Missionary Work Among the Ojebway IndiansWilson, Edward Francis
History
Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians
Wilson, Edward Francis
Indians of North America -- Missions; Ojibwa Indians
By seven o'clock everything was in order, books were got out, and the
children seated themselves quietly round the table, not for school, but
just to amuse themselves, as best they liked. I sat in the Matron's
rocking chair by the cook-stove, and was amused to hear them puzzling
over the English words, spelling, and helping one another; some of them
had copies of my Ojebway grammar, and were teaching themselves the
English sentences translated from the Indian.
At half-past seven I suggested they should sing a few hymns before
prayers, so the monitor got the hymn books, and they started the tunes
themselves, and sang very prettily "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,"
"Beautiful River," and "Hark, hark my soul, angelic songs are
swelling." Then we had prayers. I read a short passage from the Gospels
in English, and explained it in Indian. Kneeling down, they all joined
audibly in the general confession and the Lord's prayer. After prayers
all went off to bed, the boys over to the Carpenter's Cottage, and the
girls into the three dormitories. The monitor and cook, girls, however,
had to stay up another hour, for bread had been set and was not yet all
baked. There was the large wooden kneading trough by the stove, and the
scales, and as fast as one batch of bread came out of the oven another
went in, one girl cutting the dough, weighing it--four pounds to a loaf--
and another making up the bread and placing it in the tins. I think
twenty loaves altogether were baked that evening, and very nicely baked
too.
John Rodd was the wood-cutter, and his task was to light the fire in
the morning. He was early to his work, and by 6 a.m. a bright fire was
burning up, lamps were lighted, the bell rung, and soon the occupants
of the dormitories began to make their appearance, shivering,--and so
indeed was I--for it was a cold morning, twenty degrees below Zero, or
thereabouts: the smoke seemed to freeze in the chimney, the window
panes were caked with ice, and nearly everything in the house frozen
solid. It was just as well that the porridge had been made over-night,
even though it was frozen; a little hot water soon brought it to, and
it did not take very long to heat up. "Hole in the Sky" stirred it, and
kept her fingers warm, and we all huddled round the stove, wishing the
wood would stop crackling and smoking, and begin to glow with a red heat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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