Red River Indian Mission
Red River Indian Mission
St. John’s Parish, Red River Settlement (in what is now St. John’s Park, Winnipeg, near St. John’s Cathedral)
1820-1833
THE COMPANY AND INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
In 1670, the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading in Hudson Bay was granted a charter for exclusive trading rights in a region defined by the rivers flowing into the Hudson Bay. For the next 100 years, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) ignored the ‘civilization’ requirements of its charter and the required Christianization and education of First Nations people in HBC territories. The Company did not want to give First Nations the skills to scrutinize HBC ledgers or take them away from their traplines, with fur being the main trade commodity of the HBC.1
The watershed of Rupert’s Land, Canadian Geographic
In the late eighteenth century, some Company officers began to send their children–whom they had with primarily First Nations women–to England and Scotland to be educated. These same fathers continued to push for their children’s education in a more local environment. This, combined with a labour shortage, forced the London Committee of the HBC to seriously consider the education of a potential ‘colony of useful hands’ in Rupert’s Land. Between the 1790s and about 1813, the HBC funded a schoolmaster and sent supplies for the education of Metis and First Nations children at fur trade posts, including Albany and Moose Factory.2 At the same time, the Selkirk colonists, Scottish settlers recruited by the Earl of Selkirk, arrived in Red River in 1812 on the promise of religious and educational supports.
By 1821, when the HBC amalgamated with its primary competitor, the North-West Company, these efforts at education had ceased but the HBC was still responsible under its charter for the ‘moral and religious improvement’ of First Nations, as well as the education of the Metis children of Company servants, and the children of the Selkirk settlers. Historian and University of Saskatchewan associate professor Dr. Winona Wheeler argues that “the HBC was faced with finding a solution to meet the wishes of everyone, as frugally as possible. In the end, cost, more than any other factor, including the wishes of Company officers, determined the path of education in Rupertsland.”3 As would be the case in western Canada for at least the next 150 years, the first consideration in Indigenous education was cost rather than quality.
The London Committee was committed to meeting its obligations regarding education but doing so in the most cost-efficient way possible. This primary goal, plus the evangelical leanings of the Committee resulted in a partnership with the Church of England Missionary Societies (Church Missionary Society). One missionary was to combine the duties of Company Chaplain, schoolmaster, and missionary to First Nations people under the auspices of an Indian Mission. Reverend West was convinced to take on this task, but the HBC and West could only convince the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to partially fund the mission “to make a trial of what could be done for the natives of Rupert’ Land.” The HBC was financially on the hook for settler and Metis education at the Red River colony.4
Red River settlement in 1822, showing narrow river lots and Fort Douglas in the background, Peter Rindisbacher
THE FIRST RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL IN WESTERN CANADA
In August 1820, West and schoolmaster George Harbridge arrived at York Factory. West’s instructions from the Company were to provide “religious instruction and consolation to servants of the Company” and to establish schools in the Red River colony for the British-Metis children of Company officers.5 The Company apparently had little interest in funding the education of First Nations or settler children. West, however, disregarded the instructions of the London Committee and immediately began gathering First Nations children to educate as part of an Indian mission. When West arrived at Red River weeks later, he had two boys with him: Pemutewithinew (later renamed Joseph Harbridge), the nine-year-old son of Withaweecapo, and Sakachuwescum, the eight-year-old son of a Metis widow from Norway House and who was later known as the Reverend Henry Budd. Chief Withaweecapo at York Factory had agreed to place his eldest son with West. West recorded in his journal that “He [Withaweecapo] yielded to my request; and I shall never forget the affectionate manner in which he brought his eldest boy in his arms, and placed him in the canoe in the morning of my departure from York Factory.”6
A Protestant Church, and Mission School, At the Red River Colony, by John West c. 1823
On arriving at Red River there were no accommodations prepared for the mission so West, Harbridge, and the two boys were given a room at Fort Douglas. Once permanent accommodations were ready at what would later become the site of St. John’s Anglican Cathedral and the heart of St. John’s parish, West opened the day school to settler children. The response was overwhelming, with twenty to thirty children in attendance alongside the mission children. This became the St. John’s parish school.
As Company Chaplain, West travelled to posts to do baptisms, marriages, and regular services. Wherever he went, he attempted to recruit First Nations children to bring to the mission. By 1823, he had gathered ten children from various communities to bring to the St. John’s mission, including Askenootow. Later baptized Charles Pratt, he was from the Nēhiyaw-Pwat, a mixed band of Cree-Assiniboines at Beaver Creek. When West first asked the band for their children, they said they would think about it over the winter, and they did. The next spring, in 1822, they put Askenootow in HBC boats and sent him to Red River with a note to send him home as soon as he had learned to read and write.7 Wheeler, the great great-granddaughter of Asketnootow/Pratt, notes that “Reverend West claimed that his recruitment modes were based on the principles of ‘mild persuasion and conviction,’ and since there are no recorded instances of kidnapping or force, his claim appears to be plausible.”8
Map showing the travels of John West and the home communities of mission school students. Compiled and provided by Winona Wheeler.
Parents’ reasons for allowing their children to be removed from their home communities were diverse. While many parents refused West’s request to take the children into his care, some were receptive. In the case of Askenootow, his people wanted him to learn to read and write. Other parents had different reasons:
The Plains Cree father of young Joseph [Harbridge] sent his son to the mission school specifically to learn about West’s religion, and Askenootow’s people wanted him to return after he learned to read and write. The Chipewyan father of Chinnayarzey [later renamed Thomas Hassel or Halsal] desired his son to be “taught more than the Indians knew” and helped West procure Chuckathee [later renamed William Sharpe] from his widowed mother at Fort Churchill. The father stated that both boys were to be returned “when they had learnt enough.” Of the original ten Indian students, five may have been given up to the missionary for economic reasons. Harriette West (Tackagouatim) and Harry Sinclair (Sakachesiciothenew) from the York Factory region were orphans, while Chuckathee, Henry and Sarah Budd were fatherless. Henry and Sarah, for example, lived with their widowed mother Agathus at Norway House. In the fall of 1820 Agathus was convinced to hand her son over to the care of Reverend West, and two years later she and Sarah arrived at the Mission School and stayed. While Sarah and Henry studied, Agathus worked as the resident domestic, which relieved Harbridge of the taxing job of caring for seven young children.9
Wheeler describes the school curriculum, which focused on Christianity and the practical skills that the students would need as potential future missionaries.
The curriculum was not so much about assimilating the students, as it was about training the students to convert their own people. And so, they were given really useful skills. They were given a Western education, so they all became fluent reading and writing English, mathematics, the works. But they were also given a lot of training on animal husbandry and horticulture, and gun smithy (how to fix guns), carpentry (how to build), masonry (how to make bricks and how to build with bricks). They were given some really, really useful skills because John West, I believe, correctly believed that if you sent a missionary out there that doesn’t have anything to contribute, they’ll be useless. And so, he was going to use these kids as kind of his, you know, his frontline, right? If you think about it in military terms, to go out there and convert the masses of brown people. And so, he provided them with all sorts of skills. The other thing he did at the Mission School was he hired a hunter. And that hunter’s name was Ausa. And not only did he hunt for the mission school, but he taught all the little boys how to hunt, taught them how to trap, how to live off the land, how to process the meat and everything. And West also hired a Cree woman, a Swampy Cree woman, who was Henry Budd’s mother, because Henry Budd was one of the students there. And she was the cook and the cleaner, and she also taught all sorts of skills to the kids, as well.
The other really unique thing is that he, John West, thought that it was absolutely vital that they retain their Indigenous languages. And so, even though Charles Pratt spoke predominantly Assiniboine as a little boy, he learned Cree, became a fluent Cree speaker, at John West’s Indian Mission School. All the kids retained their languages. And [West] believed that was absolutely vital because they needed to communicate with their brethren. So, that mission school was really unique in that way. But it wasn’t all fun. I mean, the kids had to work very, very hard, they were very strict with them. But all the kids that came out of that first school came out with a whole whack of really useful skills. And that was my great-great-grandfather’s notion, that he had these skills, and that he would use them for his people.10
West established what would become key aspects of later residential schools. The first was education in English. As Wheeler notes, West’s “civilizing” and Christianizing goal for First Nations children depended upon their ability to read and speak English and he wasted no time. When Pemutewithinew, the nine-year-old boy who left York Factor with West in August 1820 and who could not speak English, reached Norway House a month later, he recited the Lord’s Prayer in full in English each morning and at bedtime. To learn English, the children memorized religious texts and sang hymns. None of the ten students at the mission arrived able to speak English, and for some it was more than two years before they were able to converse semi-fluently. Harriette West, for example, “read with tolerable ease any part of the New Testament” after twenty-one months at the mission but she did “not know the meaning of any sentence.” The schoolmaster found it most exasperating that the children could parrot English but not understand it. Unlike later residential schools, West did not require students to discontinue speaking their own languages; rather, they were to become at least bilingual in the service of their future work as missionaries.
The second foundational part of residential schools that West established was having mission children perform manual labour, and in particular to learn agriculture. West’s goal was for the boys at the mission to become missionaries and return to their peoples as farmers and missionaries to teach a sedentary lifestyle and Christianity. Therefore, their education needed to combine ‘western’ pursuits and traditional knowledge in order for them to be accepted back into First Nations communities. Agricultural training was key to their education in western ‘civilization.’ The mission school aimed to be self-sufficient, and children grew the crops, learned animal husbandry, carpentry, and gunsmithing. They also gathered roots and berries, and, as Wheeler notes, the boys were taught how to hunt and prepare meat.11 By 1830, the farming operations at the mission took so much of the boys’ time that the schoolmaster complained that their school attendance was so irregular “as to preclude any sanguine hope of their reaping much benefit from it.”12
Thirdly, West separated children from their parents. Initially, he was tolerant of his students’ contact with their families, allowing parents unfettered access to their children. Some, like Agathus and Chief Withaweecapo, relocated permanently to the colony to stay near their children. Certainly, rumours circulated that caused parents to be concerned. A widow “clandestinely retrieved” her two sons from the mission after she heard that West threatened to cut their ears off if they left the school without permission.13After a year of this ‘open door’ policy, West revoked this liberal visitation arrangement. He became convinced that having parents nearby was detrimental to their child’s Christian education, and that housing children who were far removed from their home communities was a better policy. He wrote in his diary in April 1823 that:
The two last Saulteaux Indian boys have given us a little trouble in disciplining them to the school; from the mother living constantly about the settlement and occasionally visiting them when they have run off with their sisters to the wigwam: sometimes they returned to the School house of their own accord but frequently obliged to fetch them. It has convinced me that is far better to obtain the children from a distance, as those who are in the school and at a distance from their parents soon become reconciled to the restraint and happy upon the establishment.”14
By 1823, West had also shifted his focus to orphans, writing that “it will be my earnest endeavor to complete the number of Indian children on the Establishment with orphans. To do away with the objection, that the Indians, the parents of those children I admitted, would be hovering around the school with their children, instead of remaining on their hunting grounds.”15
He thereby “instituted a residential school program which became the cornerstone of later Indian education and programs in Western Canada.”16
In 1823, West left for a year of furlough (vacation) in England. When he arrived, he submitted a report to the CMS and HBC that condemned the behaviour of Europeans in Rupert’s Land in general, and Company men in particular, which he considered harmful to the efforts of the mission. He had also previously come into conflict with HBC Governor George Simpson over refusing to support Company policies and denouncing Company men for failing to sanction their marriages to their First Nations and Metis wives with Christian rites. The London Committee thereafter relieved West of his duties.17 He never returned to Rupert’s Land, but in 1826 was commissioned to report on the Sussex Vale Indian college in Sussex, New Brunswick. During his three years in Rupert’s Land, West laid the foundations for the residential schools that would later follow.
This historical plaque was installed in 1995 to commemorate the Red River Mission School, noting it was “the first Protestant school in western Canada for the education of local children.”
STUDENT EXPERIENCES
In her study of the mission, Wheeler considers the trauma that the children likely experienced when they arrived at Red River:
When they first arrived at the mission school, the children faced traumatic physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual readjustment. The numerous reports of furious tempers and “Hatred of Control and Subjugation” indicate that some of the children were dragged up the path of “civility,” while others, who exhibited “unsocial,” “sullen,” or “meek” characteristics may well have resigned themselves to their lot. True conversion required that all beliefs and practices incompatible with it be renounced as false. Christianity possessed absolute standards of right and wrong that went well beyond traditional Indian considerations of “appropriate and inappropriate behavior.” Also in sharp contrast to Native customs, Christianity placed a premium on regularity, order, and discipline which were not readily comprehensible to the young students. The children were subject to psychological intimidation and corporal punishment, the purpose of which was to acquaint them with “the distinguishing characteristics of right and wrong.”
For children who were unused to requiring permission to eat or move, they must have “experienced a lot of fear, confusion, and anger when subjected to various forms of English discipline and a different set of social customs.”18
SHIFTING FOCUS: THE ARRIVAL OF REVEREND DAVID JONES
In 1823, Reverend David Jones was called to fill in while West was on furlough. When he arrived at York Factory, West had gathered two boys from Fort Churchill for Jones to take south to Red River. Jones wrote that “I have two Indian boys to take with me to the Mission school at Red River, of the Chippeway Tribe: They are interesting lads, and I have named one of them William Sharpe.”19 He was apparently fond of the boys, noting later that “The two Indian boys whom Mr. West brought from Churchill win my affections very much, the eldest I have named Thomas Halsell [Hassel or Halsal], and the little one William Sharpe. May the Lord send them back to their country men as devoted Missionaries of Christ.”20
These would be the last First Nations students that Jones brought to the mission himself. Having been sent with instructions to support the Company, establish a boarding school for Company children, and focus on the educational needs of the colony, Jones paid little attention to recruiting First Nations students to the mission. Unlike West, Jones was unwilling to act against Governor Simpson and Company interests and the focus of Indigenous education at Red River soon shifted.
Also unlike West, Jones did not travel to outlying posts to recruit students. Instead, the Company took responsibility to send students to Red River. On 19 July 1824, the Northern Council at York Factory passed Resolution No. 96 which directed post factors “to facilitate and promote the humane and benevolent intentions of the Church Missionary Society towards the procuring for the purpose of Christianizing, the children of such of the Indians as the parents may be induced to part with.”21 Nine students arrived at the mission in the next year. By August 1825, however, Simpson, whose support for First Nations education had long been tepid at best, revoked the resolution and closed the doors of the school to new admissions.
Jones continued with the mission school at St. John’s, in part because CMS interest was in First Nations conversions and both Jones and the HBC relied on CMS support for education in the colony. At the same time, growth of the Red River colony meant that demand for spaces in the parish day school outstripped the capacity of mission and teaching staff.
STUDENTS AT THE MISSION SCHOOL, 1824
In July 1824, mission schoolmaster George Harbridge wrote an account of the students at the mission school to the Secretary of the Red River Colony. His individualized assessment of the students provides some insight into their education and the challenges they dealt with in conforming to Anglican culture and language.
With respect to our School, I proceed to give you an account. We are not yet in a flourishing state. The number is still very small that attend as day scholars, owing to obstacles before stated; our number also on the Establishment is still small, but we expect an addition of 10 more this fall. I now give you the names and an account of those at present upon the Establishment, viz: –
| INDIAN NAME | ENGLISH NAME | AGE | TRIBE OR NATION |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pemsetemithineu | James Hope | 13 | A Muskago or Swampy |
| Sakachamesham | Henry Budd | 12 | A Muskago Half Breed |
| Nakukesecoitheneio | Harry Sinclair | 11 | Half Breed Maskago |
| Chimnayarzey | Thomas Halsal | 12 | A Chippeway Mountain |
| Pemuteuithoneu | Joseph Harbidge | 9 | An Inland Cree |
| Askenooton | Charles Pratt | 8 | An Assiniboine |
| Chreckethee | William Sharpe | 8 | A Chippeway Mountain |
| Kananeeqused | John Hope | 7 | A Muskago or Swampy Cree |
| Tackaquoatim | Harriet West | 8 | A Muskago or Swampy Cree |
| Nehougatime | Sarah Budd | 12 | A Muskago Half Breed |
JAMES HOPE
is the Sone of an Indian at York Fort and was brought the Settlement by Mr. West on first arrival in the Country in October 1820; He is a very sharp Lad, and of great natural abilities and quickness of apprehension; he reads very well and can answer with great promptness any question on the leading doctrine of the Gospel. The prevailing feature of his disposition is Stubborness, and he is very much addicted to falsehood: but has behaved well of late; he knows English tolerably well and can interpret with tolerable facility.
HENRY BUDD
This boy was brought to the Settlement from Norway House at the same time with Hope, and is his equal in the qualities above specified, and he is Superior in many respects: Henry is perhaps of the most amiable disposition of them all; he is remarkably still and quiet, and apparently of more thoughtful turn of mind than the rest, and a boy in whom I can confide for the hath. This boy was much attached to Mr. West, felt much on his departure, and wept on being told of his not returning. It is much to be regretted that nothing further can be stated of these two fine boys; but the seed is sown in their hearts and the result mush be left with him, who along can change the heart and renew the Spirit aright.
HARRY SINCLAIR
is a Half Breed Native and was intended by Mr. West to be removed to the School in contemplation for such by the Hudson’s Bay Company; but as that Philanthropic design has not yet been put into execution he remains here: He is very quick in learning but is the most troublesome to manage of them all being very much addicted to Sarcasm, and hatred of control and subjugation.
THOMAS HALSAL
was brought to the School on the 15 Oct/23 By Mr. Jones from York, to which place he came in company with Mr. West from Churchill. He is a very fine and promising Lad, and of a very amiable, obedient, and docile disposition, and learns very fast: it is hoped that with the blessing of God, he will be sent home as a Soul well famished for the kingdom of heaven. He is not yet baptized.
JOSEPH HARBIDGE
is the son of a fine Indian and noted hunter from the vicinity of the river Qu’Appell. This boy is very dull of apprehension and of a very furious temper when made angry; but tractable and obedient when otherwise; he understands English but imperfectly, and consequently there is yet but very little opportunity of endeavouring to soften his mind.
CHARLES PRATT
was sent from Inland; is an interesting boy, and upon the whole may be called a good boy: the Gentleman who procured him from the Assiniboines, informed us that he is of French extraction, his father being the Half Breed Sone of a French Nobleman. He was given up by his friends on condition of being returned when he had learned to read and write, which I hope he will, when endued with the Spirit from on high. He reads the New Testament fluently and will soon speak good English.
JOHN HOPE
is brother to James Hope; they are distantly allied by consanguinity to the Esquimeaux and this boy on his broad face and small eyes very much resembles them: he is young and knows but very little English. Until they learn to talk fluently it is next to impossible to convey an Idea to their minds; they may read a sentence fluently and even learn to repeat it, and not understand a syllable. John is docile if not irritated, but when he is, he is quite an Indian.
WILLIAM SHARPE
was brought to the Establishment at the same time and from the same place as Thomas Halsal, by Mr. Jones. He is at present not very promising in his habits, but he may soon change as his mind becomes conversant with the distinguishing characteristics of right and wrong, with which he is at present perfectly unacquainted. He has since his coming to the Establishment manifested a very sullen and unsociable turn of mind, and that governed by an unconquerable disposition to pilfer; however, by correction and resolute conduct to correct him, and making an example of him before the other boys, he has manifested less of these reprehensible inclination of late: he has not been discovered to covet any thing, even articles of food, which is common to them all when they first come to us from the Indians, where no restraint is laid either upon habits or appetites: in William it seems to be an irresistible temptation, and to the obtaining of which, he will spare no pains. He is just beginning to learn to read: not yet baptized.
HARRIET WEST
was brought to the Establishment by Mrs. Harbidge from York Fort in October 1822. She is of a meek spirit and tender feelings, and of good disposition; obedient and tractable when good humoured, but quite opposite when displeased, always manifesting no ordinary degree of stubborness; she is not of a very quick apprehension, but is making progress: she can read with tolerable ease in any part of the New Testament, but as yet does not know the meaning of any sentence: Since Mrs. Harbidges confinement she has lived with her altogether, and consequently is being made acquainted with domestic usefulness: she can work tolerably well at her needle at plain work and altogether is very promising.
SARAH BUDD
is sister to Henry Budd; both the Children of the Half Breed upon the Establishment; she came with her mother in the Fall/22. She is rather dull of apprehension and inferior to Harriet West in many respects; both in habits and disposition, she is forward & rather bold and impudent; she is with and assists her mother in the work she has to do, and hereafter (if she continues) might be useful in that department: she reads in the Testament but badly: These are the only two girls we have at present as it is very difficult to obtain them therefore in plants and in fruit it is but the day of small things with us, but that, I hope is not dispised. I trust these once uncultivated shrubs may prove plants of the Lord own right hand planting; and through the medium of this plantation with the copious showers of the Spirit from on high and the general warmth of the Sun of Righteousness they may and will in the Lords appointed time, bring forth fruit: some thirty some sixty, and some an hundred fold: to the praise and glory of His grace.22
Reverend Henry Budd, Archives of Manitoba
STUDENT DEATHS
In 1825, two mission students died within a month of each other. Chuckethee, “William Sharpe,” from the Fort Churchill area arrived at the school with Jones on 15 October 1823. The eight-year-old died of dysentery on February 25. “George (sic) Harbidge,” aka Pemuteuithinew, or “Joseph Harbridge,” eleven years old, arrived 25 May1821, from the Qu’Appelle/Beaver Creek region and died of tuberculosis on March 23.23 Both boys were buried in the mission cemetery. Jones described the young boys’ deaths and the funeral of Chuckethee, “William Sharpe,” in his journal, along with the inscription he wrote on the grave markers for the two boys:
January 25, 1825:
The Indian boy, Joseph Harbidge is still very unwell, and appears to be in a deep consumption: I went to his bedside early this morning when the following conversation took place: Q. Well Joe, how do you do today? A. Not better, sir, my back very sore. Q. Are you afraid to die, Joe? A. No sir. Q. Can you tell me where good boys and girls go when they die? A. Yes, Sir, they go to heaven. Q. Should you die soon where do you think you will go? A. I hope to the good place. Q. And, my dear boy, can you tell me why you hope so? A. Because I hope Jesus Christ loves me. Q. What reason do you have to think so? A. The Testament says he died for sinners. I was agreeably surprised at the clearness of his answers, he is far inferior to any boy in the school in point of intellect but ignorance is no barrier against the influence of the Holy Spirit’s teaching.
January 27, 1825:
Poor Joseph is getting worse every day, and is reduced to a skeleton. Mr. Hamlyn, the Colony Surgeon, attends him daily: May the Lord have mercy on his soul! His knowledge is very limited: but I trust he is under the teaching of the Spirit.
February 15, 1825:
One of the Indian youths to I had given the name of William Sharpe, as a small mark of my gratitude & and if Dean for my private tutor in England is taken very ill today; this is a constant source of uneasiness, but the Lord will do what is best.
February 21, 1825:
Pour [sic] William is going off very rapidly. I have no hopes of his recovery: the Lord’s will be done!
February 24. 1825:
The governor and his lady called this morning. Got a separate department arranged for the sick boys. Wm Sharp has been in a state of torpor all day and I fully expect will go off before morning. Mr. Harbidge, the Schoolmaster performs the duty of a Father to both the invalids which is a great relief to me. Poor Poor William Knows but little English, and there is no Interpreter. He told me this morning, he hoped to go where Jesus Christ was; but to any further questions he gave no answer.
February 25, 1825:
According to my expectations poor William the northern Indian, breathed his last about 7 this morning. This is one of those dispensations which call for submission. The little boys are much affected…. Joseph Harbidge continues in a precarious state, and I have but little hope of his recovery.
February 26. 1825:
This afternoon the remains of our young Indian were deposited in the Burying ground. The procession was small but solemn, being the first that ever proceeded from this infant establishment. Immediately after the Coffin (which was conveyed on a sledge) followed the only remaining boy of the Northern Indian Nation, Thomas Kajsab as Chief Mourner: next a few neighbors who attended on the occasion, and after them the School children, to the number of about twenty; a few Native women closed the procession. After the burial service, the Coffin being adjusted, I briefly addressed the little group on the brevity of life and the necessity of preparing for death; and the grave closed between us and our departed young friend. We then returned in the same order to the Church, and after a hymn and a prayer dispersed. The recollection of this simple ceremony will long live in my mind.
February 27, 1825:
Sunday. This was the most trying day time that I remember ever to have experienced. I was forced to go through the duties of the day without a ray of comfort to myself: I hope it was not the case with others. At four o’clock in the morning Mr. Harbidge called me up in consequence of an alteration for the —– in Joseph Harbidge. I sent immediately for the Surgeon, but when he came the poor boy was so terrified at his state being so urgent as to call for this step that he would not answer a single question put to him relative to the symptoms he felt. Nothing is impossible with God, but in all human probability, he cannot remain with us long.
March 23, 1825:
Poor Joseph is gone! His removal was attended with circumstances which will have an effect on my views and feelings that will take some time to eradicate. I trust his afflictions are now ended forever in everlasting joy above. For the last three weeks he had been in the habit of coming to my sitting room after breakfast regularly and came this morning as usual. He looked considerably revived and was much more communicative than usual: observing of his own accord, that “he hoped to be soon well, and would be a good boy for all the care I had taken of him.” When he had dozed for about an hour, a Settler came in on business with whom I was conversing, when I observed him starting up suddenly, clenching his hands and staring wildly at me. I asked him – “Joseph you want any thing?” He then arose and came towards me as if with the intention of speaking, and when he opened his mouth the blood gushed out in a stream as copious as his extended jaws would admit of. In a moment the room, chair, and table covering and floor were deluged with blood, and in endeavoring to keep him still, my clothes also. I desired the stranger to support him while I called the Schoolmaster. I was not absent two minutes, but when I returned his struggles had ceased, and instead of the distressing rattle in the throat, a solemn silence ensued. All transpired so momentarily sudden that I could hardly believe its reality. This was the boy Mr. West got at Beaver Creek in consequence of his standing between the Great Spirit and the Father: his parents were here last Summer and will be again in the Spring.
May 5, 1825:
Today we performed our last duty to the dispatched Boys, by placing simple memorials over their graves; the inscriptions were as follows:
Here lie
The remains of Joseph Harbidge
a Cree Indian boy
from the vicinity of Beaver Creek.
He had been educated for four years
at this Colony at the charge of the
Church Missionary Society.
He died on March 23, 1825.
Aged 14 years.
Be yee therefore ready also: for at an hour when
yee think not, the Son of Man cometh.
Underneath
are the Remains of
William Sharpe
A Northern Indian boy from the Neighborhood
of Churchhill Factory, Hudson’s Bay
He had been at the Church Missionary Society
at this Settlement, for one year & five months
He died February 25, 1825.
Aged about eight years.
Remember thy Creator in the days of thy Youth.
On clearing the ground to arrange the Graves I noticed the arrow rod with which the deceased’s uncle lacerated his flesh when he visited the Grave: it was tied up in a small leathern bag containing some red material similar to Vermilion. Well might St. Paul — end with the epithet of “beggarly elements” all that the mind of man is capable of discovering without the aid of revelation.
In his journal, Jones also recorded the grief Pemuteuithinew’s family expressed at the loss of their child:
June 22, 1825:
This afternoon I noticed some Indians coming up to our fence with horses laden after the manner of the Assiniboines, and seemed to be putting up for the night: I took no particular notice of them until I heard the women setting up a most melancholy dirge: I then suspected them to be some of the friends of our deceased Boy Joseph Harbidge, and sent for them to the house: they said they had come from “Beaver Creek” a distance of 300 miles to “cry over the grave”: they said they had not eaten anything for six days; among them was the Boy’s Mother, and Grandfather: the Father sent me four Moose skins and said he was not well enough to come and see me this year and besides “that the grave was too new.” I gave them an abundant supply of potatoes and Fish which they devoured most voraciously; they then laid down to rest and said they would go and see the grave in the morning.
June 23, 1825:
This morning early the Indians were on the alert anxious to see the grave: they said they could not sleep all night from the consciousness of being so near the spot where the child was laid. When my Indian servant conducted them to the Burying Ground they set up a lament — for a quarter of an hour and then came away with their flesh dreadfully lacerated.
June 24, 1825:
The Indians left us this morning after I had addressed them. I feel assured that this dark dispensation will be productive of good —- of alienation in the minds of the parents, as they left us expressing their gratitude and confidence. God works in a way which we cannot understand. The Missionary ought never to lose sight of this sentiment.
In spite of Simpson’s 1825 edict that the mission was closed to new students, children continued to be taken to the school, including by Simpson himself. In 1824-25 and again in 1828-29, Simpson travelled to the Columbia District (now part of British Columbia and Oregon) to inspect Company posts and establish and re-affirm business ties. As part of these efforts, he brought a small group of Indigenous boys from the Columbia River Plateau region to Red River for an Anglican missionary education.24 An 1827 baptismal register shows two of these students: Kootenay Pelly and Spokane George. Given that students were required to learn English before baptism, these two boys were likely brought east with Simpson in 1825. Pelly was buried in the St. John’s Church cemetery on 6 April 1831, at about 18 years of age. At least one other student, Sans Poll Harrison of the “Church Mission House; Red River Settlement,” was buried on 8 January 1832, at thirteen years old. These children, buried far from home and without the knowledge or ceremonies of their people, are some of the first Missing Residential School Students in western Canada.
St. John’s parish baptismal records, 1827, Diocese of Rupert’s Land Archive.
THE END OF FIRST NATIONS EDUCATION AT RED RIVER
By 1825, the demand for education was more than could be accommodated by mission staff. In October of that year, Reverend William Cockran and his wife Anne arrived to set up a new church and day school at St. Paul’s (Middlechurch), seven miles upstream. Prior to 1825, the mission students, Metis and settler children had all been taught together at the St. John’s parish school. After the opening of St. Paul’s, the Metis and settler students were relocated to the Middlechurch school, thereby marking the beginning of segregated education for First Nations students.
At the same time, the beginnings of a boarding school at Red River began with the wives of Jones and Cockran. Both women took Metis girls into their homes to teach them Christianity and domesticity beginning in the 1820s as part of their roles as missionary wives.25 Cockran himself scoffed at these efforts, finding parents’ desires to have their Metis daughters “educated in refined skills” to be “pretentious.” Red River society, he concluded, “not being so highly polished as to meet their approbation, they wish to make the offspring of the Indian Wives accomplished Ladies all at once.”26
The second St. John’s Church, built 1833. A third Cathedral replaced this one in 1862. Archives of Manitoba.
By 1827, Jones fully shifted his attention away from the mission and towards primarily Metis students. In part, this was because teaching First Nations children agriculture brought the mission into conflict with Company policies and in part because he felt that Metis children showed more promise for ‘progress’ and the ministry.27 That same year,a third church and school opened at Grand Rapids (St. Andrews) under the Cockrans for the primarily Company and British-Metis families who had settled there. The parish churches and schools continued to expand and in 1833, in addition to the parish schools at St. John’s, St. Andrew’s, and St. Paul’s, the CMS was also supporting a parish school at Frog Plain.28
By the late 1820s, there were increasing calls for boarding schools that separated the children of Company officers from the children of Company servants and separated Metis children from their First Nations heritage. In 1833, Jones opened the Red River Academy at St. John’s. Historian Jonathan Anuik explains that “former traders hoped that their children, if distanced from their First Nations and Metis ties at a young age, would forget their First Nations or Metis ancestry. For Jones, the Academy was the institution to prevent cultural contact.”29
The opening of the Red River Academy at the St. John’s parish campus was marked by the closure of the mission school. The remaining First Nations students were sent to board with Cockran at Grand Rapids, and they remained there until another boarding school was established at St. Peter’s Mission by Cockran around 1839.
St. Andrew’s Church, Rectory, and parish school, by Nanton Marble, 1860, Archives of Manitoba
MISSIONARY CHARLES PRATT AND FAMILY HISTORIES
Wheeler argues that the mission school children that Jones deemed “unsuited” to the ministry went on to become the groundbreaking missionaries of the Church of England in Ruperts Land. The pioneering efforts of the CMS among First Nations communities in Rupert’s Land were not carried out by any of the English missionaries who arrived in the region, but rather by the First Nations proteges of the original Red River Indian mission school. These students were out in the field as teachers, ministers, translators, and spokesmen long before their European or Metis contemporaries.30
Wheeler is the great-great-granddaughter of Askenootow, or CMS missionary Charles Pratt. She recounts her decision to study Pratt as part of her academic training:
Anyway, I grew up hearing stories about our community, histories of our family members, family histories. We grew up hearing about Charles Pratt, Askenootow. And we heard stories about him that, you know, he was a missionary, that he was a buffalo hunter, he was a pipe carrier, and that he was a really generous man. He had lots of children, two wives, one after the other… you know, monogamous. But he was a very generous man. And he would give the shirt off his back. So, I grew up hearing these really positive stories about him.
And then I went off to do my master’s degree and the topic I was going to do, somebody else was doing, which is weird. So, I had to find another topic. And so, I came back to Regina for Christmas and my grandmother was there and she asked me about school. I told her, you know, how school was going and I told her, I need to come up with a new thesis topic. I said it’s like a big paper. And I said that it has to be about something or somebody in the past that’s really unique and that people don’t know very much about. I said, “So, do you have any ideas on what I should focus on?” And we had tea, she always liked to have afternoon tea, and then the next day for morning tea, she said, “You know, I was thinking about this, your big paper.” And she said [to my mother], “Kicapan, your great-grandfather, I always wondered. Charles Pratt, you know, Askenootow, I always wondered if he really was the good person the old people said or if he was the first sellout.” And I thought, “Oh my god, that’s perfect!” [laughs] Yeah, absolutely perfect. And so that was my research question going into my master’s thesis.31
Charles Pratt opened his first mission at Fort Pelly in what is now Saskatchewan in the 1850s, and went on to build five church missions along the Qu’Appelle River. In each case, Pratt did the hard work to establish the mission, and then a white missionary was sent in to take over. “He got the mission built, he got the garden started, then they would send in a non-aboriginal missionary to take over. He was the grunt work,” Wheeler argues.32
Church Missionary Society missionary Charles Pratt, c. 1850s, courtesy of Winona Wheeler
Pratt had taken a pragmatic approach to his ministry. “He didn’t require people to settle down and start farming and give everything up, because he was a realist. People would have starved to death if they had tried. He would have starved to death.”33 This approach, however, often brought him into conflict with the CMS who thought he was not converting enough people.
When Wheeler began to research Pratt, she had a hard time reconciling family and community stories with what she read in the formal records of the CMS:
Yeah, it was really hard for me because I had this oral history that was handed down to the family that painted him as a really kind and loving man. And then I had his journals that represented him in a totally different way. He represented himself as a racist missionary. And it just broke my heart, I didn’t understand this. I didn’t understand how he represented himself in this way, which was so almost diabolically the opposite of how the family represented him. And I didn’t quite know how to deal with this.
So, I started to study literature, you know, I went into literary criticism and found some really useful analytical frameworks, and realized that he wrote in what’s called the “missionary genre.” The missionary genre is writing to a specific audience. In his instance, he was writing specifically for his superiors, for his bosses. So, he had to do a couple of things–he had to prove to them that he was doing their work and that it was promising, it was really, really promising. And on the other hand, he had to prove to them that he was surrounded by pagans and there was so much work to do. That’s the kind of the genre that they wrote in, in order to keep their missions alive, to secure funding from year to year. So, that’s how I came to understand why he wrote the way he wrote.
If you do a really deep, deep read of his journals, however, you find little snippets of him. And you find little snippets that may be intended for Indigenous people. But they’re couched in this missionary genre in such a way that the missionaries reading it wouldn’t find it but as a descendant and as an Indigenous person, you could pick it out.34
Unfortunately, “all the hope that he had that the church would help his people transition to a new way of life died in him. He lost hope in the church. Then he put all his hope in the treaty process, hoping that through the federal government the treaty process would help his people, and that died as well.”35
Upon completion of her Master’s thesis, Wheeler’s grandmother asked her what she had learned about Pratt:
I told her, I said, “This is what I learned, kokum”: He lived during one of the most tumultuous times in our past. He was born in 1816 so he saw his people when they were autonomous, powerful, independent nations on the plains, you know, buffalo hunters. And he watched them starve with the demise of the buffalo, with the waves and waves of disease epidemics. He saw his people totally… what was the term I used with my granny, can’t remember precisely. But yeah, how they lost their autonomy and became really pitiful. And they became very pitiful. He watched them die of diseases around him. I said, “So, this is what he experienced and he knew change was coming.”
And so he stayed with the Church Missionary Society, I believe, because it was the only chance he had in that historical period to help his people prepare for a new way of life. So, he put up with the racism inside the Church Missionary Society, because the Native missionaries were given half the pay that the white missionaries were, etc. And they treated them like dogs, they would send the Native missionaries out to actually build the missions from scratch. And then they’d send a white guy out to move in, and then send the Native guy to start another one. It was pretty bad working conditions but he stuck with it because it provided him access to tools and knowledge that he could then teach the people to help them make adjustments to the new way of life, specifically agriculture.36
Wheeler’s grandmother was happy to hear of her findings:
She was relieved. She was so relieved. She said, “Oh, that makes me feel good, that he did good, that he did good for his people.” The other thing that I told her that I found in my studies was that he was always getting hell, getting reprimanded because he wasn’t your typical missionary. He had a big family, he had to join the buffalo hunts. So in that picture, you see him in his leathers. He was a buffalo hunter, his oldest son was a buffalo hunter, and he joined his people out on the plains. And he would try to have Bible readings out on the plains at the camps and stuff like that. And he did.37
Wheeler’s conclusion about her studies of Pratt:
My task as a granddaughter and student was to take direction from preceding generations and to take full advantage of the scholarly tools available to locate him within his own texts. In many ways, it’s been a cyclical journey. I ended up about where I began. Charles Pratt was a generous, selfless, feisty, and proud man who used his position in the CMS to help his people adjust to dramatically changing conditions in their world. But I knew that already because my mooshim [grandfather] Colin Pratt told me.38
St. John’s College, Main Street Campus, c. 1883. Today St. John’s College is a member college of the University of Manitoba. Dr. Wheeler completed her undergraduate degree in the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba.