885 was placed in charge of Father 

 A. G. Morice, Oblate, 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 



i)f 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 grannnar, nu- 

 merous religious and miscellaneous trans- 

 lations, an Indian journal, scientific 

 papers, 'Notes on the Western Denes' 

 (1893), 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 Shuswa]) Indians since 1880, is also 

 noted as the inventor of a successful 

 shorthand system, by means of which 

 those antl 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 jtress in his own 

 stenographic characters. Another dis- 

 tinguished veteran of tlie same order is 

 Bishop Paul Durieu, since 1854 vmtil his 

 recent death, laboring successively among 

 the tribes of Washington, Vancouver id. 

 (Ft Rupert, in Kwakiutl territory), and 

 Fraser r. 



Episeo})al work began in 1857 with, the 

 remarkable and sui'cesslul missionary 

 enterprise undertaken i)y Mr William 

 Duncan among the Tsimshian at Metla- 

 katia, first in British Columbia and later 

 in Alaska. The Tsimshian at that time 

 were among the fiercest and most de- 

 graded savages of the N. W. coast, 

 slavery, human 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 2,300, opened his first school 

 in June, 1858. By courage and devotion 

 through danger and difficulty he built 

 up a civilized Christian body, which in 

 1860 he colonized to the number of about 

 340 in a regular town estal)lished at Met- 

 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 comjielled, in 1887, 

 to abandon their town and improvements 



