16 



what is said to be very pure Cree. 



The Rev. William and Mrs. Mason, 

 in like manner, translated the New 

 Testament into the Cree language. 

 Mrs. Mason was a Miss Thomas, from 

 Red River, and when dying of coin- 

 sumption in London, England, she was 

 propped up in bed to continue her 

 labors, so great was her anxiety to see 

 the translation finished. 



The Rev. James Evans, a missionary 

 of the Wesleyan Methodist church, to 

 the Indians, is well known as the 

 inventor of the Cree syllabic charac- 

 ters, which has done so much to sim- 

 plify the instruction of the Indian and 

 is generally used throughout the 

 Northwest. When Lord Dufferin was 

 on one occasion shown a Cree syllabic 

 testament he was lost im admiration, 

 and said, "The nation has given many 

 a man a title, a pension, and a last 

 resting place in Westminster Abbey 

 who never did half so much for his 

 fellow creatures as did the inventor of 

 that alphabet." 



The Rev. Father Lacombe has also 



added much to the study of Indian 

 tongues by his French-Cree dictionary- 



Conclusion. 



Such were some of the efforts made 

 to promote the higher intellectual life" 

 in Red River and the Northwest. They 

 fully dispose of the accusation brought 

 by someone against the officers of the 

 Hudson's Bay Co. that "there was not 

 a man among them that had a soul 

 above a beaver skin." All honor to 

 the men and women who thus faith- 

 fully endeavored to make the wilder- 

 ness rejoice and 'blossom as the rose. 



The transfer of Rupert's Land from 

 the rule of the Hudson's Bay Co. to that 

 of the Canadian government brought 

 many changes to the Red River set- 

 tlement, but we of the present day owe 

 much to that past regime. The edu- 

 cational ambition and literary taste 

 of these early days have permeated 

 our modern ideas and we can at least 

 point to three of our prominent educa- 

 tional institutions as having had their 

 root in "Early Red River Culture." 



