APPENDIX. 407 

 PACIFIC. 



Fort Simpson . Mr. William Duncan, 1856. 



21 Country-bom and Native Teachers in addition to the above- 

 mentioned. 



At Home . . . Rev. William Mason, 1840. 



V. 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS WEST OF 

 RED RIVER. 



In 1830, Bishop Provencher went to Canada, with a view to 

 induce his church to commence missionary operations in Rupert's 

 Land, west of Red River, and returned the following year with 

 his first missionary, Mr. <3r. Belcourt. This gentleman at once 

 set himself to acquire the Salteaux dialect, as he was to begin 

 with that tribe, being nearest at hand. He mastered the lan- 

 guage thoroughly, and commenced operations above Lane's Fort, 

 at a point which still bears his name. He baptized a number, 

 and the mission got a good start under his management. Others 

 followed him and laboured in hope, but after years of anxious 

 care and toil, the results were not satisfactory. The death of 

 Mr. Darveau, who succeeded Mr. Belcourt, and the better dis- 

 position of the Indians elsewhere, induced Bishop Provencher 

 reluctantly to abandon that mission. At present there are no Ca- 

 tholic missions in, or immediately around the settlement : they 

 are all in the interior. It is the universal experience of the 

 missionaries, that the Indians in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of white settlements are much more degraded and less disposed 

 to spiritual matters, than those far from the whites. In 1842 the 

 Roman Catholic missions fairly began. In that year M. Thibeault 

 was sent forth, and was followed in 1844 by Messrs. Lafleche 



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