Abigail McDougall is known to the visitors of Victoria Settlement
Provincial Historic Site as John McDougall's first wife but her story
stretches beyond that.
Abigail was born at Norway House in Manitoba. She was a second child but
her older brother William died just a few months after her birth. Her parents
were Henry Bird Steinhauer and Seeseeb Mamenuwartum (Jessie Joyful). Her
father was an Ojibwa missionary, her mother a Swampy Cree.
Abigail began to teach school when she was thirteen years old, with a class
of 70 children. Then she was herself sent to school at the Victoria Mission in
the winter of 1864 - 65, as was her sister Eliza Ann.
At seventeen years old she was married to John
McDougall. Of his wife, John writes:
My bride to be was the daughter of the Rev. H. B.
Steinhauer. I had met her in the autumn of 1862, when I accompanied father
on his first visit to Whitefish Lake. Our acquaintance, which had grown into
a courtship on my part, was now between two and three years old. Our parents
willing gave us their consent and blessing. Father and Peter accompanied us
to Whitefish Lake, and father married us in the presence of my wife's
parents and people. Our "honeymoon trip" was to drive from
Whitefish Lake to Victoria with dog-train, when the season was breaking up,
and in consequence the trip was a hard one. (From John's book "Pathfinding
on Plains and Prairie"
Shortly after his wedding John and Abigail went to Pigeon Lake to start a
mission there, where Rundle's earlier mission had been. The Mission Society had not yet approved the new mission but
George McDougall was determined a mission there should be built anyway. George
gave them two four-point Hudson's Bay Blankets, two hundred ball and powder,
net twine and loaned them two oxen and carts. John had already eight or ten
ponies. Their trip there was not alone, but in the company of Oliver, a young
Indian named Paul and Paul's wife.
Her first daughter, Flora, was born at Victoria in 1866, and was baptized
there on April 8, about two months after her birth. The record of the baptism can be seen at the Glenbow
Archives in Calgary, Alberta. Her second at
Pigeon Lake a year later. Her third daughter was born at Whitefish Lake.
John and Abigail spoke Cree at home, and Cree was the first language that
their daughters learnt.
Abigail died "suddenly ... and unexpectedly" on April 11th, 1871
shortly after the smallpox epidemic had gone through Victoria. Her death may
have been the result of smallpox or perhaps some other cause. No where
in the extensive writings of the McDougall family do they record the actual
cause of death, and this absence of record has lead some to speculate that she
may have committed suicide. After her death she is never mentioned in the
McDougall's writings.