Project Canterbury

 The Red Indians of the Plains
Thirty Years' Missionary Experience in the Saskatchewan
by the Rev. John Hines

London: SPCK, 1919.


Chapter XIV. The Pas (3)

HAVING erected school chapels, which served the dual purpose of Church and school at Red Earth, Shoal Lake, and Moose Lake, I also fixed up buildings for school purposes at Cumberland and Cedar Lake, so that for a number of years the Government paid the diocese an annual rent of £40 a year for buildings that had cost the Church funds nothing to erect. I also built a Church at Cedar Lake, and I paid for more than half the cost of the material used in the erection of a new dwelling house for the Cedar Lake missionary, as well as all the labour employed on both buildings. In all these buildings I was assisted only by Indian labour, and I would like to add that some of my Indians at the Pas, who used to travel about with me, became quite expert carpenters, as were also some of the Indians and half-breeds at Grand Rapids.

The next building of importance I undertook to erect was the Church at Cumberland. The picture of this Church will not stand severe criticism, but it is the only one I have of the place. Whilst building this Church I was severely afflicted with boils, in fact, I suffered from boils all the time I was at the Pas, but on this occasion I had no less than three at one time on my neck. These prevented me from moving my head about, and when I wanted to inspect the work being done on the walls or roof, or when called upon for advice, I was put to the necessity of going to see what was wanted, as I was unable to raise my head above a certain angle.

During the building of this Church I sent the resident missionary to the Pas to take my services, and I did his visiting work in the evenings after the hours for carpentering work was over, as well as his Sunday duties; so that sixteen hours each day I was fully employed, and the rest day for others meant only a change of work for me, and it was hardly to be wondered at that I felt my health was giving way. Before I got rid of the plague of boils I must have had over a hundred which continued over a period of eight or ten years and attacked me on every part of my body. I have often wondered if any one ever had a boil in the right place? With all my experience of boils they seemed to be always in the way. Some people tried to console me by assuring me that boils were a sign of good health; it may have been wrong of me, but frequently I found myself saying that I wished I was not quite so healthy.

My next building exploit was a school chapel at Birch River. The community here, though Indians, were not treated as such. They had formerly been under treaty and belonged to the Pas band, but after a time they commuted and received either a sum of money from the Government or a gift of land in lieu of their treaty rights. But this change did not benefit them in the least, for what they received from the Government was soon spent, and then they became as if they were fatherless children. They had been born and brought up as Indians, and lived entirely on the proceeds of the trap and the gun, so that after they had disposed of that which the Government had granted them, they were worse off than their friends who remained in treaty; for their method of living was the same, minus the annual help that was meted out to the treaty Indians by the department. The gifts I received from the lady I met at Bedford helped me to erect the building at Birch River and support a teacher for the children; and this mission, like the mission at Red Earth, did not cost the C.M.S. nor the diocese a cent up to the time of my leaving. This made the tenth building I had erected since I took charge of the Pas district, eight of which were paid for out of the funds I had given me as the result of my appeal whilst on furlough in England; so merciful was the good Hand of my God upon me.

The next and last place to claim my attention was Grand Rapids. For this Church I had to go to Winnipeg for my materials, which were shipped out across the lake a distance of three hundred miles, and I engaged a carpenter from there to assist me with the building, but had I known how handy some of our people at Grand Rapids were with the saw and plane, I should not have engaged anyone outside the Mission.

I had the seats and reading desk made in Winnipeg and shipped out in sections, and practically all the carpenter did in connection with this building was to put the seats together, make the Communion table and stain and varnish them. It is only right that I should state here, that at each of the places where I erected a Church or a school, the Indians made suitable donations according to their means, such as supplying the logs for walls where logs were used, or giving one day's work on the building when suitable work could be found for them.

The Church has been added to since I left, for it was only completed one month before I left the district. Since then, a tower and small spire have been added to it by the native clergyman to whom this Mission was entrusted. He was a great worker and an expert carpenter, but his bodily strength was not equal to the energy of his mind and will. He was shifted about from place to place where his mechanical skill was most needed by those who must have known of his enfeebled health, as well as of his persevering will, etc., and who ought therefore to have taken the former as well as the latter into consideration, but in the Saskatchewan diocese it was the same as in most other places. It was a case of "whipping the horse that will pull, because it is of no use whipping the horse that won't!" He simply wore himself out and passed away from his earthly labours in, I think, 1911 or 1912. Upon his tombstone might safely be inscribed, "Whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with all his might!"

Having erected eleven buildings in the eastern part of the diocese, viz., two school chapels at the Pas Mountain reserves, a house and church at the Pas, a church and school at Cumberland, a school chapel at Birch River, ditto at Moose Lake, a house and church at Cedar Lake, and a church at Grand Rapids, it only remains to say a few words about the Indians before saying "good-bye" to the district.

In the first place the Pas Indians were very exacting, for in addition to my ministerial work, there being no doctor in the district, we not only had to prescribe but to dispense the medicines sent out by the Government, and the Indians used to come for miles for medicine, arriving at the Mission at any hour, any time between six o'clock in the morning and twelve at night, and sometimes call me out of bed to go and see some one who had met with an accident and chopped his foot, or a child who was described as having lost its oo-sik-oo-win ("saliva"), and often when I have arrived at the house, I have been told in answer to my question as to the condition of the sick party, "Sa-si-pc-toos Is-se Ayow!" meaning the person had improved for the better since the messenger had been dispatched to the Mission. But what annoyed one most was to find on calling a second time to see a sick person the medicine or dressing fetched from the Mission had not been applied. The truth is, the Indian has more faith in beverages made from their native herbs than in what they called the "White man's medicine," and often they allow their friends to be maltreated and on the point of departing this life before they call in the aid of proper medical advice, even when such advice is at hand. It seems impossible to get an Indian to take a course of medicine; he believes in drastic measures, and unless he feels the effect of the second dose of medicine, he loses faith in it and gives up taking it.

The only physic one can rely on them taking (as the power of these they cannot very well dispute) are purgatives and emetics. There seems to be something tangible about these, so to speak, something that appeals to their senses, and so the nature of an Indian after all differs little from that of many a white person who express their sentiments in words like these, "Seeing is believing." But even in purgatives, the Indian is wont to discriminate, preferring castor oil to anything else. Very often mothers would send to the Mission for castor oil for their infants and then come the next day and complain that the medicine had not operated and the child had done nothing but cry ever since it took the medicine, and so my wife would pour out another teaspoonful and hand it to the mother and request her to administer it in her presence. The child, as most children do, objected, and that part of the oil that left the spoon would trickle down the cheek of the child, and then the mother, partly to remove the oil and partly to pacify the child, would give the child a kiss which covered the whole of its check, and in so doing, removed the oil with her lips and then swallowed it herself, and licking the spoon clean, handed back the spoon to my wife--and that is the way the Indian women as a rule give castor oil to their children. After witnessing this performance, we had no difficulty in understanding why the child was not benefited by the previous dose. To overcome this difficulty my wife undertook to show them how to administer a dose of castor oil to a child. She took the child on her knee, wrapped a towel close round its arms and body to keep its hands down, and then putting one of her fingers into the child's mouth, she administered the oil, and I nipped its little nose until it was compelled to take in air through its throat, and with the air, the oil; the after effects I leave my readers to imagine. When one has witnessed an Indian eat, and has seen the quantity of deei's meat he can put away, one would never think the Indian would experience any difficulty in swallowing an ordinary pill, but such is the case with most of the Indians. They do not object to taking pills, but before swallowing them, they chew them up like ordinary food! The Indian, as a rule, has the idea that any kind of medicine is equally good for all complaints, especially the white man's medicine. I remember on one occasion I was steaming up the Saskatchewan River on my way to Prince Albert for building material when, on turning a certain bend of the river, we saw a woman standing on the opposite shore beckoning to us to stop; we did so, and she shouted out she wanted to see me. As the water was shallow on her side of the river we had to anchor the launch and I went ashore in the canoe. When I came up to her she handed me a piece of paper which was dirty and yellow with age, and she asked me to read its contents to her. I unfolded the paper and found it contained the directions given to her by the Government doctor three years previous, telling her how to use the medicine he had prescribed for her child on that particular occasion. I told her what the instructions were, and asked why she wanted me to read them to her. She replied that she did not use the medicine at the time it was given to her, but as another of her children was feeling unwell she thought she would give the medicine to it, but she could not remember how much water she had been told to mix with the dose. I advised her to give the present sick child the water without the medicine, as it might be safer, and left without thanking her for hindering us, as I had 800 miles to travel, build two barges in Prince Albert and a church when I got back again before the end of August.

But apart from these idiosyncrasies, the Pas Indian has many good ideas, and he cannot be beaten as a canoe man, or as a shot on the wing, and the marvel they kill so well is, they hardly ever put more than twenty or twenty-five grains of shot in their guns for a charge. I have witnessed them time and again, when paddling in a canoe on the Saskatchewan River--and, be it remembered, the birch-bark rides very lightly on the water, and the least ripple or movement of the body causes it to wobble--I have seen the Indian take up his gun and wait for the duck to get into such a position that when it is shot it will fall close to if not quite into his canoe. I once saw my steersman as we were steaming up the Carrot River, pick up his gun in a hurry and fire at a duck that was flying towards us, and the duck fell dead on the boat not three feet from the wheel; and from the time he first sighted the duck to the time 'it fell could not have been more than five seconds. The Pas Indians did very little in the way of cultivating the land simply because the country was largely inundated, and those parts that were dry were covered with large boulders; still they did attempt a little gardening, and they went so far in their ambition to farm as to ask the Government to supply them with a team of horses, a plough and harrow, and a mowing machine, to be paid for by the band out of their annuity money, which the reader will remember was one pound per head per annum. But when they got them they could not use them for the plough would strike against a big stone every few yards and this would pull up the horses so suddenly that they became restive and refused to pull at all. and the Indians had to detach them from the plough and pull it themselves. I have before me a picture taken by myself of Indians ploughing in my steersman's garden; he is holding the handles of the plough, his brother is walking beside the plough, holding the beam to help keep it steady, and the other men are hauling it. They had tried to use the horses in the morning, but they had become so restive on account of the jerking they received that it was deemed safer to pull the plough themselves.

The Indians had never been accustomed to use horses, so they experienced the same difficulty when they started to mow their hay, and I have seen the men dragging the machine about the marsh in the same way they can be seen dragging the plough. But what added to the ridiculousness of the latter procedure was, a man rode the machine in the orthodox way to manipulate the levers. This could have been done from the ground and so have made the draft lighter for the men, but they wanted to be as orthodox as possible and so took turns in riding, and only the whip and the reins were dispensed with.

The religious consistency of the Indian is most commendable, and his fearless manner of showing his true colours without being ostentatious is very satisfactory. I remember being at Grand Rapids on one occasion, having gone there to meet my wife and daughter when the latter returned from school in England. The lake boat came in on the Sunday with my wife and daughter on board, and a number of visitors from Winnipeg who had crossed the lake on a pleasure trip. The manager of the lake fleet being oh board he asked me if I could make it convenient to hold a service on the boat in the evening, and he gave the hour of seven as most convenient for them, and I promised to be over in time. I had two services on the opposite side of the river where the Indians resided, and after the second service I had two miles to go to give Holy Communion to a sick person, so before I arrived at the boat the passengers had left and had strolled across the portage. The reason why I appeared to be late is easily explained; the boat was run on Winnipeg time, which was an hour faster than the Saskatchewan time, which we were guided by, so that seven by the boat time was only six by my watch, and although I was at the boat by 6.30 by my watch, according to their calculation I was half an hour late.

There was a man on board, so my wife told me, who had made himself rather objectionable on the journey out by making derogatory references to Indians and the work of missionaries among them, and he with the party had strolled across the portage with the intention of getting the Indians to "run the rapids" with them in their boats. Running the Grand Rapids is very exciting pleasure, and is not accompanied by danger, still many ladies who go to Grand Rapids from Winnipeg do so with the intention of experiencing this excitement. It appears when they reached the other side of the portage they saw a number of my Pas and Cedar Lake Indians. These Indians were engaged during the week taking freight from the tramway to the head of the Halfload Rapids, a distance of fifteen miles, where it was deposited in a warehouse. This was done to save the Company's steamboat contending with the Red Rock and Halfload Rapids that I had to ascend with the Henrietta when I first took her out. But as this was Sunday the Indians were not working, but were sitting about on the banks of the river when the visitors arrived.

The new arrivals soon began strolling about the Indians' camp, and came across a draught board, one the Indians had made themselves. The Indians are very fond of playing at draughts, merely to pass away the time, and they are I am told, quite efficient at the game. Now it so happened that one of the ladies of the party was an exceedingly good player, and when she saw the board her curiosity was aroused, and she asked the manager of the H.B. Company's business at Grand Rapids if the Indians could play the game, and, when she heard they could, she expressed a desire to see their champion player, who, by the way, was one of our lay readers at Cedar Lake, and she offered to play a game with him then and there. When the Indian understood the request he replied, "Madam, we do not play draughts on a Sunday." "Then how do you pass the time away?" she said. "By reading God's Word and singing His praises," he replied. The party then asked the Indians to sing to them, in their own language, two or three hymns, and, after a little consultation among themselves as to which they should sing, they sang "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and "Jesus, Lover of my soul." When the Indians had finished, the visitors sang the same hymns back to them in English, and, as the day was far spent, they each shook hands with their newly-made friends; and the visitors did not run the Rapids as they intended, but walked meditatively back across the portage. When they reached the boat, the gentleman who had said many things against missionary work among the Indians came up to me and said in his brisk manner, "Parson, you did not keep your promise, and we had to leave without the service you promised us; but never mind, we had a better sermon over there on the other side of the portage than you would have given us," and then, in one chorus of voices, they told of their experiences with my Indians. The gentleman who had spoken thoughtlessly about missionary work owned up that he had spoken without knowledge, but never again, no, never again, would he say a word against Christian Indians and the work of missionaries.

Thinking to become even with him, I said, "You had my sermon after all, though second-hand, for what you experienced on the other side of the portage was only the missionary's teaching in operation."

I once heard an officer in the service of the H.B. Company say, and he spoke from many years' experience and knew the Indians well, that he had no desire to live the life of an Indian, meaning to experience his privations and sufferings, but, he added, "I should very much like to die his death," meaning that death had no terrors for the Christian Indian, that he left this world with a sure and certain hope of a welcome on the other side in that land which is "Fairer than day."

My thoughts go back to an old Indian at the Pas who, though a good Christian man, never took any very active part in Church work further than to offer up a prayer at our prayer meetings. He left with two of his married sons at the beginning of April to go into the rat swamps and hunt the musquash, and whilst there he became ill, but the state of the river was such that neither a sleigh nor a canoe could be used, as the ice was expected to break up daily. As soon as the ice had moved out of the river, the sons started to bring their father home in their canoe. They camped the first night on the banks of the Saskatchewan River, about half the way home, the nearest house being fifteen miles away. After the tent was pitched the sons gathered reeds and grass and spread them inside the tent to make a sort of mattress upon which to lay their father, and, having done this, they carried the old man in a blanket from the canoe and placed him on the mattress, and, having made him comfortable, they went outside to prepare food for the evening meal. Whilst in the act of doing this, they heard the old man's voice, and it sounded to them as if some one had entered the tent and the old man was greeting them. So, out of curiosity, one of the sons went to the tent door to see who had arrived, when he beheld his father in a sitting position, with his hands stretched out as if in the attitude of taking hold of some one's hand, but no one was visible. The son asked his father what it was he was wanting, and the old man replied, saying, "My son, why did you speak? My Master had come for me with stretched-out hands, and I was just going to take hold of them and go with Him when you spoke, and when I heard your voice I lost sight of Him, but He will come again soon, I know He will." The son replied that he was deceived, for no one had entered the tent, and he asked whom did he mean by his Master? The old man answered, "My son, whom have I served all my life? is it not Jesus? It was He who came for me, and now I cannot see Him, but He will soon come back, I am sure." After having helped his father to lie down again, he joined his brother at the camp-fire, and, when the meal was prepared, they took something to their father that they thought he might like. But it was too late. Jesus had already returned, and taken His faithful and trusting servant to partake of the fruits of Paradise.

When the body was brought to the Mission, my churchwarden came and told me what I have repeated, and he added, "I have lived near to Isaac B. (the deceased) for many years, and I used to notice him when making or mending his canoe, or sowing his garden seeds in the spring, cease from his labours, and, kneeling down, put himself in the attitude of prayer. Out of curiosity I approached him stealthily to make sure what he was really doing, when, true enough, he was praying. He was asking God's blessing on his labours," and he added, "I have seen him do this many times in the course of the day." Having heard these facts, I ask, "May we not say of this Indian, 'That he walked with God and he was not for God took him.' "

The month of February is one of the most trying months in the year for the Indians who winter at the Pas. The month is usually very cold, with a great deal of wind; and twenty degrees below zero, with the wind blowing at the rate of ten miles an hour, is more painful to endure than forty degrees below when it is calm, and, for some reason which I cannot explain, the fish seem to evade every device for their capture. It is thought that as the water is the coldest at this season of the year, the fish search out the deepest parts of the rivers and lakes, and lie dormant at the bottom. Anyway, it is a trying month for the Indians, and their privations are many and great. Personally, I have known Indians to visit their nets daily for a whole week in the month of February without taking home a single fish.

On one occasion I had watched from my window my old churchwarden overhauling his net; the wind was blowing about thirty miles an hour, and the thermometer registered forty-five degrees of frost; in fact, the cold was so intense that he could not remain exposed on the river more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time without running up to his house to warm up. Finally, about sunset, he had got the end holes cut through the ice, and was overhauling his net, and I walked over to where he was working to see what reward he had received for his labour, but before I reached him I saw him throw on to the snow what proved to be his last fish, and then, placing his hands between his knees, partly, no doubt, to warm them, and with bent head, he began to offer up his prayer of thanksgiving! When I approached near enough to him to enquire about his catch, he replied: "Three, and I was just thanking our Father in Heaven for giving them to me, for now we shall have something to eat to-morrow (Sunday), and shall be able to worship in Church without our minds being distracted by the pangs of hunger." Now, reader, think for a moment what this meant. These three fish (which together weighed about five pounds) was all the family had to carry them through the Sunday, and besides himself and his wife he had five children depending on him for food. Truly, one may ask, what were they among so many, especially when it is known that they had no bread nor any other kind of food in the house. It did not really seem much to be thankful for, yet this Indian was not slow to acknowledge the gift as from God, and at once gave Him thanks.

The number of the page tells me that I ought, as the Americans would say, "quit" writing about the Pas district, but as my object is not so much to tell the reader what I have been instrumental in doing as to set forth the good qualities of our Christian Indians, therefore I must mention two or three more facts before I take the reader with me into my next field of labour.

The year I left the Pas for England to raise funds for building new churches, etc., I met, for the first time. Major MacGibbon at Prince Albert. The Major was a Government official and had a great deal to do with the Indians. He was about to start on a tour of inspection through the Pas district, and knew me by report only (we sat at the same table at the hotel for two meals without intercourse, a very strange occurrence among people travelling in the United States or Canada). Finally, he heard some one mention my name, and he then asked me if I was from the Pas district, and when he heard that I was from that part, he said he was glad to have met me, and proposed our travelling together, but when I informed him that I was on my way to England, he was disappointed. After he had concluded his visit to the Pas he was most satisfied with the work of the Mission, and the conduct of the Indians generally. His visit was entirely of a secular and educational character, as these had to do with the Government, but, having experienced what he had, he could not refrain from sending a report to my Bishop (the present Bishop of Calgary), and the report was of such a nature that the Bishop thought the C.M.S. in England should see it, and so he sent the Major's report on to Salisbury Square. I was on my deputation work at the time, and when I called at the house for fresh orders I was told about the report and asked if I had received a copy. I replied in the negative, and the secretary passed it on to me. It is needless to say that the Committee were both grateful to the Bishop for sending it to them, as also for the nature of the report. The Major, be it known, was a staunch Presbyterian, and therefore nothing but plain facts were stated. He told of his visit through the district, how he had entered nearly every house, and wherever he went he found a reverence for things religious. In most houses he saw texts of Scripture on the walls both in English and in their own language in the Syllabic characters. He noticed in nearly every house a special bracket on the wall, upon which were placed the Cree Bible, the Church Prayer and Hymn-Book, and, removing them from their resting-place, he found they were not there as mere ornaments, but the leaves were turned down in many places, and choice texts were underlined. Upon enquiry he found that reading and daily prayer, accompanied by a hymn, was the common order in every family, whether at home or abroad. He then gave an illustration of this latter fact. He said he engaged two Indians and a canoe at Cumberland to take him through the whole of the district, and, as the reservations were far apart, they made long days when travelling, starting not later than 5 a.m. and not camping before 8 p.m., yet he could safely say that these two men never began their day's work, nor yet retired to rest, without first reading part of a chapter from their Cree Bible, and one or the other engaging in prayer! And the Major added, "My presence did not appear to make any difference to them, they were not ashamed of their religion! It would have been only natural for them, seeing I was the representative of the 'Great praying Queen,' to have waited for me to take the initiative, but no, they looked upon prayer as a duty they owed to God, and their duty to their earthly sovereign did not prevent them rendering to God that which was due to Him! And what could I do?" he added. "I did not understand their language, so what I did was this--I knelt on the banks of the river or the shores of the lake, as the case might be, with them, bowed my head in silence and joined them in thought, and I never felt so much solemnity in any services as I did in these, conducted in the wilds and presided over by these children of nature, but men in Grace!"

The Society and I too thanked God for this independent testimony of its work among the Indians in North-West Canada.

I must now say a few words about the licensed lay reader at the Pas. His name is Simon Bell. This man has been a right-hand support to all the resident missionaries at the Pas for many years. In the summer months, when the trapping season was over, and there was little or no work to do in the district, he used to take his whole family, using sometimes two canoes and supplying himself with ammunition; he would paddle leisurely about the district, hunting for his living as they moved along, and in so doing he visited most of the out-stations, "comforting the feeble-minded and supporting the weak." He was a very good preacher, and his knowledge of the Scriptures was very uncommon; in fact, every admonition or encouragement he put forth in his sermons he completely surrounded with appropriate passages of Scripture accurately quoted. I seldom heard him myself, but my wife, who had learnt the Cree language, used to give me a digest of his sermons when I returned home from my journeys.

I have sometimes read in the C.M.S. magazines, accounts of services held in the East when the three Orders of the Church of England were present, taking part in the service, but a native layman preached the sermon. This has not been my experience in North-West Canada. If an ordained missionary who knew the language deputed a layman to preach for him when he himself was present, the congregation would think it most strange and attribute it to indolence on the part of the minister, that is if he was not debarred on account of ill-health, but when he is absent they will gladly listen to one of their own laymen.

I have said there was no resident doctor at the Pas or in any part of the Pas district; the nearest was at Prince Albert, 350 miles away (approximately), but the Government sent an M.D. through the district once in three years. If we had any serious cases of illness we had to do the best we could for them.

On one occasion a schoolgirl developed a tuberculous knee, and became so bad that when the doctor arrived he had to perform an operation. In doing this, he found the bone in such a state that he had to cut about three inches away, and the stench was such that neither the parents of the child nor the doctor's assistant appeared able to render any help.

I was away from home at the time, and my wife, being the recognised dispenser of Government medicines, was asked to assist the doctor. When the operation was over, the doctor told my wife that he would examine the knee again on his return from Cumberland, and he was afraid he would have to make another operation, as the bone removed did not include the whole of the affected part. On his return a week afterwards another operation was performed and, when the doctor left, he told my wife that he did not think the girl would live, but he added, humanly speaking, her life depended on the nursing she would receive. Mrs. Mines determined to do her best for the girl, and she visited her in her home daily for 160 odd days, only missing twice when a continuous thunderstorm with heavy rain hung over the district, and, when she renewed her visits, she found that the last dressing she put on had not been removed, nor had the wound been cleansed, and, when she removed the cloths, maggots quarter-of-an-inch long came away with the dressing. It will not be interesting reading to relate all my wife had to do for this Indian girl, but suffice it to say that her efforts were rewarded, and, when the inspector paid his next annual visit, the wound was healed up and the girl was going to school. The inspector, who had received the doctor's report of the case, quite expected to hear of her death, and I leave the reader to imagine his surprise when he saw her in her class at school. He reported the facts of the case to Ottawa, and the department of Indian affairs wrote to Mrs. Mines the thanks of the Government in acknowledgment of her services, adding, from the doctor's report, the little Indian maid owed her life to her careful attention to the case. After the girl left school (she was fourteen years old when the operation was performed) she became our servant. Of course she walked lame, as the afflicted leg was between three or four inches shorter than the other owing to the removal of the bone, but she felt no pain, When she walked, as can be understood, she raised herself up on her whole leg and then dropped again when she rested her weight on the short one, and to the mind of an Indian her action was that of an approaching wave when it rises to fall again, and falls to rise again, and so the Indians gave her a new name and called her Pa-mu-ma-ka-hun (The coming wave). No offence or slight was intended by this name, and no objection was made.

Before I cease my description of our work at the Pas, I might add that it fell to my lot principally both at the Pas and elsewhere to vaccinate most of the Indians, the Government supplying the lymph, sometimes on points and sometimes in liquid form in glass tubes. But for this extra work I did not receive a single cent, and it was not until after a good deal of writing that I was refunded the amount I had actually spent in hiring a man and a team of dogs to take me round to the winter camps to do this work that the department through its officials had asked me to do.

Another branch of secular industry that claimed a good deal of my attention was extracting teeth. When in England on my second furlough, a clergyman presented me with a number of forceps and other appliances for cleaning and filling teeth. Prior to this I had done the work of extraction with one particular instrument, but after the receipt of this gift I seemed to do better work, and my filling also proved a success. The amalgam I took out from England with me. I have extracted several hundred teeth not only for the Indian population, but for fishermen and lumbermen who were many miles from a dentist or doctor, and had no chance of going into town to see one. The most interesting part of this business and that which helps to explain in part why I had such a large practice, is that I neither made a charge nor received a gift from anyone for my services! I considered my reward lay in the consciousness of having saved others pain, and with this statement I will close the account of my work at the Pas.


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