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Native Conversions to Methodism from Rundle to the McDougalls by Christy Taylor It was Robert Rundle, Henry B. Steinhauer, Ben Sinclair and Thomas Woolsey who laid the basis for the Methodist native community in the West, before the work of the McDougalls began in the mid 1860s. Often alone, and at times with only questionable support from the East or from the Hudson's Bay Company, they worked from native camps as well as the H.B.C. forts and very soon were writing reports back home about their new followings. Today, there are questions as to the extensiveness of the conversions and the reasons behind them. Many of the native groups were welcoming to strangers and to new ideas, and at times friendly acceptance may have been mistaken for a sincere change of thought. There is also a possibility that the people misunderstood the seriousness of rituals such as baptism, or ideas such as converting. Many natives may have agreed to a conversion without sharing the missionaries understanding, but rather for more expedient reasons, such as the possibility of healings or the ability to attend schools and learn from the missionaries. Rundle was the first Methodist missionary in the area that is now Alberta, arriving in 1840 and remaining there for eight years. He was delighted and surprised by the welcome he received from the natives. What he learned somewhat later was that the Hudson's Bay Company employees had told the natives that he would be coming, and the natives understood that he was a man of God and "came down from heaven in a bit of paper which was opened by one of the Co.'s gentlemen at the Fort." 1 This image of Rundle as a man from God played a key part in his success in conversion. The native people were eager to learn from Rundle. He was one of the white man's "medicine men" and the white man had great powers. The chiefs often requested that the missionary teach his people as much as he could, and Rundle was happy to start classes, teaching the native people his Biblical truths. However, sometimes Rundle was not able to live up to what the natives expected. Within the native camps certain people were granted visions from the spirit helpers, or pawakan 2 and given permission to perform certain cures. If someone came then to one of these people and asked them to perform a cure, that person would have the ability to make a demand of their petitioner. It was at times expected that the missionaries would be able to perform similar cures. Rundle recorded in his journal having a man come to him expecting him to cure blindness. Thomas Woolsey recorded a story later of a woman who converted to Catholicism expecting to have her son cured of a disease. Rundle and his successors were unable to cure such diseases, but the fact that the natives expected them to show such power demonstrates a few things. The natives had their own ideas about what to expect from religious leaders, and the reasons behind their conversions were not always spiritual, but expedient. Besides their inability to cure diseases, there were other difficulties. Rundle was not the only missionary in the West. He had to contend with both Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Chief Maskepetoon explained to artist Paul Kane the difficulty he faced:
The natives were willing to convert should they be convinced, but the infighting between the missionaries discredited their own effort. The missionaries each had to offer some sort of argument or proof as to why their path, out of all the paths, contained the one true way. The story that Robert Rundle had fallen from heaven would likely have helped him in convincing the natives that his way was the way sent by God, but that alone does not seem to have been enough. Historian Allen Ronaghan mentions that the Cree syllabics might have been a reason why Maskepetoon did eventually convert. Robert Rundle learned Cree syllabics and taught them to Maskepetoon and the other natives. There was a tradition in some areas that Cree syllabics came directly from the Great Spirit in the heavens. Gerald Hutchinson explains that the natives thought that Cree syllabics was brought by a native person after he had made a trip to heaven. It has been found that such a person did exist, and a letter he wrote has been found and translated. The native man had not been to heaven, but instead had spent time in the East with James Evans, inventor of the Cree syllabics. There is a possibility that Rundle's knowledge of Cree syllabics may reinforced the idea that he came from heaven, however, this idea is questionable as Rundle's knowledge of both Cree and syllabics was limited. More likely, it was the practical uses of Cree syllabics, as a way of sending messages, that impressed the natives. Rundle, the man sent by God, brought to the natives the message that God cares for them personally. On one level this was a completely new idea, but on another level, it was a variation but not a complete casting off of the old beliefs. The Cree people believed in a great spirit, known as the kice-manito. 8According to anthropologist David Mandelbaum this Great Spirit was neither personalized nor thought to have any particular abode, but rather was identified as the all powerful unknown being. The Cree did not attempt to appeal to this great power, but instead were given blessings and protection by spirit powers, or atayohkanak. Rundle encouraged the people that the Great Spirit did indeed care for them, and that they could see his guidance and help directly. In his journal, he wrote: "My constant advice has been for them to pray at once to the Spirit for God has graciously promised the Spirit to all who ask Him for it." The similarity between the natives vision quest, and Rundle's insistence that everyone seek the spirit of God for his or herself would have been a benefit to Rundle. He was telling them to continue a spiritual searching they already believed in, but directing them not to their minor spirits but to the one God over all. Robert Rundle was surprised by the answers some children gave to him when he asked them why Adam and Eve were forgiven by God and not destroyed for their sin. The children replied that Adam and Eve were forgiven because Jesus' sacrifice was already promised. Although the idea of sin was foreign to the natives, and it is possible the children did not understand exactly what Rundle was asking, it may not have been difficult for those children to understand the idea of Jesus being a promised sacrifice. The Cree believed that it was possible to make promises to the spirits in return for aid. A man might promise to tie himself to the pole at the end of a Sun Dance, painfully ripping his skin, or he might promise to host a Sun Dance or make some other sacrifice. Jesus could have been seen as a once-and-for-all sacrifice, making other sacrifices unnecessary. It may have been possible for the natives to convert to an understanding of Christianity, even adopting the Methodist idea of native religions being heathenish, without actually having to move to far religiously from their previous ideas. Rundle was stationed at Fort Edmonton, but spent much of his time travelling and staying at native camps, where he knew himself to be a foreigner alone and dependant upon his hosts. He taught in Cree, first through an interpreter and then as he learned and mastered the language, on his own and adopted the Cree ways of greeting people. 11 He was grateful for the natives' generosity, writing in his journal that: "Never shall I forget it. We were hungry & they fed us. Strangers & they took us in. Surely they will not loose their reward." 12 However, his time with the natives was limited, and by the late 1840s the mission work was transferred from the British Wesleyan Missionary Society to the Canadian Conference and Robert Rundle returned to England. His own writings are the main body of documentation about his mission, and yet how accurate are they? His journals record an abundance of baptisms and conversions, but working alone as he was, with little encouragement or support from outside, he may have over represented the success of his work. Yet seven years later, when the next group of Methodist missionaries came West, there was a core Protestant group remaining. In 1855 Henry B. Steinhauer and Thomas Woolsey came West to continue Rundle's work. Thomas Woolsey described in his journal his meeting with Benjamin Sinclair, a native teacher:
Thomas Woolsey was stationed at Fort Edmonton, but arrived there to discover that Rundle's rectory was being used by the Roman Catholics, and at the Fort he was always in very direct competition with the Catholics. Much of his journal contains references to the Catholics, whom he refers to as "Papists," or "Romanists," and the reasons for which the natives joined the Catholic church. Some of Rundle's converts had gone over to the Catholics for lack of any other missionary to perform rituals such as baptism or marriage, but others had converted for other reasons. For example, the natives were interested in the beads and crosses which the priests distributed and Woolsey claims that they would have just as easily converted to Methodism, if he had crosses and trinkets to distribute. 15 It is understandable that Woolsey would attribute to those who converted to the Roman Catholic religion the most mundane of reasons. Yet it is possible that the Methodists won followers for similar reasons. As was traditional within native societies, Woolsey, like the priests, distributed gifts. He customarily gave tobacco 16 to those who came to visit him and also took to distributing for the native's use whatever goods the missionary society sent to him. 17 Woolsey also recorded the natives containing a fear for their dead, and credits the Romanists as "having received a horse from one family for delivering a deceased relative from the flames of purgatory". This is interesting, and shows that the religious beliefs of the missionaries (both Catholic and Protestant) had taken hold within their converts. The Cree, for example, had previously believed that there was only one afterlife. Woolsey's contemporary was Henry B. Steinhauer. Unlike Woolsey or Rundle, Steinhauer was native, an Ojibwa from Lake Simcoe. He had knowledge of the native's religious beliefs and was able to make comparisons between the similarities of the two religions. When natives attempted to argue that the Great Spirit created one religion for the white people and another for the natives, Steinhauer is said to have referenced to an Ojibwa group having similar laws, and pointing out the similarities in the flood story and other stories. Henry B. Steinhauer created his mission on the banks of Whitefish Lake, teaching the people to build simple houses and to farm. Sam Bull, an elder from the Whitefish Lake community, recorded that in the beginning the settlement was a family group, all related, but that it grew. As a settlement, the mission's success depended largely upon its ability to provide a livelihood to those choosing to join it. The location was an ideal one for them to settle at as there was plenty of fishing, hunting, and a slowly growing amount of agriculture, although over-fishing and over-hunting caused its problems eventually. Education was important to Steinhauer, for the sake of his new converts and also for his own young children, so he always did what he could to have a school operating at the mission, whether it meant petitioning the Canadian conference to send him a schoolteacher or convincing his own children to work as teachers. During the times in which a school was operational at Whitefish Lake, and for some people it would have been a powerful incentive to live within the vicinity of the mission. Steinhauer became an advisor to Chief Pakan (James Seenum), who has been described as a very practical, far-thinking man. As Pakan saw changes happening on the prairies, he looked for ways in which his people could adapt and deal with them. Besides whatever religious convictions he may have felt, his connection with the mission provided him with valuable help in dealing with the white men, and the coming white man's laws. And although Cree chiefs tended not to interfere in the religious choices of their band members, the support of the chief would have aided in Steinhauer's mission. While the natives had many reasons for their interest in the missionaries, the missionary never forgot his goal of instilling within his charges the spirit of Christianity. In his letters to the Missionary Outlook, a Methodist publication, Steinhauer expresses his work towards creating a deeper religious commitment on the part of charges:
To remedy this problem, Steinhauer implemented the type of Methodist class system that he had seen work at Norway House, whereby converts and potential converts are divided into peer groups. Each class met weekly, to pray, and share together in their struggle to be good Christians. The converts were expected to confess their sins to one another, and to encourage one another. By March 18, 1884 Steinhauer could report that there were five classes organized, one of which, led by his son Egerton, was specifically for the young men of the community. Woolsey attempted to create a similar group, but the class only ever had one meeting. Another social aspect of both Steinhauer's and Woolsey's missions was the love feast, an event at which there would be an outpouring of stories about how Christianity had affected their lives. These were very emotional events, filled with crying. Many people who might have held off otherwise were moved by the spirit of the event. In a letter to the Christian Guardian, April 15, 1864 Woolsey describes a love feast at Steinhauer's mission:
Rundle, Woolsey and Steinhauer each had their own unique situations from which to work from, yet common threads run through their experience. They were all warmly welcomed by at least a portion of the natives, and although the converts they found were not always converted for the reasons they might have wished for, none of them gave up. They all earnestly sought to love and care for the native people, and to inspire within them the spirit of their Methodist Christianity, although the less spiritual aspects of their mission was a very key part to attracting converts. Return
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Footnotes: 1 Gerald Hutchinson, introduction to Rundle, Rev., Journal, Glenbow Foundation. xxv 2 Mandelbaum, David G. The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical and Comparative Study. Canadian Plains Research Centre: University of Regina. 1979. 157. 3 Rundle, Journal. 44 4 Dempsey, Hugh A. Heaven is near the Rocky Mountains : the Journals and Letters of Thomas Woolsey, 1855-1869 Calgary : Glenbow Museum, 1989. 5 Kane, Paul. Wanderings of an Artist, M. G. Hurtig Ltd., Edmonton, 1968. 276, cited in Ronaghan, Allen. "The Problem of Maskipiton." In Alberta History, Volume 24, No 2, 14 - 19. 6 Ronaghan. 16. 7 Hutchinson, Gerald. In a video being produced by Lorne Taylor. 2002. 8 Mandelbaum. 157. 9 Rundle. 30. 10 Rundle. 81. 11 Gerald Hutchinson, introduction to Rundle, Rev., Journal, Glenbow Foundation. xliv; Rundle, Journal. 54 12 Rundle, 65. 13 Dempsey. 22. 14 Dempsey, 29. 15 Dempsey, 37. 16 Dempsey, 156. 17 Dempsey, 37. 18 Bull, Sam. "Thirty Years at Whitefish Lake" an unpublished document at the Glenbow Archives. 1 19 Bull, 3. 20 Michrowski, Andrew. Whitefish Lake Reserve, Alberta: Comprehensive Planning Report: Analysis and forecasts. October 1974. 5 - 6. 21 Letter from the Rev. H. B. Steinhauer, in The Missionary Outlook, April 1883, 62. 22 Letter from the Rev. H. B. Steinhauer, in The Missionary Outlook, August 1884, 127 - 128.
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