Oowikapun, or, How the Gospel reached the Nelson River IndiansYoung, Egerton Ryerson
History
Oowikapun, or, How the Gospel reached the Nelson River Indians
Young, Egerton Ryerson
Indians of North America -- Missions -- Fiction
"While I am the niece of Koosapatum, the conjurer and medicine man, whom
I hate, I am not the daughter, but the niece of Kistayimoowin, the
chief. My father was another brother of theirs. He was a great hunter,
and years ago, when I was a little child, he left the home of his tribe
and, taking my mother and me, he went far away to Lake Athabasca, where
he was told there was abundance of game and fish. In a great storm they
were both drowned. I was left a poor orphan child about six years of
age among the pagan Indians, who cared but little for me. They said
they had enough to do in looking after their own children, so often I
was half starved. Fortunately for me the great missionary, with his
wonderful canoe of tin, which the people called the `Island of Light,'
came along that way on one of his journeys. He had those skillful canoe
men--Henry Budd and Hasselton. While stopping among the people and
teaching them the true way, the missionary heard of me and of the danger
I was in of perishing, and so he took me in the canoe and carried me all
the way to Norway House. It was long ago, but well do I remember how
they carried me across the rough portages when I got tired out, and gave
me to eat the best pieces of ducks and geese or other game which they
shot for food. At night they gathered old hay from the beavers'
meadows, or cut down a young balsam tree, and with its branches made me
a little bed for the night.
"When we reached Norway House Mission, I was adopted into the family of
the missionary. They and Miss Adams, the teacher, were very kind to me.
I joined the Indian children in the school, and went regularly to the
little church. I well remember Memotas and Big Tom and Murtagon and
Papanekis and many others. I learned some of the hymns, and can
distinctly remember seeing the missionary and Mr Steinhav printing the
hymns in the characters on the bark and on paper. It was the happiest
year of my life.
"O that I had been wise, and tried to gather up and fix in my memory all
that was said to me of the Great Spirit, and his son Jesus, and about
the good way! But I was a happy, thoughtless girl, and more fond of
play with the little Indian girls and the fun-loving, happy boys than of
listening to the lessons and learning them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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