“READY FOR THE RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIP”:

CARRIER NEGOTIATIONS WITH CHRISTIANITY THROUGH
FUR TRADERS, PROPHETS, AND MISSIONARIES TO 1885
by

Erik Anderson
B.A., Carleton University, 1994

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in

HISTORY

©Erik Anderson, 1996
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
August 1996
AU rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or
other means, without the permission of the author.

APPROVAL

Name:

Erik Anderson

Degree:

Master of Arts

Thesis Title:

“READY FOR THE RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIP”: CARRIER
NEGOTIATIONS WITH CHRISTIANITY THROUGH FUR
TRADERS, PROPHETS, AND MISSIONARIES TO 1885

Examining Committee:

Chair: William Morrison

External Examiner: Antonia Mills

Date Approved:

ABSTRACT

The Carrier First Nations of north-central British Columbia were introduced to Christian concepts prior
to 1885 by their own prophets as well as by foreign traders and, after 1868, by Oblate missionaries. Oblates

continued some practices that began in the fur trade, and Oblate relations with Carrier chiefs were informed by
earlier relations between chiefs and traders. Carrier negotiation with Christianity transpired from a complex set

of motivations and circumstances, of which the prevalence of disease played an important but not exclusive role.

Carrier turned to Oblates, as they had turned to prophets, in an attempt to combat foreign disease and help make

further adjustments to an encroaching western world. Oblates had their own agenda of segregation, however, that
involved strict adherence to a Christian moral code. Carrier reaction to the Oblates’ imposed system of
surveillance was mixed. There were both overt rejections and willing compromises, but response was mostly
posed as a subtle mixture of these two extremes. Incorporation was one strategy used by Carrier that, rather than

representing rejection of their traditions, represented a desire to compete in a changing world without giving up
their identities as Carrier. Carrier actively sought out new knowledge of the world to add to their own, and
interpreted that knowledge in unique ways. The Carrier encounter with Christianity up to 1 885 should not be
dismissed as a simplistic relationship of one way impositions and forced accommodations, but should rather be
understood as a dialogue between different systems of meaning.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

u

Table of Contents

iii

List of Figures

iv

Acknowledgements

V

Figures

vi

INTRODUCTION

1

CHAPTER ONE

Carrier, Christianity, and the Fur Trade

16

CHAPTER TWO

Bini and the Prophetic Tradition

43

CHAPTER THREE Carrier and Oblates of Mary Immaculate

67

i. The Oblates’ Programme

68

ii. Oblate Adaptations

80

iii. Oblate as Shaman, Fool, and Chief

90

iv. Powerful Carrier and Their Relations
with Oblates

102

CONCLUSION

116

BIBLIOGRAPHY

121

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Map of Carrier country, north-central British Columbia

vi

Figure 2. Sketch of Carrier country by Father James MacKuckin
Archives DechSteletes (AD) P-4939

vii

Figure 3. Sketch of Carrier country by Father Jean-Marie Lejacq
AD P-4184

viii

Figure 4. Carrier shaman showing crown of grizzly bear claws
From A.G. Morice, The History of the Northern Interior of British
Columbia (Toronto: William Briggs, 1905), p. 10.

ix

Figure 5. “Stoney Creek” Charley in preparation for a hunt, 1908
Courtesy of British Columbia Archives and Records Service (BCARS)
G-03100 (HP096298)

ix

Figure 6. Carrier fishing site at the mouth of Stuart Lake, circa 190?
Courtesy of BCARS, D-00454 (HPO598O1)

ix

Figure 7. Group of Sekani, or possibly Carrier, at Fort McLeod, circa 189?
Courtesy of BCARS, A-06195 (HPO16484)

x

Figure 8. Group of Carrier smoking salmon heads near Stuart Lake, 1909
Courtesy of BCARS, G-03741 (SW 3856)

x

Figure 9. Carrier village, Nakazle or Nak’azli, near Fort St James, circa 189?
Courtesy of BCARS, A-04241 (HPO1O836)

xi

Figure 10. Carrier houses at Fort Babine, 1902
Courtesy of BCARS, E-08392 (HP088698)

xi

Figure 11. N.D. de Bonne Esperance at Stuart Lake, circa 1873
From Morice, History of the Northern Interior, p. 342.

xii

Figure 12. N.D. de Bonne Esperance after the steeple was completed in the late 1870’s
Courtesy of BCARS, A-05014 (HP013378)

xii

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many have helped me find my way around archives and uncover their secrets. I wish to thank the staffs

of the British Columbia Archives and Records Service, University of British Columbia Special Collections,
Public Archives of Canada and Archives Dcchateletes. I owe special thanks to the Inter-Library Loan personnel
at the University of Northern British Columbia for their expertise at tracking down obscure secondary material.
Thanks also to Benoit Theriault at the Canadian Museum of Civilization Archives for his assistance with the Bini
materials, Margaret Moore of the Prince George Catholic Diocese for her helpful information on Vicariate

boundaries and marriage register, and Marg Holman for letting me ring the bell. Thanks to Kevin Driscoll for his

invaluable assistance with the map. My research was partly made possible by the Baldwin family's generous
award for original research in the history of Nexthem British Columbia, for which I am greatly appreciative. I

owe many thanks to my mother, Ursula Anderson, for her help with some of the more difficult translations. She
was ever ready to help her sons with their homework even into their late twenties. Thanks also to Robin Fisher
for his help and patience and Antonia Mills for her valued friendship. I reserve most gratitude to my life partner

Lynn for her willing help and loving support throughout a sometimes difficult process.

v

Figure 1. Carrier country; north-central British Columbia.

•

Fur trading posts, settlements related to mining or outfitting stations
Carrier villages
Christian Chapels built by 1875

vi

Figure 2. Sketch of Carrier country, north-central British Columbia, by Father James MacGuckin
from his 1870 tour.

vii

Figure 3. Sketch of Carrier country, north-central British Columbia, by Father Jean-Marie Lejacq
from his tours in the early 1870’s.

viii

Figure 4. Carrier shaman with crown of
grizzly bear claws.

Figure 5. “Stoney Creek’’ Charley in
preparation for a hunt, 1908.

Figure 6. Carrier fishing site at the mouth of Stuart Lake, circa 190?.

ix

Figure 7. Group of Sekani, or possibly Carrier, at Fort McLeod, circa 189?.

Figure 8. Carrier group smoking salmon heads near Stuart Lake, 1909.

x

Figure 9. Carrier Village, Nakazle or Nak’azli, at Fort St. James, circa 189?

Figure 10. Carrier houses at Fort Babine, 1902.

xi

Figure 11. N.D. de Bonne Esperance. Stuart Lake mission, circa 1873.

Figure 12. N.D. de Bonne Esperance taken after the steeple was completed in the
late 1870’s.

xii

INTRODUCTION

I came to this topic with an interest in how peoples of differing cultural heritage resist, contend, absorb

or internalize new ideas of the world upon contacting one another. I quickly came to realize that Christian
missionary contact with the First Nations of Canada necessitated first and foremost an examination of power

relations in a wider context of contact. At the same time, I realized that an analysis of individuals and their
relations with one another, as much as cultures, was central to any story of ideological negotiation. What follows

is a micro-history of contact between distinct peoples, and not simply as representatives of their respective
cultures - western versus First Nations.

The title, “ready for the religious relationship,” is taken from the Oblate missionary George Blanchet’s

correspondence written within the first few months of his posting to Stuart Lake in 1873. It represents a

commonly held opinion of Oblates that distinguished their own ‘true religion’ from the ‘superstition’ of the
‘sauvage’. Any perceived enthusiasm for Christianity was understood by Oblates to indicate a readiness of the

Carrier to raise themselves above the baseness of ‘superstition’. More than this, however, “ready for the religious
relationship” is meant to indicate that Carrier had their own reasons for entering into a dialogue with Christianity,

some of which are addressed in this thesis.
The transmissions of religious concepts across cultural barriers have long fascinated those who study
culture change. Cultures are open and living systems constantly changing in response to both internal and external

challenges. Response to challenge, or ‘crisis’, can be both moderate and radical. Whether a culture draws purely

from within itself, its traditional beliefs and practices, or whether it borrows from outside of its tradition when
meeting new challenges, response is posed or internalized in ways that are mutually understood by its members.

Culture is forever being invented and reinvented, but always in a way that builds on the past. Understanding

power dynamics, both within and between cultures, is central to understanding the channelling and resisting of
change and continuity on both sides of a cultural barrier. No study of cultural and religious interplay can pretend

1

to understand all the workings of power. I hope that this study can at least shed some light on the power dynamics
and negotiation that occurred between the Carrier First Nations of north-central British Columbia and those

purveyors of a new and different ideology, fur traders, Carrier prophets and Oblate missionaries.
This thesis examines how Carrier adopted and interpreted the Christian message in its early stages of
introduction, and particularly how the missionaries of the order of the Oblatcs of Mary Immaculate were

perceived and incorporated into Carrier communities. The cut-off date has been set at 1885, when the Oblate A.

G. Morice arrived at Notre Dame de Bonne Esperance, the central mission to the Carrier at Stuart Lake near the
trading post of Fort Saint James. This date is convenient for several reasons, but was mostly chosen because

Morice’s stay among the Carrier partially coincided to a change in Oblate policy that would have necessitated a

more detailed examination and change of focus than was possible here. Morice has been dealt with in some detail,
having been portrayed as an eccentric egomaniac in both a doctoral dissertation and later a book by David

Mulhall.1 The pre-Morice years of contact with Christianity forms an important component of Carrier history
largely overshadowed by later historical developments that often lay outside the sphere of Carrier influence.
Christianity was introduced by fur traders and Carrier prophets as well as by missionaries. Carrier
negotiations with Christianity are traced from the beginnings of the land-based fur trade in the early 1800s to

1885, with particular emphasis placed chi the role of Carrier prophets and chiefs in their people’s rejection,
incorporation, accommodation to and acceptance of certain Christian concepts.2 Christian elements were
borrowed and used by Carrier in ways that did not necessarily undermine their traditional cultural patterns and
belief systems. The Carriers’ ability to adapt both the trade in European goods and the Christian message to their
cultural institutions and belief systems can be understood in light of their attempts to cope with and gain

advantage from the presence of strangers among them. Chiefs formed alliances with both traders and missionaries

1

D. Mulhall, ‘The Missionary Career of A.G. Morice, O.M.I.” (Montreal: McGill University PhD. Thesis, 1978), and
Will to Power (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986).
2
The title ‘chief is an approximation of English usage for various positions within the Carrier social complex. ‘Chief
is used purposely, and conveniently, loosely throughout this thesis, and can be substituted with any of the following terms
used in other works pertaining to the Carrier: noble, clan leader, group leader, toezena, deneza or denne-za.

2

that ultimately reflected the Carrier’s desire to compete on an equal footing with non-Natives without giving up
their identities as Carrier. Certain Carrier were able to bend Christian doctrine, practice and authority from
traders and missionaries to their own uses. Carrier interaction with missionaries was partly informed by earlier

interactions with traders, and Carrier negotiation with missionary Christianity represents a continuation of
negotiation that began with their own prophets. This thesis is divided into chapters that will take into account

Carrier interactions with fur traders, prophets and missionaries in turn.
When the first permanent mission began in 1873 Carrier culture was intimately connected to the fur

trade. Participation in the trade had important consequences for the Carrier including an influx of new wealth and

an increase in authority for some individuals. Usually it was those title-holders who already had a degree of
influence in Carrier society who were in the best position to gain from the trade, and who were actively courted

by traders in hopes of encouraging the trade among other Carrier. The Carrier and trader’s relationship of

reciprocal gift-giving and feasting, and the Hudson’s Bay Company policy of favouring Carrier chiefs are
examined in detail. Some chiefs were able to exert a considerable amount of control over the trade. Carrier
maintained an alternative source of European goods throughout their history of trade with Nor’ westers and the

HBC to 1885, and were not fully reliant on traders for their existence. Traders set up a system of rewards and
punishments in their attempts to control the trade, but certain Carrier came to use that system for their own

advantages. K’wah and his son Prince were the most influential of central Carrier chiefs from the beginnings of
the trade to the death of Prince in 1881, and both were able to manipulate the trade to some degree.

Chapter one also examines traders’ influence on Carrier culture through the dissemination of Christian
doctrine and imposition of Christian morality. Traders were tapping into and attempting to accelerate the pre¬

existing Carrier occupation of trapping furs, and thus may have wanted to limit their influence on Carrier culture.

It is nevertheless apparent that many traders did actively proselytize Christianity, and did attempt to alter, with
varying degrees of success, some Carrier practices that ran counter to Nor’Wester and HBC officers’ Victorian

Christian sensibilities, such as cremation, gambling, and homicidal revenge based on a belief in medicine power.

3

Carrier, however, had reasons of their own for adjusting to the land-based trade that may have eluded traders

whose exceptional opinion of racial superiority was deeply engrained. Fur trade journals and correspondence,
both published and unpublished, form the basis of evidence for this chapter.

Chapter two examines Carrier prophets and the Christian elements within their messages. After a brief
review of the literature on North American prophet movements, I argue that Carrier ‘prophets’, or visionnaire as
the missionaries called them, were working within a shamanic tradition of dreaming and healing. Christian

concepts were internalized through the mediation of prophets in ways that helped to explain the economic changes
brought about by Carrier participation in the trade. Trade in European goods brought unfamiliar diseases that

called for new cures. Prophets incorporated Christian paraphernalia with older methods of healing in their

attempts to combat European disease. Prophets served an important function in Carrier culture and represented

not simply a reaction to or mimicking of European culture, but an i ntemalized process of creation in response to
both actual and anticipated change.
Bini, an influential and well remembered Witsuwit’en prophet from Hagwilgate (Rocher Ddbould), used

elements of Christianity in ways beneficial to all Carrier. He is remembered through oral accounts as introducing

many elements of Christian belief and practice within a Carrier cultural context. These remembrances represent

an interpretation that provides the Carrier with an active role in shaping their history from within, rather than it
having been imposed from without The main sources that are used to uncover aspects of Bini’s life, his teachings

and his prophetic messages, are oral accounts that had been collected by the anthropologists Jenness and Barbeau
in the 1920s. Of these accounts, the most instructive are those taken from Barbeau’s field notes that have been
transcribed directly from his shorthand. These do not always jibe with his published material.
The third and final chapter explores Carrier interactions with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The first
visit to northern Carrier by Oblates was made in response to a request from the Stuart Lake Carrier chief Prince.

Bishop Louis D’Herbomez and Father James MacGuckin in 1868 first put in place the Church-centred

4

hierarchical system whose origins came to be falsely associated with D’Herbomez’ successor Paul Durieu.3 This

‘system’ was designed to be a form of self-regulation along Christian standards of morality whereby influential
Carrier were given authority from the Oblates in the symbolic form of crosses, medallions, rosaries and
temperance flags. In this the missionaries were following the practice of gift giving to Carrier chiefs begun in the
ftir trade. Influential Carrier were given various titles and tasks in an attempt to institutionalize Christian morality
and regulate the Carrier’s daily and weekly religious activities. They formed a court, headed by the missionary,
that settled disputes and meted out punishments, sometimes corporal, to transgressors of Church-based rules.

It would be erroneous to assume, however, that these initial contacts with Oblates simply resulted in a
one-way imposition of ideas and practices. As much as Oblates may have wanted to believe it, they did not come
into contact with a weak culture and weak minds on which they could etch their particular brand of Christianity
wholesale. Oblates instead found a people with a strong sense of place and history and long standing social
institutions. Oblates did in fact adapt to certain aspects of Carrier culture and other established practices such as
the potlatch, the debtor system put in place first by the Nor’ westers and later continued by the HBC, and

matrilineal marriage customs. Calling attention to Oblate adaptations is not meant to minimize their policy of
altering both belief systems and lifeways, for any adaptations were entirely oriented towards these goals.

Some Carrier by all accounts appeared anxious to receive missionaries and follow their Christian

messages and programme. The missionaries’ power was tested, as the traders had been previously, and Carrier
sought to find advantage from what the Oblates had to offer. It is clear that Carrier believed Oblates to at least

have the potential for shamanic-like healing power. As with their own prophets, Carrier looked to missionaries to

effect cures to unfamiliar diseases. Neither the prevalence nor fear of disease, however, can alone account for all

3

See J. Gresko, “Roman Catholic Missions to the Indians of British Columbia: A Reappraisal of The Lemert Thesis”
Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 24, no. 2 (1982), pp. 51-62.

5

Carrier conversions.4 Baptism was variously perceived to be both cure and cause of disease, but mostly Carrier

seem to have attributed a considerable amount of beneficial power to the ritual. To what extent Carrier interaction
with the missionary and his ‘civilizing’ programme effected their daily lives is also briefly examined. The majority

of Carrier contact with the missionary was minimal, and it is important that Oblate accounts of the ‘progress’ of
Carrier, who they saw for a total of a few days to a few weeks each year, not be read too literally. Carrier were

selective in their response to the Oblate’s programme and continued to utilize their age-old cultural institutions
and have recourse to the medicine or spirit power that formed such an intricate part of their universe.

Both resistance and accommodation were factors in the early contact between Carrier and Oblate. While
shamans and prophets were recorded by missionaries as offering the most overt resistance, chiefs offered a more

subtle form. The Oblates’ missionary method quickly became entangled with the authority of chiefs. Those

Carrier who had either maintained or increased their authority through the fur trade were courted by missionaries
to help them in their proselytising. The authority of the missionary was in turn manipulated by certain Carrier for
both their individual interests and for more community oriented goals. Rather than understand chiefs to be either

dupes of the missionary, or themselves agents of a ‘civilizing’ colonialism, it is suggested here that chiefs may
have had their own reasons for buying into at least some aspects of the missionary programme. These reasons
could, but did not necessarily, coincide with the missionaries’, and missionaries’ authority could be used for other

ends than those intended.

The missionaries, especially Jean-Marie Lejacq who made extensive and regular tours of Carrier country

from 1869 to 1880, have left behind a rich source of material that will make up the majority of evidence for
understanding both the Oblate response to the Carrier and Carrier response to Catholicism. Understanding a

culture’s response through the eyes of those being responded to is problematic for obvious reasons. The Oblates

4

‘Conversion’ is used loosely herein to mean adherence, at least in outward appearance, to Christian doctrine and
practice. ‘Conversion’ did not have the same ‘all-or-nothing’ meaning for the Carrier as it had far the Oblates. It is not
always dear at what point the Oblates themselves considered Carrier to be ‘converted’. Baptism, for example, the first of
six sacraments, was often used by the Oblates to help them in the conversion process, rather than itself necessarily
indicating conversion.

6

and their Christian message, however, did not simply represent something to be reacted against while remaining

themselves relatively unchanged; a careful reading of the mission correspondence is invaluable to understanding
the dialogue that occurred between priest and Carrier. Carrier oral accounts are used when possible, but

unfortunately few are in existence for the period that frames this study. Those anthropologists who did record oral

accounts in the 1920s were mostly not as interested in recording creative adaptations to changing circumstances

as they were to salvage aspects of pre-contact culture before First Nations were completely assimilated, a process
that most believed to be inevitable.

Recognition of First Nations’ agency in their interactions with missionaries is only a relatively recent
historiographical development. This is partly the result of a distinction having been drawn between directed and

non-directed cultural change.5 The assumption seems to have once been that First Nations had less control over
the directed cultural change of the missionary than they had over the non-directed cultural change of the fur

trader.6 In his book Contact and Conflict, where he shows First Nations to have a controlling force in the fur
trade, Fisher writes of the influence of the missionary and the Christian message: “Unlike those of the trader, the

demands of the missionaries could not be incorporated into existing Indian society; their teaching and their

example had to be either accepted or rejected, and acceptance meant virtually a total cultural change for the

proselyte.”7 More recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that First Nations have indeed been able to

5

See R. Linton ed„ Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1963), and R. Fisher,
Contact and Conflict (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), pp. 47-8 and his chapter on missionaries, pp. 119-146.
6
For a critical analysis of Linton, see D. Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy (Waterloo: Wilfrid
Laurier U Press, 1988), p. 2. For works that have treated First Nations as actively shaping the fur trade, see Abraham
Rotstien, ‘Trade and Politics: An Institutional Approach,” Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1972),
pp. 1-28, Arther Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade (Toronto: U of T Press, 1974), and “Indians as Consumers in the
Eighteenth Century” in Out of the Background, R. Fisher and K. Coates eds. (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1988), pp.
134-49, Fisher, Contact and Conflict, Francis, D. and T. Morantz Partners in Furs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U Press,
1983), S. Van Kirk Many Tender Ties (Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1980). Phillip Goldring makes a similar argument
for Inuit agency in their interaction with European whalers; “Inuit Economic Responses to Euro-American Contacts:
Southeast Baffin Island, 1824-1940” in Interpreting Canada’s North, K. Coates and W. Morrison eds. (Toronto: Copp
Clark Pitman, 1989), pp. 252-277. For the argument that the early fur trade was a stimulus for First Nations cultural
growth, see W. Duff; The Indian History of British Columbia (Victory: Royal British Columbia Museum, 1969), pp. 54 60. For a recent refutation of theories of First Nations control in the fur trade, see Peter Carstens, The Queen’s People: A
Study of Hegemony, Coercion, and Accommodation among the Okanagan of Canada (Toronto: U of T Press, 1991).
7
Fisher, Contact and Conflict, p. 125.

7

actively incorporate aspects of Christianity into their belief systems without necessarily undermining or

superseding their traditional beliefs and practices.

Clarence Bolt, in his examination of the Methodist missionary Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian’s

response to him, disparages Fisher’s lack of attribution of agency to First Nations in their interaction with

missionaries.8 Bolt, however, has a similar take on what conversion actually meant to First Nations, only he
argued that the decision to replace their culture with another was consciously made by the Tsimshian. Bolt is
somewhat ambivalent on this point arguing both that it was the Tsimshian’s desire to participate in British

Columbian society while remaining Tsimshian,9 and that conversion to the Tsimshian meant “in fact the
acceptance of a whole new cultural framework.”10 Assuming a conscious decision among the Tsimshian to
assimilate themselves also assumes that Tsimshian saw their traditions as inferior to those of the European - an
assumption that has been refuted in other studies of missionary contact.

John Webster Grant addressed the complexity of what conversion might have meant to First Nations in
his overview of missionary-First Nations contact in Canada, Moon of Wintertime. In his concluding chapter
entitled “A Yes That Means No” he offered the theory that “profession to Christianity was a subtle but effective

way of rejecting it”11 Conversion, Grant reasoned, may have been used by First Nations as a means of
acceptance into European society while secretly maintaining their own traditional beliefs and values. A major
contention of Grant’s book, however, is that First Nations tur'ed to Christianity when their traditional beliefs

were proved ineffective in dealing with changes, especially diseases, brought by the European. Kerry Abd refutes
this “disaster and deprivation” thesis,12 and argues instead that certain aspects of Christianity fit quite well with

8

C. Bolt, Thanas Crosby and the Tsimshian (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992).

9 Ibid,

p. xii.

10 Ibid, p.

106.
J.W. Grant, Moon of Wintertime (Toronto: U of T Press, 1984), p. 250.
12
K. Abel, “Of Two Minds: Dene Response to the Mackenzie Missions, 1858-1902” in Interpreting Canada’s North,
Coates and Morrison eds., p. 77.
11

8

the Dene cosmology and that neither the daily lives nor the cultural outlook of the Dene were fundamentally
changed by the Christian missions.

13

Similar to Abel’s assertions regarding the cultural strength and resilience of the Dene, Margaret
Whitehead has argued in numerous works on missionaries in British Columbia that First Nations were capable of

sound judgement and had the perception and intelligence to recognize those aspects of Christianity that might be
used to their advantage and those that were detrimental, and were thus rejected.14 Jacqueline Kennedy, in an
important early B.A. thesis, has shown that Oblates adapted their teaching techniques to Stalo ways of life and

that the ‘Durieu system’ was not as successful in its acculturation program as some had been led to believe by the
earlier work of Edwin Lcmert.15 This last point had been expanded by both Gresko in a later article,16 and

Rodney Fowler in another important and much overlooked B.A thesis.17 Both Gresko and Fowler demonstrate
that Lemert’s unfounded conclusions had come to inform later influential works on First Nations history in

British Columbia, notably those of Duff and Fisher.18 Fowler argued that the Sechelt maintained a duality of
cultural practices, both indigenous and European, throughout the missionary period, and that Oblates had
inadvertently helped them to achieve this duality by using the existing political power structures to impart their

Christian message.

E. Palmer Patterson II has demonstrated leadership continuity among the Nisga’a community of
Kincolith throughout a period of tentative acceptance of Anglican missionaries. Patterson argued that Nisga’a
petitioned the missionary in hopes of bettering their economic condition, and were able to use the missionary as an

13

Ibid. See also Abel, “The Drum and the Cross: An Ethnohistorical StudyAof Mission Work Among the Dene, 18581902” (Kingston: Queen’s University PhD. Thesis, 1984).
14
See particularly M. Whitehead, They Call Me Father (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988), and “Christianity: A Matter of
Choice,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 72 (1981), pp. 98-106.
15
J. Kennedy (now Gresko), “Roman Catholic Missionary Efforts and Indian Acculturation in the Fraser Valley, 18601900” (Vancouver: UBC B.A. Essay, 1969). E. Lemert, “The Life and Death of an Indian State” Human Organization 13,
no. 3 (1954), pp. 23-7.
16
Gresko, “Roman Catholic Missions.” See also, J. Gresko, “Missionary Acculturation Programs in British Columbia”
Etudes Oblates 32, no. 3 (Juillet-Septembre 1973), pp. 145-58.
17
R. Fowler, “The Oblate System at the Seshelt Mission 1862-1899” (Vancouver: Simon Fraser U B.A. Thesis, 1987).
18
See Gresko, “Roman Catholic Missions,” p. 58 note 1, and “The Oblate System,” pp. 1-3.
9

adjunct to the chiefs power of manipulation of white authorities.” Ronald Hawker has also demonstrated
leadership continuity among Tsimshian peoples in his unique article on the syncretism of form and media in

gravestones. Gravestones, Hawker argued, continued to express social positions that were previously depicted by
so-called ‘totem’ poles. He concluded that gravestones should be viewed as examples of Tsimshian cultural
tenacity rather than dismissed as indicative of their cultural degeneration.19

20

Finally, of particular interest to the

study of Carrier, are the many works of Jo- Anne Fiske in which she demonstrated how Carrier women of the

Stoney Creek community had overcome attempts by white authority figures to subordinate their traditional

positions.21 In “And Then We Prayed Again,” she argued that some women were not only able to use the
missionary for their own advantage but made use of the foreign knowledge learned in residential schools to

maintain their unique cultural identity.22

Recently there has been criticism and some fairly serious allegations levied against those who, it is
believed, have taken the ‘agency' argument too far.23 These allegations are mostly made with current First

Nations political struggles against the Canadian government in mind. Those who have attempted to not only point

to an historic element of First Nations resistance, but also of control, in such areas as the anti-potlatch law and
residential schooling have been accused of being apologists of colonization.24 These contentious issues do not play

E.P. Patterson n, “Kincolith, B.C.: Leadership Continuity in a Native Christian Village, 1867-1887,” Canadian
Journal of Anthropology 3, no. 1 (Fall 1982), pp. 53-4. See also E. Patterson, “Nishga Perceptions of Their First Resident
Missionary, The Reverend R.R.A. Doolan (1864-1867),” Anthropologica 30. no. 1 (1988), pp. 119-135.
20
R. Hawker, “A Faith of Stone: Gravestones, Missionaries, and Culture Change and Continuity Among British
Columbia’s Tsimshian Indians,” Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 3 (1991), p. 99.
21
J. Fiske, “And Then We Prayed Again: Carrier Women, Colonialism and Mission Schools” (Vancouver: UBC M.A.
Thesis, 1981), “Gender and Politics in a Carrier Indian Community” (Vancouver: UBC PhD Thesis, 1989), and “Fishing
is Women’s Business: Changing Economic Roles of Carrier Women and Men” in Native People, Native Lands, B. Cox
ed. (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1987), pp. 186-98.
22
Fiske, “And Then We Prayed Again,” pp. 2 and 102.
23
See R. Brownlie and M. Keim, “Desperately Seeking Absolution: Native Agency as Colonialist Alibi?’ Canadian
Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1994), pp. 543-556, and E. Furniss Victims of Benevolence (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press,
1992), and “Resistance, Coercion, and Revitalization” Ethnohistory 42, no. 2 (spring 1995), pp. 231-263.
24
Those works dealing with the anti-potlatch law criticized by Keim and Brownlie are T. Loo, “Dan Cranmer’s
Potlatch: Law as Coercion, Symbol, and Rhetoric in British Columbia, 1884-1951,” Canadian Historical Review 73, no. 2
(1992), pp. 125-65, D. Cole and I. Chaikin, An Iron Hand upon the People (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990). J.
Miller’s article on residential schools, “Owen Glendower, Hotspur, and Canadian Indian Policy,” Ethnohistory 37, no. 4
(fall 1990), pp. 386-415, is criticized both in the commentary by Keim and Brownlie and in Furniss, Victims of
Benevolence. Furniss, “Resistance,” p. 253, also criticizes Gresko’s article on residential schools, “Creating Little
Dominions within the Dominion: Early Catholic Residential Schools in Saskatchewan and British Columbia” in Indian
19

10

a role in this study of the pre-1885 introduction of Christian concepts among the Carrier. Nevertheless, the
situating of this thesis within the historiographical trend of treating First Nations as active agents in their

interaction with missionaries, especially in light of the imposed Oblate programme, needs to be defended.
Elizabeth Furniss, in a recent article on Shus wap interactions with Oblates between I860 and 1900, has

argued.
Studies that emphasize native agency and that advocate models of religious syncretism or
dualism...do not consider how coercion, the product of a social context of unequal relations of
power between natives and colonial society, served to limit native options for responding to the
25
missionary presence.*
Following the definition of coercion as a one way act perpetrated on the culturally weak by the culturally strong,

an unequal power relationship must then be demonstrated. This Furniss does by placing the initial interaction of
Shuswap and Oblate in the context of a “shattering of [Shuswap] social networks, and a loss of control over their

lands” that resulted from the double invasion of gold miners and disease.26 In a context of social destabilization
she argues that conversion to Catholicism should ultimately be understood as a revitalization movement of the

type outlined by Wallace and Aberle.27 Prophet movements, often associated with revitalization, had occurred in
the 1830s, she argues, and helped to “set a backdrop for the...pageantry and ritual of the Catholic Church.”28
Considering her own account of Shuswap society’s adjustments to the fur trade in the early 1800s, however, the
conditions that would have caused the type of revilatization outlined by Wallace do not seem to have been

present I argue that the model of revitalization, which presupposes cultural breakdown, applies neither to the

movements introduced by Carrier prophets nor to the early introduction of Catholicism by Oblates. There is little

Education in Canada: Volume 1: The Legacy, J. Barman, Y. Hebert and D. McCaskill eds. (Vancouver: UBC Press,
1986), pp. 88-109, and Whitehead’s article, “Christianity, a Matter of Choice.” For responses by Cole and Miller to the
Keim and Brownlie piece, and a further rejoinder by Keim, see “Desperately Seeking Absolution,” Canadian Historical
Review 76, no. 4 (winter 1995), pp. 628-640. For a tidy summary of this debate, see H. Foster, “Letting Go the Bone: The
Idea of Indian Title in British Columbia, 1849-1927’ in Essays in the History of Canadian Law: British Columbia and the
Yukon, H. Foster and J. McLaren eds. (Toronto: U of T Press, 1995), p. 35.
25
Furniss, “Resistance,” p. 233.
26
Ibid. p. 240.
27
Ibid, p. 252. AF.C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements” in Reader in Comparative Religion, W. Lessa and E. Vogt
eds. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 421-9. D. Aberle, “The Prophet Dance and Reactions to White Contact,”
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15 (1959), pp. 74-83.
28
Furniss, “Resistance,” p. 251.

11

J

&

evidence that Carrier cultural patterns were in disarray or that their options of response were limited to any great
degree at the time of first contact with Oblates.
Furniss adapted Jean and John ComarofTs theory of hegemony, central to their penetrating analysis of
missionary influence on the “long conversation” of South African colonialism and apartheid, to her own work on

-

Oblate Shuswap relations.29 There are many dissimilarities between these encounters, however, of both degree
and kind, that necessitate careful consideration before any theory can be structurally applied. Furthermore, the
30
ComarofTs themselves emphasize agency in their theoretical formulations in ways that Furniss does not. While

Furniss is willing to accept Shuswap’s active participation in their history when it comes to instances of overt
resistance to the missionary, she is not as willing to show Shuswap exerting much choice in their accommodations

of Christianity. She does argue that Shuswap had their own reasons for accepting Christian elements and
following the Oblates’ programme, only she insinuates that these reasons were entirely forced on them by
circumstances beyond their control. Rather than rely solely on theories of revitalization or deprivation, the

Comaroffs’ examination of colonial evangelization is rather more complex, in which “each party was to try to
gain some purchase on some mastery over, the other: the churchmen to convert the Tswana to Christianity; the

Tswana, to divert the potency of the churchmen to themselves.”31

The Comaroffs’ works are particularly instructive in their examination of the subtle internalization of
missionary categories in the daily lives of Tswana. Furniss' invoking of the Comaroffs’ recent anthropological

theorizing does not take full advantage of this insight, nor is their work in fact necessary for her purposes, for
Hilary Rumley had argued twenty-two years previously that missionary contact with the First Nations of British

Columbia should be viewed in its larger colonial framework (including temporally), and that adherence to

29

J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa.
(Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1991).
30
One of their three stated intentions, for example, is “...that, just as colonialism itself was not a coherent monolith, so
colonial evangelism was not a simple matter of raw mastery, of British churchmen instilling in passive black South
Africans the culture of European modernity...”; J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, p. 12.
31 Ibid,
p. 11.

12

Christianity is best understood as a revitalization movement.’2 Underlying these studies is the assumption that
adherence to Christian doctrine and practice only occur in contexts of preceding cultural dislocations, and that

inversely, those communities that have maintained a degree of cultural integrity will simply reject the missionary
and his message. Ignored in these studies is the possibility that First Nations may have attempted to incorporate
Christianity and make use of the missionary for their own purposes in order to effectively participate, on their

own terms, in a wider social and economic setting.
The Comaroffs’ study of hegemony and the “colonization of consciousness,” has potentially wider

applications for all examinations of culture contact in a colonialist context. A more sophisticated examination of

the Comaroffs’ theories can be found in Michael Harkin’s look at the Heiltsuk

- Methodist encounter at Bella

Bella.3233 The issue at base seems to be one of attempting to come to terms with First Nations participation in a
‘symbol system’ or ideology of a colonizer that ultimately dominates them, thus a process of created hegemony
begun at first contact There is, however, an inherent inclination in such examinations to deny First Nations the
ability to internally construct their history and identities in the face of external challenges and to be selective and
creative in their borrowings from outside influences. Realizing the danger of such analysis, Harkin added the

cautionary note:

While it is important to recognize the operation of hegemony, it would be mistaken to see the
process of missionization as simply one of imposing Euro-Canadian in place of Heiltsuk
conceptions. Rather, the Heiltsuk maintained (and in some ways invented) a strong sense of
themselves and their “tradition” in opposition to definitions imposed by missionaries. Perhaps
more important novel practices were integrated into Heiltsuk culture and given specifically
Heiltsuk readings.34

32

H. Rumley, “Reactions to Contact and Colonization: An Interpretation of Religious and Social Change Among
Indians of British Columbia” (Vancouver: UBC M.A. Thesis, 1973).
33
M. Harkin, “Power and Progress: The Evangelic Dialogue Among the Heiltsuk,” Ethnohistory 40, no. 1 (Winter
1993), pp. 1-33.
34 Ibid,
p. 3.

13

Tina Loo also struggled with this issue in a recent examination of British Columbia First Nations participation in
Canadian Law, and argued that theories of false consciousness “denies the possibility that Indians acted
strategically and in accordance with their own agenda.”35

A further danger of emphasizing, in Furniss’ words, the “long-term hegemonic consequences of using

colonial symbols to reconstruct an aboriginal identity and worldview,”36 lies in the temptation to read history
backwards. The power dynamics of culture contact are on some level unfathomably complex, and rarely, as the
Comaroffs make clear, involve straightforward domination by a monolithic colonialist force.37 Hasty conclusions
regarding “unequal power relations” in early contact situations can grossly simplify complex cultural encounters.

A good example of this is found in Peter Carstens’ recent monograph on the Okanagan, where the spectre of First

Nations as ‘passive victim’ is front and centre in his analysis of Okanagan cncwnters with fur traders and

missionaries.38 Furniss, in another article, argued that the Carrier were “not simply passive recipients of foreign
cultural traditions” when adopting cultural elements from coastal First Nations.39 Rather, they “actively modified
these ideas while making changes to their own cultural practices.”40 To then deny Shuswap the same internal

agency in adopting certain aspects of Christianity for their own use is not only inconsistent, but continues to
understand power relations between missionaries and First Nations in terms of one-way impositions and forced

accomodations that denies First Nations the cultural strength to adapt to new circumstances.

Studies that emphasize agency do not necessarily undermine the negative consequences of colonialism,

as is demonstrated in the exemplary works of the Comaroffs, where hegemony far from precludes agency of the
oppressed. Agency should not be polarized with constraint, as Furniss has done in order to take a supposed
middle path. Rather the concept of agency should be embraced to exemplify both resistance in all of its

35

T. Loo, “Tonto’s Due: Law, Culture, and Colonization in British Columbia” in Essays in the History of Canadian
Law. British Columbia and the Yukon, H. Foster and J. McLaren eds. (Toronto: U of T Press, 1995), p. 143.
36
Ibid, p. 233.
37
J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, p. 12.
38
P. Carstens, The Queen’s People.
39
E. Furniss, “The Carrier Indians and the Politics of History” in Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, R.
Morrison and C. Wilson eds. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), p. 530.
,

40

Ibid.
14

complexity, including its possible manifestations in accommodation, and the extent of cultural oppression,
coercive and hegemonic. The pre-1885 Carrier encounter with Christianity, as disseminated from traders,

prophets and missionaries, is best conceived as a dialogue between different systems of meaning, as understood in
the works of Sergai Kan and Ann Fienup-Riordan.41

A rare even-handed examination of First Nations contact with missionaries is found in Fienup- Riordan’s
monograph on the Alaskan Yup’ik’s interactions with the Moravian missionaries John and Edith Kilbuck.

Fienup-Riordan criticizes anthropologists of “dispensing with their usual relativism” when critiquing

missionaries.42 Instead of the usual ‘value-laden argument’ espousing the negative effects of Christianity on First
Nations culture, she understands the cultural interaction as an “encounter between different systems of meaning.”
“This encounter,” she continues, “has resulted neither in total commitment nor in total rejection of one by the

other.”43 The result of this “dialogue” was a subtle internalization and negotiation of Christian concepts in ways
that differed from both Kilbuck and Yup’ik expectations.
Cultural dialogue can involve both active resistance and outright acceptance, but mostly refers to the

range of incorporation, adaptation and accommodation that exists between these two extremes. Culture contact
does not often result in one culture’s absolute resistance or wholesale acceptance of the other. The emphasis of
this thesis has thus been placed on power dynamics and negotiation of the various parties involved. Christianity
provided a basis from which much of that negotiation occurred.

41

See especially S. Kan, “Anthropological Approach to Missionization,” Arctic Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1987), pp. 3-7,
and A. Fienup-Riordan, The Real People and the Children of Thunder (Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
42
Fienup-Riordan, Real People, p. 4.
43

Ibid, p. 8.

15

CHAPTER ONE: Carrier, Christianity and the Fur Trade

This chapter examines the extent to which Christianity was introduced to the Carrier via the fur trade, as
well as providing context for the later impact of the prophets’ and missionaries’ proselytizing within a trading

environment.1 The missionaries’ relationship with chiefs, for example, is best understood in the context of earlier
relations between traders and chiefs. Chiefs and company officers made formal alliances with one another that
found expression in gift-giving, reciprocal feasting, and greetings. These alliances could be initiated by cither

party, and both sides were subject to manipulation by the other. Traders attempted to control the trade by playing

on the status of chiefs through a system of giving and refusal of both gifts and goods on credit. Chiefs, however,
were able to exert a considerable influence over the trade through manipulation of this ‘system’, which was in the
end as much forced upon the trader as it was maintained out of choice.

A brief examination of the power dynamics between Stuart Lake Carrier chiefs K’wah and his son
Prince, and the traders of Fort St James, demonstrates the extent to which chiefs’ authority could be enhanced by

the trade. Although trade profits began slowly to decline from approximately the 1850s on, chiefs continued to
have considerable influence over the trade and within their communities. K’wah, who died in 1840, and Prince,
who died 41 years later, were both able to take advantage of the trade, and the presence of the traders, to maintain

and increase their personal and clan power bases within the region. The trade up to 1885 is best characterized by

an uneasy partnership between traders and chiefs in which goals occasionally coincided, but in which traders by

no means had the upper hand.

1

Some notable studies that have attempted to understand First Nations perceptions of missionaries in the context of a
fur trade that would have largely shaped such perceptions include J. Brown, ‘“1 Wish to be as I See You’: An OjibwaMethodist Encounter in Fur Trade Country,” Arctic Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1987), pp. 19-31, and J. Goossen
“Missionary - Indian - Trader: The Triangular Nature of Contact in Rupert’s Land” in Approaches to Native History,
D.A. Muise ed. (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1977), pp. 30-43.

16

The lur trade set the stage for missionary Christianity in more direct ways as well. Gift-giving, greeting

customs and the dispensation of medicines and vaccinations were practices that began in the fur trade and were
continued by missionaries. It is possible that whipping as a form of punishment had also originated in the fur
trade. Although it may have been in traders’ best interests to limit their interference in Carrier culture, they did
nevertheless seek to impose elements of both Christian morality and dextrine. Traders attempted to prevent the

Carrier customs of cremation, gambling and concept of homicidal revenge based on medicine power. Elements of

Christian doctrine filtered into Carrier society from the trade in many ways, including traders who took an active
role in proselytizing the Christian message, either for personal gain or from more altruistic motives.

Carrier participated in the maritime fur trade through Aboriginal brokers to the west well before 1800.
Both Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, looking for an overland route to the Pacific in the employ of the
Northwest Company, saw evidence of a coast-interior trade in European goods.2 A coast-interior trade network

was a long established institution, and before its incorporation of European trade goods such items as obsidian,

copper, oolichan grease, nephrite adzes, dentalian shells, wool, cedar boxes and other carved goods were traded
into the interior.3 Many anthropologists have argued that the maritime trade in European goods had stimulated

coast-interior trade and cultural exchanges, and that Carrier incorporated the coastal potlatch complex and clan¬
based social organization as a result4 Recently, however, Antonia Mills has convincingly argued for a greater

2

A. Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Laurence through the Continent of North America to the
Frozen and Pacific Oceans, In the Years 1789 and 1793 (Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig, 1971), p. 287. The Letters and Journals
of Simon Fraser 1806-1808, W.K. Lamb ed. (Toronto: MacMillan, 1960), p. 170.
3
There was a twelfth century Chinese coin found at Chinlac; M. Tobey, “Carrier” in Handbook of Neath American
Indians. VoL6, Subarctic, J. Helm ed. (Washington: Smithsonian Institute, 1981), p. 416.
4
For a literature review of the various datings of Carrier adoption of the coastal potlatch complex from the coast, see W.
Aasen, “Should the Clans Decide?: The Problems of Modelling Self-Government Among the Carrier-Sekani Indians of
British Columbia” (M.A. Thesis, 1993), pp. 112-18, and Tobey “Carrier,” pp. 418-9. See also C. Bishop, “Limiting
Access to Limited Goods: The Origins of Stratification in Interior British Columbia” in The Development of Political
Organization in Native North America , E. Tooker ed. (Washington: American Ethnological Society Proceedings, 1979)
p. 156, and “Coast-Interior Exchange: The Origins of Stratification in Northwestern North America,” Arctic
Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1987), p. 72.

17

antiquity of these institutions among the Witsuwit’en or Bulkley River Carrier, a western Carrier group.5 With a
direct and mostly regular trade, European goods were incorporated into an older potlatch complex.

The land-based fur trade began when Fraser set up the McLeod Lake trading post in Sekani territory in
1805, the Stuart Lake (later Fort St James) and Fraser Lake posts in 1806, and Fort George in 1807. Later posts
added to what became known as the District of New Caledonia were Fort Alexandria in 1821, Fort Kilmaurs
(later Fort Babine) in 1822, and Fort Connolly (Bear Lake) in 1826. Fort Chilcotin was added to the district in

1841, and Fort Graham and the outposts at Stoney Creek and Giscome Portage were added in the latter half of
the century to combat the influx of free traders that followed the discovery of gold in Omenica. Not all of these

posts remained stationary or functional throughout the period as there were both post movings and periodic
dosings. Fort Alexandria closed permanently in 1867.

Opinion about the effects of the fur trade on Carrier intra-community power relations can be divided into
two camps. Some have argued that chiefs' traditional power was undermined because anyone could trade at the
posts and attain wealth through credit. James Hackler wrote that because of the fur trade, a low ranking Carrier

could undermine the traditional system of claiming title, normally the perogative of the noble. He asserted, “chiefs
found that they were no longer masters of their destiny but to some extent were the servants of the trading

company.”6 Douglas Hudson also argued that the power of the deneza had diminished in this way. He did not,
however, see any serious diminishing of deneza power prior to the 1880s, and believed that the early trade may

have increased deneza power, “due to his position of control over production on clan lands.”7

5

A. Mills, Eagle Down Is Our Law (Vancouver UBC Press, 1994), pp. 90-1. Daniel W. Harmon, a Not’Wester who
resided among the Carrier and Sekani from 1810 to 1819, described a system of feasting whereby chiefs demonstrated
territorial ownership, but did not mention the use of European goods that he knew to have been acquired from the coast in
this context; A Journal of Voyages and Travels in the Interiour of North America (Andover: Flagg & Gould, 1820).
6
J. Hackler, “Factors Leading to Social Disorganization Among the Carrier Indians at Lake Babine” (San Jose: San
Jose State College M.A. Thesis, 1958), p. 100. Rumley, pp. 27. For the argument that a newfound interest in
manufactured trade items resulted in a decrease in the giving of goods, see M. Tobey, “Carrier,” p. 423, J. Steward,
“Variations in Ecological Adaptation: The Carrier Indians” in J. Steward ed. Theory of Culture Change (Urbana: U of
Illinois Press, 1955), p.177, and “Determinism in Primitive Society?” in J. Steward ed. Evolution and Ecology (Urbana: U
of Illinois Press, 1977), p. 195. See also Bishop, “Limiting Access,” p. 155.
7
D. Hudson, “Traplines and Timber: Social and Economic Change Among the Carrier of Northern British Columbia”
(Edmonton: U of Alberta PhD. Thesis, 1983), especially p. 103. He attributes the eventual decline of deneza power to a
new form of land tenure based on patrilateral ties. For the argument that K’wah’s sons’ inheritance of his lands in the

18

Others believe that chiefs’ power was enhanced by trade with the European because chiefs were in the
best position to gain from the trade, and often did so. This opinion is best represented by Wilson Duff who argued
that the early ftir trade in British Columbia, with its influx of new wealth into a society “already organized around
wealth,”*8 and gatherings of people around trading posts, greatly stimulated the frequency and size of potlatching.9

This in turn resulted in both a “golden age” of Native art and an increase of chiefly wealth and security.10 Fisher

picked up and elaborated on this theme, pointing out that traders preferred dealing with influential individuals
rather than groups.11 Consequently, he argued, the status of chiefs such as Lejaic of the Tsimshian and the

Carrier K’wah were raised considerably.
These arguments are not mutually exclusive, nor is the fact that some chiefs’ authority may have been
undermined incongruent with traditional Carrier concepts of chiefly power. There is ample evidence in the fur
trade and mission reports, as well as in the oral record, to demonstrate that Carrier concepts of authority were not

the same as the European’s. Chiefs ruled on a consensual basis, and needed continuously to prove their ability by

responding positively to the needs of the community.12 The potlatch complex, while highly formalized, allowed
3

lor some flexibility in the holding and passing on of titles.1 This form of meritocracy meant that those individuals

1840s forever changed land tenure practice from matrilineal to patrilineal, see the various writings of Steward, especially
“Carrier Acculturation: The Direct Historical Approach” in Evolution and Ecology, J. Steward ed. (Urbana: U of Illinois
Press, 1977), p. 197, Bishop, especially “Limiting Access,” p. 155. See also Fiske, “Fishing is Women’s Business,” p. 188.
Missionary documents suggest, however, that land tenure could still be achieved through the Mother’s line by 1884; see
Chapter three below, p. 84-5.
8
Duff, Indian History, p. 57.
9
See Bishop, “Coast-Interior Exchange,” p. 77, for a similar argument regarding the central Carrier. Trading posts
were erected near existing Carrier villages and fishing sites; see Hudson, ‘Traplines,” p. 47, and Furniss, “The Carrier
Indians,” p. 532.
10
Duff, Indian History, pp. 57-9.
11
Fisher, Contact and Conflict p. 46. For this policy’s earlier origins east of the Rockies see Ray, Indians in the Fur
Trade, p. 137.
12
For discussion of a dynamic social ranking system among a southern Carrier group see I. Goldman, “The Alkatcho
Carrier of British Columbia” in Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes, R. Linton ed. (Gloucester: Peter Smith,
1963), p. 361. See also D. Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River: Their Social and Religious Life,” Bureau of
American Ethnology 133, no. 25 (1943),” pp. 488-9, and M. Whitehead, They Call Me Father, p. 37.
13
See Mills, Eagle Down, p. 40, for the assertion that those who were to be considered hereditary candidates were
chosen based on capability, and, pp. 66 - 71, for more recent evidence of flexibility in the handing down of hereditary
titles. Jenness outlined the usual heredity pattern to chiefly titles, but also attests to their having been some choice
involved; see “Hie Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 513. He further wrote, p. 514, that upon two candidates
competing for chiefly title, they would jointly hold a potlatch and rival each other through gift giving. See also p. 518 for
evidence that “stingy” chiefs could loose their chiefly title and privilege.

19

who were best able to negotiate a dialogue with the traders, in a way beneficial to all Carrier, were those most
likely to increase their status and influence. Existing chiefly title holders were regarded by both the Carrier and

traders to be in the best position for such negotiation. Traders did not give goods on credit to just anyone, but

I

were careful to propitiate those whose influence they perceived as greatest within Carrier communities. ‘Nobles’
who increased their wealth and authority among the Carrier were long remembered for their hunting and trading

prowess, as the following account of an Ulkatcho Carrier chief recorded by Irving Goldman in the 1950s
illustrates:

Only Inkakuti traded. He was a smart man. He traded all the time. That's why he was a big
meotih [chief]. Other fellows are too lazy. They don’t want to go to far places. Inkakuti even
went to Fort Fraser, before the Hudson's Bay store was opened there, to trade skins. He even
wenttotheTsaten. He hired two or three men to pack for him.14
If someone who did not hold chiefly title proved superior skills in negotiation with the trader, and there is little
evidence of such occurrences, then a chiefs influence may indeed have been undermined. This, however, would

not in itself have seriously challenged traditional Carrier cultural patterns.
Traders generally desired to be on good terms with chiefs and did not commonly undermine their

authority by attempting to elevate others to chiefly status.15 Chief factor William Connolly wrote of the policy
towards chiefs in his “Report on the District" for the years 1824-25:

Every Camp, or what are here called villages, has one or more Chiefs whose authority or even
influence do not seem to extend farther than to the individuals who compose their families. But
as they might occasion mischief were they so inclined it is thought good policy to be on friendly
terms with them, and they are in general treated with some kind of distinction.16
Traders had reasons other than avoidance of mischief for respecting chiefs positions. They, unlike the Carrier,
depended entirely on the trade for their existence. Despite the scorn of chiefs’ authority often voiced in their

14

Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier” in Acculturation, Linton ed., p. 353.
For the Colvile district, see D. Chance, Influences of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the Native Cultures of the
Colvile District (Moscow. Northwest Anthropological Research Notes, 1973), p. 92. Only one example was found in the
New Caledonia District documents that might indicate an attempt to elevate a non-chiefly title holder to chiefly status:
John McDonell, the officer in change of Fort Fraser, wrote to Chief Factor John Stuart, April 22, 1822, that the returns in
fur were greater than expected, and concluded .’’.this is a feather in the cap of my newly created Chief Relation - Le
Grand Sauvage”', National Archives of Canada (NAC), Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), microfilm B.188/b/2.
16
NAC HBCAB.188/e/3.
15

20

accounts, traders were forced to not only respect chiefs’ power but often comply with their demands. While
traders attempted, with varying degrees of success, to manipulate the authority of existing chiefs for their own

ends,17 chiefs had their own agenda and some were able to exert a considerable control over the trade.
Gift-giving was an intricate part of both the potlatch complex and fur trade, especially in the traders’
relations with chiefs. The Nor’ Westers and later the HBC knew the value of reciprocal gift giving from long

experience elsewhere.18 Ogden described being feasted by the Witsuwit’cn chief of Hotset, “Sniggletrum” or

Smogelgem,19 in what he believed to be their first encounter with whites in the early 1820s. Alter having
indicated, through an interpreter, his desire to “enter into arrangements with him [Smogdgem]...for purposes of

traffic,”20 and receiving a favourable reply, he was given gifts of furs by the chief and “several of his principal
men,” as well as a rather bizarre gift of a live bear cub that his interpreter indicated represented the family crest of

the chief and should not be harmed.21 The next day, Ogden wrote, “was occupied in making return presents to the

chiefs.”22 When Ogden was invited by chief Hanayah of Stella to another feast in the 1830s at the western most
end of Fraser Lake, he wrote, “I took care to make over to Hanayah other articles more than equivalent to what I

received.”23
Gifts were given to chiefs to authorize their privileged position as trading allies, as a means of rewarding
those who lived up to trader expectations, and as a way of gaining their favour generally.24 Connolly wrote in his

report of 1824-25: “The Chiefs are in the habit of receiving a Capot and shirt annually as a present, if their

17

See Chance, pp. 78-82 and 91-8, for examples of a general policy whereby traders of the Colvile District reinforced
chieftainships in an attempt to control other Natives. See also Bishop, ‘Limiting Access,” for evidence of HBC policy that
favoured Carrier Chiefs, especially page 155.
18
See Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. 65-8.
19
See Mills, Eagle Down, p. 92, for a list of chiefs names given by Ogden and their modem equivalents.
20
P.S. Ogden, Traits of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1853), p.
97.
21 Ibid,
p. 98.
22
Ibid. p. 101-2.
23
Ibid. p. 161.
24
See Chance, pp. 91-2, for examples of an extensive system of gift-giving to chiefs in the Colvile district that included
tobacco, food and European clothing.

21

conduct throughout the year has made them deserving of it”25 It was in the traders’ best interests to minimize
inter-community feuding, and to this end they attempted to recruit the chiefs’ assistance.26 James Douglas wrote
in 1838 that it was company policy “to operate on the hopes and fears of the Native Chiefs by a system of

distinctive rewards, bestowed on such as succeed in preserving the peace.”27

Gifts were given to chiefs in hopes of encouraging their families and clans to hunt, fish, and relinquish
their customary trade networks with coastal groups in favour of the inland posts. K’ wah and Prince were given

annual gifts of clothing and other goods provided they spent their time trapping and encouraged others to do

likewise.28 Taya, another of K’wah’s sons who succeeded Prince upon his death in 1881, was given an annual
gratuity of $200 in exchange for which he was to ensure his peoples’ loyalty to the company.29 The company,
however, was not always successful in either of these pursuits - encouraging Carrier to “industry” or

discouraging the coastal trade. Carrier maintained an alternative source of European goods, whether from the

coastal trade or free traders after 1869, which enabled them to manipulate the trade to some extent.30 The

problem was most acute for Fort Babine traders among western Carrier groups where there is a great deal of
complaint of Carrier taking their furs elsewhere to trade. William Brown, manager of Fort Babine, in a letter to
chief factor John Stuart in 1823, wrote of the coastal trade:

25

Fort SL James Report on the District, NAC HBCA B.188/e/3. The HBC had a long history of providing certain chiefs
with a “Captains outfit’; see Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. 139.
26
For the argument that trader’s attempted to change existing patterns of feuding see D. Harris and G. Ingram, “New
Caledonia and the Fur Trade: A Status Repot” in Sa Ts’e: Historical Perspectives on Northern British Columbia, T.
Thomer ed. (Prince George: College of New Caledonia Press, 1989), p. 8. A notable exception cones from the Babine
journal entry for March 18, 1823, in which it is indicated that chiefs had been given gifts in attempts of “stirring up a
spirit Rivalship,” NAC HBCA B.l l/a2.
27
James Douglas to the Governing Committee, Fort Vancouver, HBCA B.233/b/22/8a; cited in Chance, p. 88.
28
For K’wah, see the Fort St. James Post Journal Dec. 10, 1820, NAC HBCA B.188/a/l. For Prince, see Ogden’s letter
to Donald Manson dated June 24, 1864, NAC HBCA B.5/c/l.
29
T. Hornick, A Social History of Fort Saint James, 1896 (Parks Canada, 1984), p. 45. Taya temporarily lost this
gratuity as both he and his family traded with the free traders at Quesnel, who, at this time, were offering serious
competition to the Company.
30
Fisher, Contact and Conflict, p. 33. See Bishop, “Coast-Interior Exchange,” pp. 75-6, and Hudson ‘Traplines,” pp.
91-2, for examples of a continuing trade in European goods whereby Carrier at Fraser and Stuart Lakes traded furs to the
Babine, who in turn traded to coastal groups.

22

If this traffic is not put a stop to, I much doubt the whole of the upper Establishment of New
Caledonia will suffer by it I sent a present to the Chief and took such other steps as I thought
31
might be a means of preventing them from going there next season.
The company’s policy of advancing goods on credit was closely related to their gift-giving. The “debtor

system” was put in place first by the Nor’Westers and later by the Hudson’s Bay Company in their attempts to
tie Carrier to particular posts and prevent their participation in the coastal trade.32 Excesses in the giving of debt

or gifts were continually being warned against from the chief factor at Stuart Lake. Brown at Fort Babine was the
target of many of these criticisms:
The frequent remarks in so many different letters of my giving Debts etc. etc. to the St. James
Indians, would make a stranger conclude that I was drawing them to this place - whereas the
very contrary is the case - as I have done everything in my power to prevent them. Still when I
found them here I considered it my duty to do all in my power to get them off a hunti ng & that
could not always be done without giving them something either Gratis [as gifts ] or on Credit 33
and the latter preferred as seeming to me most for the interest of the concern.
The Chief Factor himself, despite his complaints against others, commonly gave out debt or gifts as part of the

company’s system of rewards and punishments. Stuart, for example, provided the following instructions for
McDonall, who was to temporarily take charge of Fort St James:

the less that is given either gratis or debt, the more pleasing it will be to the gentleman who will
assume the charge when you leave us, but to Qua [K’wah], at whom I have cause to be pleased,
a common shirt, a half axe, a couple of snares, half a tin [?] of tobacco, a Pound of Powder,
three pound shot, two Gun flints and a dressed skin of the 2nd quality.34

It is probable that the system of advancing goods on credit was incorporated into both the Carrier’s
concept of reciprocity and the company’s policy of gift-giving to chiefs.35 Despite the frequent complaints
regarding this system and the fact that many Carrier, especially the influential chiefs, had racked up debts that

31

Jan. 17, 1823, NAC HBCA B.188/b/2. See also Brown’s “Report on the District” for the same year, NAC HBCA
B.l1/e/l, where he reported this practice to have worked.
32
John McLean’s Notes of a Twenty Five Years’ Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, W.S. Wallace ed. (Toronto:
Chaplain Society Pub., 1932), p. 183.
33
Brown letter to McDougall, June 25, 1825, NAC HBCA B.ll/b/1.
34
Stuart letter to McDonall, April 27, 1823, NAC HBCA B.188/b/3.
35
For evidence of Sekani’s and trader’s differing perceptions of debt, and Sekani’s manipulation of the debtor system,
see G. Lanoue, “Continuity and Change: The Development of Political Self-Definition Among the Sekani of Northern
British Columbia” (Toronto: U of T PhD. Thesis, 1984), pp. 292-3.

23

they could never hope to pay back, the system was never discontinued.36 In fact, according to the Oblate Lejacq,

most Carrier had no intention of ever paying back their debts to the company.37 Carrier may have come to
understand goods given on credit to be more like gifts that they had every right to as a continuing indication of
their trading alliance. Furthermore, if Carrier perceived the traders to be like chiefs, then they may have expected

to be given goods as part of a chiefs perogative. Traders, in their turn, were often forced to give out credit to
certain influential Carrier knowing they would never be able to collect.38 This, in fact, may have become an
informal policy of continuing to uphold and attempt to influence Carrier politics.
Influential Carrier came to expect, and even demand, to be given goods either as gifts or on credit. Soon
after the initial founding of Fort Babine, Brown wrote, “...the Indians are of opinion, that as soon as there are a

Fort Amongst them they will only have to ask for goods and they will be immediately supplied, cither on Credit or

Grattis...”39 In a letter to McDougall in 1821, Stuart made noises to ••...entirely curtail the Natives of the whole of
the Gratuities which for some...have been in the habit of getting.”40 Far from being curtailed, however, the

practice was to become further entrenched. Peter Ogden Jr. (ID wrote to Donald Manson in 1864:

...Prince the other day was creating a great noise threatening to shoot us and our animals, the
reason he assigns was we did not look upon him as formerly. A fine fellow to expect to be
looked upon as usual, he last fall traded upwards of sixty martins and disposed of them to the
Babine traders, and this winter he abandoned the Company and traded with the American
notwithstanding all this expects as usual his annual present.41
The off-handed tone in Ogden’s statement belies the real problem traders faced in consequence of not living up to

chiefs’ expectations. A passage from the Fort Babine journal of 1825 runs:

Oss [Woos] who is bye the bye a troublesome Indian, desired the amount of his debt & wished
to pay it off with 5 instead of 12 skins; upon which he and Mr. Brown disputed. And the result

36

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions de la Congregation des Missionaries Oblates de Marie
Immaculee, henceforth referred to as Missions. 12 (1874), p. 227.
37
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 24, 1875, Archives Descheteletes (AD) P-4377.
38
See Lanoue, “Continuity,” p. 307, for the argument that traders were forced to give and ignore Sekani debts, “if
future trade were to occur at all.” See also Hudson, “Traplines,” p. 94, for the failure of the debtor system to produce the
desired results.
39
Fort Babine Post Journal, Feb. 23, 1822, NAC HBCA B.ll/a/1.
40
Fort St. James Post Journal, Feb. 22, 1821, NAC HBCA B.188/a/l.
41
NAC HBCAB.5/C/1 fo. 129.

24

was Oss got affronted and walked off with his followers and most part of his Furs to Casepins

village.42
Another problem traders faced was keeping the posts stocked with those goods that Carrier most desired.
Leather was the trading commodity in greatest demand for much of the early trading period through to at least the

1860s.43 Traders of New Caledonia received their leather directly from the east via the “Leather Trail” through
the Rocky Mountains. Their demand for leather to satisfy the Carrier was much greater than was able to be

supplied, as Governor George Simpson’s correspondence from Norway House in 1853 indicates: “there has
always been a wasteful expenditure of leather in New Caledonia, & now that the article is becoming so scarce &

expensive, you must devise means to curtail your demands.”44 Simpson suggested that New Caledonia traders
skin their dead horses as an alternate source of leather, and find a cheaper means of making horse bridles for

themselves. Brown attributed his lack of leather being largely responsible for the continuation of the coastal

trade,45 where it was reported that good leather could be had cheaply.46
Far from being dependant on European trade goods, Carrier not only would trade elsewhere if they could
not get what they wanted from the posts, but also commonly held onto their goods until such time as their

demands could be met47 “Several of the Indians,” wrote Brown to McDonell in 1825, “have put their furs en
cache [and] will not bring them to the Fort until we receive Leather.”48 Carrier who were not traded goods they

most desired may have come to consider the trader’s refusal as a breech of alliance. Brown wrote, “...the Babines

42

Fort Babine Post Journal, June 9, 1825, NAC HBCA B.ll/a/3. Oss, in the Babine Report on the District 1822-23,
HBCA B.ll/e/1, is at the top of a list of Babine chiefs next to whose name is the statement, “Him I sent the present to.”
43
Connolly, for example, wrote in 1825, “leather is an indispensable article...[and] is in many cases preferred to any
commodity we have,” Fort St James Report on the District 1824-25, NAC HBCA B.188/e/3.
44
Simpson letter to Manson, June 18, 1853, NAC HBCA B.188/c/l.
45
Brown letter to Connolly, Oct 8, 1825, NAC HBCA B.188/b/4. Brown letter to Connolly, July 15, 1826, NAC
HBCA B.ll/b/1.
46
Babine Report on the District 1822-23, NAC HBCA B.ll/e/1.
47
For the argument that Carrier dependence on the trade and European goods was minimal throughout most of the
nineteenth century, see Hudson, ‘Traplines,” p. 4 and 31, and Harris and Ingram, p. 9. See Lanoue, “Continuity,” p. 302,
for a similar conclusion regarding the Sekani. For applied dependency theory on Carrier - trader interactions see W.
Smith, The Carrier Indians in the 19th Century: A Study in Metropolitan - Satellite Relations (Ottawa: National Historic
Parks, 1972). Smith’s, however, is a poorly documented argument replete with factual error.
48
June 24, 1825, NAC HBCA B.11/h/l. See also Brown letter, Oct 8, 1825, NAC HBCA B.188/b/4.

25

are so unreasonable as to threaten our lives for not furnishing them with what we have not to give...”49 Ogden
wrote to Manson in 1864: “You cannot imagine the trouble I have when these Carriers know we have not the
articles of trade in store.”50

Gifts of special interest included medals and flags that were given by company officers to chiefs as signs

of their privileged position within the trade and augmented authority from traders.51 Simpson, for example, had a
special medal struck with the company’s arms that was presented to a Shuswap chief in 1825.52 Stuart, in a

response to Brown’s attempts to incite the Carrier to hunt, wrote:
Medals may have a good effect, but when they find them of no intrinsick value, I am of opinion
that the individuals to whom they may be given, will as much as keep them. But as you observe
they are of little value and the experiment may be worth trying.53

A red flag was presented to a recently succeeding Cayuse chief in the Colvile District in attempts to remedy what
the company believed to be a lack of authority over his people.54 Separate entries of “Fort Flag” and “Indian
Flag” are commonly found in the New Caledonia company’s inventory reports.55 It is likely that crosses as well

were traded to Carrier at an early date. Silver crucifixes have been found at the site of the Rocky Mountain Fort
in Sekani country along the Peace River dated to before the 1821 amalgamation of the North West and Hudson’s

Bay Companies.56 Other articles that may have come to represent a chiefs authority that were traded or given to
chiefs, and which chiefs often explicitly asked for, included red silk handkerchiefs, foxtail feathers, ostrich
feathers, hats and assumption belts.

Company officers were quick to realize the benefits of joining in formal alliance with chiefs through
reciprocal feasting. The first account of company officers feasting chiefs is found in Harmon’s journal. On New

49

Brown letter, Nov. 2, 1825, NAC HBCA B.18W4.
June 24, 1864, NAC HBCA B.5/c/l fo. 129.
51
Oblate missionaries continued this practice by giving out medallions and temperance flags as a means of conferring
chiefs with authority from the church; see chapter three below.
52
Chance, p. 91.
53
Stuart letter to Brown, Jan. 31, 1822, NAC HBCA B.188/W1.
54
Chance, p. 92. Red cloth, enough to make into an ‘apron’, was given to a Carrier Shaman by McDougall in 1806 so
that he would be recognized by subsequent traders into the area; see AG. Morice, The History of the Northern Interior of
British Columbia (Toronto: William Briggs, 1905) pp. 55 and 61.
55
See, for example, Fort St James Account Bk., NAC HBCA B.188/d/l.
56
D. Burley, S. Hamilton and K. Fladmark, Prophecy of the Swan (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), p 125.
50

26

Years Eve, 1812, he wrote, “I invited several of the Sicauny [Sekani] and Carrier chiefs, and most respectable
men, to partake of the provisions which we had left; and I was surprised to see them behave with much decency,

and even propriety.”57 This “decency and...propriety,” however, is not surprizing given the formalities and order
of traditional Carrier potlatches.58 One of Morice’s many complaints against the company’s encouragement of

Carrier customs was of officers’ holding yearly “tobacco potlatches... in connection wherewith the traditional
differences of rank among the reedvers were scrupulously observed.”59

Accounts of Carrier chiefs’ feasting company officers can be found in the writings of Harmon, John

McLean and Ogden. These feasts served an important function of securing alliances between chiefs and traders.60
McLean described an invitation to one such feast in 1830:
The person who delivered the invitation stalked into the room with an air of vast consequence,
and strewing our heads with down, pronounced the name of the presiding chief |K’wah], and
withdrew without uttering another syllable.61

McLean explained that Chief Trader Dease was given a seat next to the great chief K’ wah, and that the other
traders were called “Meewidiyazees” or “little chiefs” and were arranged accordingly next to Dease. Both the use

of down and the place of prominence given to the company officers indicate that K’wah was making active
overtures of peace and alliance with the traders.62 This feast was concluded with an exchange of gifts.63

57 Hannon, p.

215.
See McLean’s description of a potlatch, pp. 156-9. Ogden, pp. 147-62, also described a highly complex feast he
attended in the 1830s.
59
Morice, “Are the Carrier Sociology and Mythology Indigenous or Exotic?’ Transactions of the Royal Society of
Canada 2 (1892), p. 115.
60
Hudson, “Traplines,” p. 81, believes that the most important function of the traditional feast was to maintain
alliances between deneza.
61
McLean, p. 156.
62
Informants of Mills, Eagle Down, p. 38, and Jenness, “Myths of the Carrier Indians of British Columbia,” Journal of
American Folklore 47 (1934), p. 182, ‘The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley Riva-,” pp. 879-80, 503 and especially 519,
indicated that eagle down was used for binding relations of peace. See also Hackler, “Factors Leading to Social
Disorganization,” p. 35.
63
McLean, p. 159.
58

27

K’wah, who has been the subject of some scholarly attention,64 first formalized trade alliances with

Harmon, a Nor’Wester who resided in Carrier and Sekani country from at least 1810 to 1819. Harmon related in

some detail an incident in 1811 that clearly shows K’wah testing the trader’s power. K’wah is quoted by Harmon
as boasting:
“...do not I manage my affairs as well as you do yours? When did you ever hear that Quas was
in danger of starvation?...!, often, feast all the Indians of my village; and sometimes, invite
people from afar off, to come and partake of the fruits of my hunts...! never want for any thing,
and my family is always well clothed.”65

It is significant that after having been viciously clubbed over the head and beaten by Harmon, K’wah invited him

to a feast There are two possible and related explanations for this feasting of Harmon. Only upon having tested
the trader’s power might K’wah have been willing to negotiate a formal alliance. /Xs well, by holding a shame

feast for Harmon, K’wah may have increased his prestige and demonstrated his ascendency over the trader.66

K’wah had also feasted the Fort St James managers James McDougall in 1823 and Ogden in 1837.
Both feasts were well attended by representatives of outlying villages. The latter feasting of Ogden prompted
Morice to write: “Indeed, the Chief Factor and ‘Kwah seem to have been, in some respects, almost on the same
footing in the establishment, and more than once the fort chronicler records the visits he paid to the gentlemen.”67
There are other recorded feasts hosted by K’wah that attracted Carrier as far off as the Babine, as well as Sekani

from the northeast In all, there are nineteen feasts documented in the HBC records between the years 1828 and

1853 for the Stuart Lake area, nine of which were held at Fort St James.68
K’wah commonly made both demands and threats on the traders. In 1826 he threatened Connolly that
unless goods were given on credit he and his people would stop trapping. He apparently did not have the backing

64

See especially Morice, History of the Northern Interior, based mainly at oral accounts, and C. Bishop, “Kwah: A
Carrier Chief’ in Old Trails and New Directions, C. Judd and A. Ray eds. (Toronto: U of T Press, 1980), pp. 191-204,
based almost entirely on Morice’s evidence and traders’ reports.
65
Harmon, p. 108-9.
66
See Mills, Eagle Down, p 91, for the explanation that Kwah was holding a shame potlatch fa Harmon. According to
Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier,” p. 361, holding such a feast to wipe away insult increased a chiefs prominence. See
also Bishop, “Kwah,” p. 194.
67
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 197.
68
Hudson, ‘Traplines,” p. 82.

28

of his people in this, however, and was later forced to lessen his demands while claiming that the interpreter had

misunderstood him.® Aside from trapping, K’wah and his wives were essential for maintaining a supply of fish to
70
Fort St James. As chief, K’wah was in charge of constructing fish weirs and distributing the catch.69 Stuart

wrote in 1820: “we must depend entirely on Kind Providence and the Natives for our subsistence... This evening

Qufis’ woman brought 13 fresh fish,”71 and in 1821: “[K’wah] is the only Indian [who] can and will give fish, and

on whom we must depend in a great measure, It behooves us to endeavour to Keep friends with him, for
Unfortunately he too well Knows our extreme Poverty.”72 Fort Kilmaurs (Babine) was built in 1822 partly in an

attempt to break the fishing monopoly of the Stuart Lake Carrier.73 Traders’ ambivalent attitudes towards K’wah

are best summed up by chief trader Connolly: “[K’wah] is the most Industrious Indian of all the Carrier but is
withal so mercenary that it is hard to bear with him.”74

K’wah’s relationship with the company occasionally turned volatile and, had it not been for some mutual
goals and development of a reciprocal relationship in which each party stood to gain from the other, would have
undoubtedly taken a violent turn. In 1823 five company engages were killed at Fort St John on the Peace River

by Beaver and/or Sekani,75 and another two were killed by Carrier at Fort George. There was increasing
suspicion of Carrier good will following these incidents, especially given traders’ inability to threaten or bribe
Carrier to have the perpetrators of the Fort George murders executed. The following passage from Stuart
regarding K’wah and his relation to this incident is perhaps indicative of the company’s true feelings towards the

Carrier chief:
[K’wah] is a greedy beggar and downright fool - [who] seldom knows what is best for himself...
I never thirsted for the Blood of anyone - but if I find Qua - as I strongly suspect, will endeavour
to dissuade the Indians below from punishing the perpetrators of the murder committed at Fort
George - It will some prove the opinion I long entertained of himself and his Brother (Hoolson) that they are at heart ill disposed towards the Whites - that nothing but self Interest had
69

Fort St James Post Journal, Feb. 19th, 1826, HBCA B.188/a/5. See also Bishop, “Kwah,” p. 195.
See Mills, Eagle Down, pp. 135-6, for chiefs’ control of fishing sites and their role of distributing the catch. See also
Hackler, “Factors Leading to Social Disorganization,” p. 13, and Hudson, ‘Traplines,” p. 57.
71
Fort St James Post Journal, June, 1820, NAC HBCA B.188/a/l.
72
Fort SL James Post Journal, April 17, 1821, NAC HBCA B.188/a/l.
73
Hudson, ‘Traplines,” p. 90.
74
Fort St James Post Journal, Dec. 7, 1826, HBCA B.188/a/8.
75
For the most recent treatment of this incident see D. Burley et al., pp. 126-36.
70

29

prevented them from committing themselves what they approve in others Ji.e. the killing of
company men] - Had QuS acted as he ought, he himself, seeing the others have not done it,
would ere now have destroyed the Murderers and prove his abhorrence of the deed.76

The future governor James Douglas, who was a clerk in New Caledonia from 1827 to 1830, managed to kill one

of the suspected murderers at Stuart Lake five years later. K’wah, shortly afterwards, artfully gained access to
the fort with a contingent of his men in order to visit upon Douglas payment-in-kind, but, as the story goes,

decided at the last moment to have him spared.77
K’wah died in 1840 and after his brother Hoolson briefly took on his chiefly title before he too died,

K’wah’s son Prince came to succeed his title and position vis-^-vis the trade. Prince was able to exert the same,

or even greater, control over the trade as his father had. In 1848 he convinced the Stuart Lake Carrier to withhold
their salmon from the company in order to maintain the standard price of 60 salmon per made beaver.78 Although
this embargo was eventually broken by an individual who traded in 650 salmon, it indicates the extent to which

Prince could go in his attempts to manipulate the trade.79 In 1853 he moved from camp to camp all the way to the

Babines preventing Carrier from trading furs at the posts, and had prevented the Carrier of Grande Rapide from
trading in their salmon.80 The reason lor his displeasure with the company was not recorded. Such influence, that

the company may have partly helped to create, needed to be reckoned with in their dealings with chiefs. It is
probably no coincidence that the chiefs nearest to the central trading post of New Caledonia, where furs from all
other posts (except Fort George) were taken in and where the annual district outfit was sent to be divided,81 were
those chiefs who seemed to gain most in prominence.

Other practices, besides gift giving, that began in the fur trade and came to play a role in Carrier - Oblate
relations, include the greeting customs of firing guns and hand-shaking, and the giving of medical aid. Following

76

Stuart letter to McDougall, Jan. 22, 1824, HBCA B.188/a/2.
See Fort St. James Post Journal, Sept 17, 1828, HBCA B.188/a/12, McLean, pp. 162-4, Morice The History of the
Northern Interior, pp. 139-52, and Bishop “Kwah ” pp. 200-1.
78
‘Made beaver” (MB) was a standardized value of goods initially created by the company to adjust their capitalist
economy to the barter system of First Nations; Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. 61.
79
HBCA B.188/a/20; in Hudson, ‘Traplines,” pp. 89-90.
80
Fort St James Post Journal, July 19, 1854, NAC HBCA B.188/a/4.
81
Harris and Ingram, p. 4. Hornick, p. 12.
77

30

volleys of gunfire, each Carrier meeting with traders began with a solemn ceremony in which the head chiefs
hand was shaken first followed by all other members in order of status.82 The company officer’s custom of

shaking chiefs’ hands each New Years Day was of symbolic importance in renewing alliances and reaffirming
their roles in the trade.83 Father Lejacq related an incident in which chief trader Hamilton purposely passed Prince

over in the New Years Day hand-shaking ceremony in protest to the harsh treatment earlier meted out to a
Company employee. The seriousness with which Prince and his family toik this refusal to reaffirm their position
of prominence in the trade can be found in Lejacq’s account of a rumour that Prince and those loyal to him were

planning to storm the fort, take all within captive, and plunder the store.84
Traders, beginning with Harmon, were often asked by Carrier to tend to their sick. It would seem that

Carrier were prepared to at least entertain the possibility of traders possessing shamanic-like healing powers.
Asking traders to heal was a practical way for Carrier to test the newcomers’ power. Harmon, knowing that he

was being tested, made the Carrier promise that he would not be blamed if the patient that he had been asked to
look at should die under his ministrations.85 McLean boasted that his healing prowess was held in high regard

among the Carrier. After having effected a number of cures he wrote, “my reputation as a disciple of TEsculapius
became firmly established.”86 The company commonly gave out food and medicine to Carrier, and in 1837-38
instituted a policy of vaccination.87 To what degree this policy was followed in the field is difficult to know, but

5For the origins of the hand-shaking ceremony see Chance, p. 102. Ogden wrote, p. 93, when first encountering the
Witsuwit’en at Hotset: “The ceremony of hand-shaking having been gone through, with a gravity which its novelty, to one
party at least, did not fail to secure for it, the chief led the way to his lodge.”
83
For a description of a typical New Year’s Day hand-shaking ceremony, that included the company gift of a full set of
clothing to the ‘head chief, see Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 151 .
84
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 19, 1876, AD P-4385.
85
Hannon, pp. 253-4.
86
McLean, p. 171. The Company’s apothecary of medicines was considerable. There are upwards of forty different
decoctions and articles of first aid listed in the company’s inventory, including such items as mint, phials spirits of
hawthorn, phials laudanum (solution of opium), calcined magnesia (for dyspepsia), opium pills, mercurial ointment and
pills (for venereal disease?) and syringes, Fort St James Account Bk. 1821-22, NAC HBCA B.188/d/l.
87
Hornick, p. 84. Fisher Contact and Conflict, p. 45, note 87. For the company policy of relieving starvation, see
Chance, p. 105.
8

31

(

!
i

88

many Carrier and Shuswap do appear to have been vaccinated during the smallpox epidemic of 1862-63.

Traders who were successful in their healing would no doubt have increased Carrier desire to tap into this power
source, as was also the case with missionaries.

Another facet of fur traders’ influence that may have come to play an important role in the Oblates’

religious practices is the introduction of whipping as a form of punishment. There were clear directives in the

Orders and Regulations founded by the HBC Council of the Northern Department given to all “Gentlemen in
charge of posts” against the use of violence. Regulation six read: “That the Indians be treated with leniency and
forbearance, and many mild and conciliatory means be resorted to, for to encourage industry...& inculcate

Morality.”89 Ogden, in a long letter chastizing the manager of Fort Fraser, Alexander Thew, for his hostility
against a Native of Stoney Creek wrote, “it is not only our duty, but our interest also, so far as circumstances will
admit, to avoid coming to extremes with the Indians.”90

Not all post officers followed these directives, however, nor did all those in charge of New Caledonia, or

even the Governor himself, share these sentiments. Simpson wrote to Andrew Col vile in 1822: “I have made it my
study to examine the nature and character of the Indians and however repugnant it may be to our feelings, I am

convinced they must be ruled with a rod of iron.”91 Some officers in New Caledonia had gained reputations for
their rough treatment of both Company employees and Carrier traders. Simpson wrote to Manson in 1853 that,

“the service in New Caledonia is very unpopular among the people in consequence of the reports spread of rough

treatment experienced at the hands of the Company officers.”92 Twenty-three years previously Connolly wrote to

Brown:
Mr. Simpson recommends that mild measures be pursued in regard to our treatment of the
Indians, and is of opinion that very serious evils may be expected to arise from a contrary
conduct He has been given to understand that Messrs. Yale [in charge of Fort George] and
88

Hornick, p. 84. Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 308. See also Fisher, Contact and Conflict, p. 116, n.
83. For vaccinations ministered by Oblates at this time see Morice, History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada,
From Lake Superior to the Pacific, 1659-1895 (Toronto: Musson Press, 1910), pp. 320 and 329.
89

Fort St James Post Journal 1824-1825, HBCA B.188/a/4.
Cited in Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 204.
91
Simpson to Colvile at Fat Garry, May 20, 1822., cited by Goossen, p. 33.
92
June 18, 1853, NAC HBCA B.188/c/l.

90

32

Todd [of McLeod Lake] are much given to the beating system, in which they must be checked.93

95

Elsewhere, however, Connolly made it known that those traders under him should minister punishment to Carrier

“rude in their conduct” in the form of beatings:
Punishments of this Kind are sometimes necessary, and when justly inflicted, are generally
attended with good effects. Exposed as we are amongst swarms of these people whose ideas of
right and wrong are very limited, it is absolutely requisite for the preservation of our Lives and
Property that our superiority over them should on proper occasion be exhibited.94

Traders’ fear of their tenuous position among the Carrier could lead to both conciliatory gestures and brutal
conduct.
There is at least one recorded incident in New Caledonia of traders using the whip as a mode of

punishment A Carrier visiting Fort St James in 1853 was recognized by an engage of the company as having
previously stolen some goods from him. The Carrier man admitted, after questioning, to some but not all of the
charges:

Several Indians were present when this enquiry took place and on my asking what punishment
the thief deserved the principle man, and chief of this place [Prince], replied that if he, the thief,
had belonged to his tribe, he would in the first place give him a good beating himself & then
hand him over to me to be dealt with as I might think proper. I therefore tied the fellow up and
gave him a good flogging with a dog whip.95

It was apparently usual for the company in the Colvile district to demand payment from First Nations for minor
crimes and, when this was not forthcoming, to attempt to have chiefs whip the culprits.96 David Chance cites two

examples of whipping being prescribed for First Nations in the Colvile district in the 1830s, one for horse stealing
and the other for attempted rape.97 The Jesuit missionary, Joset, wrote disparagingly that a Sxoielpi chief, Martin
Hemuxstolix, had distorted the Christian message upon returning to his people and set off a trend of mass

93

May 11, 1825, NAC HBCAB.ll/h/1.
Fort St James Post Journal, Nov. 19, 1824, HBCA B.188/a/5.
95
Fort St James Post Journal, Nov. 15, 1853, HBCA B.188/a/21.
96
Chance, p. 97.
97
Ibid. Part of the religious teachings of Spokane Gerry, Chance wrote, p. 97, were expressly against the practice of
whipping, which would seem to indicate its widespread use in the Colvile district by the 1830s.
94

33

confessions and whippings; evidence that prompted Chance to conclude: “The punishment of the Company had
become the road to heaven.”98

There is also evidence of whipping being administered in New Caledonia by government representatives.
The following is an account of a Chilcotin youth’s trial and sentence for shooting a Government horse, entered in

the Fort Alexandria journal for Aug. 5, 1866:

...a large number of Indians arrived from Soda Creek and the ncighbourhotxi Judge Spalding
holding court - the prisoner being brought in by Alexis [a Chilcotin chief] and his young men.
The result of the affair, was, that his friends are to pay for the horse in furs during the next 12
months, and the youth underwent the punishment of flogging in the presence of all the
surrounding tribe.99

Just how common whipping was prior to the arrival of Oblates in 1868 is difficult to say. It is nevertheless a
possibility that the idea of whipping came from colonial governments or traders in New Caledonia, or even
diffused from the Colvile or other southern districts.

100

Contrary to Whitehead, traders were also instrumental in introducing certain elements of Christian
morality and doctrine among the Carrier.

101

This could have been partly the result of ongoing attempts to increase

their control of the trade, but also came from a simple desire to put an end to those Carrier practices that seemed

to run most contrary to officers’ Christian sensibilities. Traders arguably participated more in First Nations
culture, as it appeared at contact, than any other pervayors of western culture. Both officers and engages not only

commonly intermarried with First Nations, but often limited their influence lor obvious business reasons. That is

not to say, however, that they could lose the Christian-based cultural lens through which they observed First

Nations even if they had wanted to, nor was all traditional First Nations culture perceived to be conducive to the
trading of furs.

98

Ibid. p. 98.

99

NAC HBCA B.5/a/ll. Spalding was officially a stipendiary magistrate, rather than ‘Judge’. The Oblates were just
beginning to make regular tours among the Southern Carrier at this time. A priest had stayed among the Fort Alexandria
First Nations, on his way to the Cariboo, from July 21 to 23 in 1865. The next visit from a priest did not occur until
December of 1866.
100
For the argument of a Columbia Plateau whipping complex that antedated direct contact but had diffused from
Spanish practice in the Southwest, see T. Garth, “The Plateau Whipping Complex and its Relationship to PlateauSouthwest Contacts,” Ethnohistory 12 (1965), pp. 141-170.
101
Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission: A History of the Oblates (Victoria: Sono Nis Press, 1981), p. 33.

34

Cremation was one of the Carrier customs that traders disapproved of most.102 Traders took an active
role preventing this custom, not so much because in itself it went against the Christian concept of burial, but
rather because the ceremony surrounding the cremation clashed with the traders’ Victorian attitudes, producing

reactions of disgust and indignation. In short, it was the treatment of the widow or widows during the cremation

ceremony that the traders objected to. Ogden wrote in his chapter on the subject: “I may remark here that motives
of humanity had induced myself, and the other gentlemen stationed in this district, to endeavour all we could to
abolish the barbarous practice of burning the dead.”103 McLean recorded in the 1830s what he believed to be the
first internment of a Carrier, who had been a Company interpreter, ‘‘it being introduced through our influence in

pity to the unfortunate widows, who are exposed to the cruellest tortures at the burning of the body.”104 In 1835,
out of the eleven Carrier deaths that came to Ogden's attention, six were interred, and by 1837 three out of five

were interred.105
An early account from 1820, however, indicates that in certain cases Carrier may have had their own
reasons, unrelated to traders' haranguing, for wanting to be interred rather than cremated. One trader showed

some surprize at a chiefs request to be buried: “Mr. McDougall also informed me of the death of a respectable
old Indian of that place [Fraser Lake] called the Canoe Chief, and what is remarkable expressed a wish in his last

moments to be buried by us & contrary to their own customs, not to be burned.”106 In fact, there is evidence that

some burial may have taken place prior to direct contact with traders. Alexander Mackenzie wrote of a site on
Kluskus Lake in his journal in 1793: “Near [two houses] were several graves or tombs, to which the natives are
particularly attentive, and never suffer any herbage to grow upon them.”107 The following passage is from an oral

story recorded by Jenness at Hagwilgate (Rocher D£boul£) in the 1920s:

102

Morice believed the practice of cremation, along with most other Carrier customs, to have been adopted from the
Tsimshian; “About Cremation” American Anthropologist 27, no. 4 (1925), pp. 576-7.
103
Ogden, p. 130.
104
McLean, p. 153-4.
105
Ogden, p. 130.
106
Fat St James Post Journal, Oct 18, 1820, NAC HBCA B.188/a/l.
107
Mackenzie, p. 298.

35

A woman died, and her husband, who was a medicine-man, wished to accompany her to flic
Spirit Land in order to discover what the place was like. So the people did not bum her body,
but buried it in the ground with the living husband beside it.108

It is quite possible that certain Carrier may have requested burial as a way of accessing the spirit realm of the
traders, thus acquiring their knowledge and power. Oral accounts of the prophet Bini’s request to be buried are

examined in the following chapter.
Traders also attempted, unsuccessfully, to do away with the Carrier game that commonly took place at

potlatches and trading centres, referred to by them as ‘gambling’. The best description of this game comes from

chief trader Joseph McGillivray’s report on the district of Fort Alexandria for 1827-28:
[The gambling game] consists of about fifty small sticks, neatly polished of the close [?] of a
quill; a certain number of the sticks have red lines around them, and as many of them as one of
the players find convenient arc rolled up in dry grass and according to the judgment of his
109
antagonist respecting their number - and marks - he loses or wins.

Carrier ‘gambling’ was both a form of recreation and a means with which to test each others’ power, for good
gamblers were believed to have strong medicine at their command. Success in gambling could thus be a further
indicator of a chiefs power.110 There are numerous accounts, most likely exaggerated, of Carrier loosing all of
their possessions in these games. It was a favourite trick of Carrier chiefs to show up at the posts dressed in little

clothing asking to be given goods after claiming to have lost all their possessions either through gambling or

feasting.111 Traders' perception of the conduct of leaders usually resulted in their predisposed inability to see
through these ruses. Company officers believed gambling to be both counterproductive to the trade and morally
undesirable. McLean wrote of this ‘gambling’: “we, in fact, used our best endeavours to abolish the pernicious

108

D. Jenness, “Myths erf the Carrier Indians,” p. 143. There is further mention of burial on pp. 110 and 121.
NAC HBCA B.5/e/l. For descriptions erf this and other gambling games, see Morice, “The Western Denes - Their
Manners and Customs,” Proceedings of the Canadian Institute 7 (Oct 1889), pp. 154-5, and Jenness, “The Carrier
Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 533, and “Myths of the Carrier Indians,” p. 161.
110
Goldman, ‘The Alkatcho Carrier” in Acculturation, Linton ed., p. 354.
111
For an examination of First Nations manipulation of traders by appearing to be often in need, see M. Black-Rogers,
“Varieties of ‘Starvation’: Semantics and Survival in the Subarctic Fur Trade, 1750-1850,” Ethnohistory 33, no. 4 (1987),
pp. 353-83. Taking Morice’s penchant for exaggeration and racial arrogance into account, the following passage
regarding the Babine’s ability to manipulate whites remains significant: “Few people have such a control of their
emotional faculties...With them they will feign to perfection sickness or starvation, grief or any other situation which they
deem most calculated to serve their own interests”; “The Great D6n6 Race,” Anthropos 5 (1910), p. 707.
109

36

custom, and, to avoid countenancing it, were as seldom present as possible.”112 According to Morice, Jean-

Baptiste Boucher, or Waccan, the M6tis interpreter who often took on a role more akin to policeman, was sent

out in 1838 to put a stop to gambling at a nearby feast113
Another Carrier practice that traders frowned upon was that of homicidal revenge based on medicine

power. John Phillip Reid has shown in two recent articles that traders in the American West of the old Oregon
territory adopted First Nations’ legal concepts of revenge killings and were quick to rctaliatc-in-kind for the

murder of Company men.114 Morice provides graphic examples within New Caledonia of traders’ retaliation

against murder of Company men.1

15

It was not the idea of revenge killing that the traders objected to, on the

contrary, they seemed to have readily participated in this Carrier legal concept. Rather, it was the idea that

revenge could be meted out to those suspected of using medicine power that the traders found distasteful. It was
also, in this case, in traders' best interests to attempt to limit the feuding that could result from revenge on those

suspected of witchcraft. The following quote from Harmon’s journal is from the same account as that above
regarding a Carrier woman he was asked to cure:

I understand that her relations had said, that a certain Indian, by his magic, had caused her
illness, and that he would finally take her life. I, therefore, took this opportunity of repeating
again, what I had often told them before, that God, the infinitely powerful being, who made
every thing, had alone the power of causing their dissolution, whenever he thought proper. Upon
this, one of the chiefs, who thought himself more knowing than the others, observed, that it was
the God of the salmon, who remained at the sea, who was taking the girl’s life. I replied, that
God is in heaven above; but that, so searchi ng are his eyes, he can easil y see what takes place on
the face of the whole earth. They said, it might be so; but they could not conceive, by what
means I came to have a knowledge of these things. This, I endeavoured to explain to them. 1 16
Here is an example of a trader’s attempt to discourage belief in medicine power and in the process proselytize the
Christian message. As well, it provides an example of how Christian concepts could be understood in uniquely

112

McLean, p. 180.
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 255.
114
J.P. Reid, “Principles of Vengeance: Fur Trappers, Indians, and Retaliation for Homicide in the Transboundary
North American West,” The Western Historical Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1993), pp. 21-43, and “Restraints of Vengeance:
Retaliation- in-Kind and the Use of Indian Law in the Old Origin Country,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 95, no. 1 (Spring
1994), pp. 48-92.
115
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, pp. 147, 215, and 254-6.
116
Harmon, pp. 254-5.
113

37

Carrier ways. ‘God’ in this case was associated with “God of the salmon, who remained at the sea.” In fact, had
this woman’s illness been the result of one of the various European diseases that made their way into the interior

from the coast, the chiefs explanation of her death would have been the more pragmatic one.
There are many examples, beginning with Harmon, of traders who actively sought to proselytize

Christianity. Harmon had a conversion experience in September of 1813 in which Christ was revealed to him.

“My views of the Saviour,” he wrote, “underwent a total change.”117 The tone of his journal also changed as he
became a deeply religious man ever ready to preach to anyone who would listen. One of Harmon’s tour personal

resolutions that he composed to help him keep the instructions of the holy scriptures always in mind was, when in
the company of “the wicked...to persuade them in such a way as may be consistent with propriety, to forsake their
evil courses.”118 McLean in the 1830s gave an example of the difficulty experienced by some traders in getting

across Christian concepts:
One of our gentlemen, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, teaching the Takcllies
[Carrier] to make the sign of the cross, with the words used on the occasion, his interpreter
translated them, “Au nom du Pere, de son Frere, et puis de son petit Garcon!” (In the name of
the Fatter, his Brother, and his little Boy!).119
Carrier, seeking to test and tap into the knowledge of the newcomers, requested the traders speak on

matters of religion. McLean wrote:
They applied to us for instruction, and our worthy chief [Chief Factor Dease] spared no pains to
give it But alas! it is for the most part labour in vain. Yet, an impression seemed to have been
made on a few; and had there been missionaries there at the time, their efforts might have
proved successful.120

As early as 1823 the HBC Council of the Northern Department resolved that company officers should hold
Sunday sawices, “at which every man woman and child resident must attend, together with such of the Indians
who may be at hand.”121 Chance believes that both officers and engages were highly influential in proselytizing

117

Ibid. p. 234.
p. 252.
119
McLean, p. 161.

118 Ibid,

120 Ibid, p.

121

159.
Fort St James Post Journal, Nov. 14, 1825, HBCA B.188/a/5.

38

the Christian message in the Colvile district. He also believes, based on sketchy evidence, that the company
actually encouraged chiefs to lead Christian rituals among their people.122

An important and much overlooked, source of pre-missionary dissemination of Christian concepts came
from the wives of traders. Morice wrote of Julie Ogden, a Spokane woman and wife of Peter Skene Ogden Sr.,

who resided at Fort St James from 1834 to 1846: “one who powerfully contributed to prepare the way for the
evangelization of the country was the Indian wife of Peter Skene Ogden...She... never tired of communicating her
religious knowledge to the aborigines.”123 Another Mrs. Ogden, the wife of Peter Ogden Jr. (II), when widowed in

1870, continued to reside at Fort St James until 1879. Her leaving prompted the Oblate George Blanchet to

comment sadly that they were loosing their best parishioner.124 Many Ogden women insisted upon bringing up
their children Catholic, despite pressure, sometimes violent from their husbands and other company

Protestants.125
There were other, less overt ways, in which Carrier may have picked up Christian concepts from traders.

For example, Carrier may have on occasion witnessed some of the Christian ceremony that was practiced by
Company members, such as the holding of mass, the Christian burial of Company members and the observance
of religious holidays and Sundays. While Morice, in his The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia,

was critical of traders’ refusal to stop work on Sundays,126 by at least the 1850s the HBC Council’s directives to
observe Sundays as a day of rest seem to have been followed.127 A further possibility of Christian influence
introduced through the trade may have come from Iroquois or Cree who were either in the employ of the company

or followed on the heals of the expanding trade westward.128 There was some reported proselytizing from a group

122

Chance, p. 79.
Morice. History of the Catholic Church, pp. 280-1. See also Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 226.
124
Blanchet Letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 8, 1879. AD P-500 -1.
125
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Aug. 28, 1869, AD P-4249, and Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, April 21, 1876, AD P123

4390-1.
126

Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 115.
See, for example, the post journals for Fort St James 1851-56, HBCA B.188/a/21 and Fort Alexandria 1864-67,
NAC HBCA B.5/a/l1, in which the designation “a day of rest” is found within almost all Sunday entries.
128
Jenness, The Sekani Indians of British Columbia (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1937), p. 64. Whitehead,
The Cariboo Mission, p. 33. For the Colvile district, see Chance, p. 72.
127

39

of Catholic Iroquois who had settled among the Flathead in the 1820s.129 A woman pntphct masquerading as a

man, or the “manly-woman” prophet, had resided among these Iroquois for a time and was reported to have a
considerable religious influence in the area.110
There are more unusual cases in which notions of Christianity were proselytized by traders who sought

to increase their influence among the Carrier. William McBean, a M&is clerk of Fort Babine in the 1830s, is
thought to have introduced a hybrid religion whereby he forbade the Babine to work on Sundays, made them

throw goods into the fire as an offering to God, conducted a dance ceremony dressed in white, and warned the

Carrier against the Blackrobes that would soon come among them.131 However, the fact that McBean was at the
top of a list of traders who were asked to contribute towards a future Catholic mission, would seem to contradict

a strictly anti-Catholic religion led by him.132 The following passage is taken from the correspondence of Samuel
Black of Fort Kamloops to Alexander Fisher of Fort Alexandria in 1832:
Lolo [Black’s interpreter] tells me of the many tricks wherewith you deceive the Indians, such as
making holy water in wash hand-basins, dressing up your cook to make him hold it, walking
about the house with a whitewash brush in your hand with many mumblings and magical
words, sprinkling the natives in said holy water, telling them that if they do not come to Our
place to dance and bring their furs with them this fall, they will be swallowed up like another
Sodom into a fiery furnace or boiling caldron...133

Perhaps the greatest pre-missionary Catholic influence into the region, other than from Carrier prophets,

came from Native men of Kamloops who were returning through Carrier country from having received a
Protestant education at Red River, Manitoba. Simpson had formed a policy whereby a number of chiefs’ sons
from the Kamloops/Colvile district would be given an European education at Red River in hopes that they would
then help the company’s trading efforts upon their return. Part of their education included an indoctrination of

129

See Grant, Moon of Wintertime, pp. 121-2.

130

Ibid.

131

Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 548. See also Morice, The History of the Northern Interior,

p. 225.
132
See Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 227, for the list of contributing HBC personnel.
133
Cited in Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 155.

40

Protestant beliefs and practices, and likely Bible studies. McLean wrote that on two of the young mens’ returns
through Carrier country, they had
introduced a sort of religion, whose groundwork seemed to be Christianity, accompanied with
some of the heathen ceremonies of the natives. This religion spread with amazing rapidity all
over the country. It reached Fort Alexandria, the lower post of the district, in the autumn...134

One of these men, Spokane Gerry, is also credited with spreading religious influence among the Coeur d’Alene
and Spokane.135 An important aspect of Gerry’s religious teachings included readings from the Bible. At least one

source indicates that these may have occurred following the speeches of the Colvile District manager Francis

Heron.136 Heron, according to Chance, “took great interest in introducing religious ideas among the Indians
around Fort Colvile and seems to have fallen into a messianic role.”137 Prior to Colvile, Heron was posted to the

Peace River district among the Beaver and Sekani.
Many Carrier chiefs initiated alliances and actively participated in the fur trade throughout much of the
nineteenth century. Carrier continued to have recourse to their traditional subsistence activity, and were not

dependent upon the trade for their existence. The power dynamics between chiefs and traders were such that they
continuously vied with each other for control of the trade, each trying to best the other. Oblate missionaries to the

Carrier did not come into contact with chiefs whose authority had been diminished. Quite the opposite, they met

some chiefs whose family and personal power had been bolstered by an influx of new wealth, and whose prestige
had gained considerably through their participation in the trade. Some chiefs would come to manipulate the
missionaries just as they had the trade. Oblates continued many of the practices begun with the fur trade,

especially regarding their interactions with Carrier chiefs, in their attempts to solidify alliances and solicit

influential Carrier to help them proselytize.
Traders actively attempted to alter certain Carrier cultural institutions, with varying degrees of success.
Carrier, however, were traders of great antiquity and had their own reasons for adjusting to trade with foreign

134

McLean, p. 159.
Chance, p. 73.
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid. p. 31. Heron was in charge of the Colvile district between 1829-32 and 1834-5.

135

41

entrepreneurs, as they had previously made adjustments to trade with other First Nations. In all, the evidence is
overwhelming that both the Nor’Westers and the HBC were instrumental in disseminating aspects of Christian

doctrine and morality among the Carrier. It is also apparent that these tidbits of Christianity were interpreted
through existing Carrier traditions and understood in ways congruent with Carrier culture. An examination of the

Aboriginal religious movements, or ‘prophet movements’, that were in part touched off by the trade is provided in
the following chapter. These movements combined elements of Christianity with the traditional Carrier means of

gaining knowledge through dreaming.

42

CHAPTER TWO: Bini and the Prophetic Tradition

By exploiting new sources of knowledge and power in the form of Christian symbols and practice,

Carrier prophets effected a creative synthesis of new elements into an older system of attaining power
through contact with the spirit world. They incorporated elements of Christianity into an entirely Aboriginal
understanding of how such knowledge is attained

- through dreaming, thus functioning as negotiators or

‘bridge figures’ between cultures.1 They served their people by explaining the strangers among them and
changes around them in ways culturally understood by all Carrier. Ultimately, by maintaining the central

elements of their belief system intact, prophets represented resistance to assimilationist tendencies

consequent from their interaction with the newcomers.2 Their presence and messages are indicative of a
desire to activdy participate in newfound relationships with non-Natives on Carrier terms.
Following a brief literature review of North American Indigenous prophet movements, whereby

Carrier prophets are understood in relation to other Athapaskan prophets, I examine the Witsuwit’en
prophet Bini and his messages from heaven in some detail. Bini served the Carrier in a role of ‘bridge

figure’ within a culture undergoing change. I do not propose to establish a model of prophet activity that

may be applied elsewhere. I use other studies for comparisons, and hope that this study will contribute to a
better understanding of prophets and their negotiations with non- Native culture. Bini, the Carrier, and their

1

Grant Moon of Wintertime, p. 260. Although Grant used the term ‘bridge figures’ to describe certain

‘successful’ missionaries, his definition of those who can successfully facilitate cross-cultural transmissions applies
well to Carrier prophets: “Their availability has sometimes made the difference between a mechanical blend of
ideas and a creative process of adaptation.”
2
Other notable ‘cultic’ movements where Christian elements were accomodated in ways that helped maintain
Aboriginal identities, while rejecting assimilationist tendencies, include the movement of the Kickapoo prophet
Kenekuk and the west coast Shaker religion. J. Herring, “Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet: Acculturation without
Assimilation,” American Indian Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1985), pp. 295-307. L. Slagle, “Tolowa Indian Shakers and the
Role of Prophecy at Smith River, California,” American Indian Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1985), pp. 353-376. P. Amoss,
“The Indian Shaker Church” in Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 7, Northwest Coast, W. Suttles ed.
(1990), pp. 633-9.

43

contact experience, however, are all unique to themselves and cannot be easily incorporated into a ‘model’,

or theoretical, understanding of prophets.3 Bini is best understood as a product of his indigenous and fur
trade environments. He incorporated new elements with older methods in his attempts to deal with diseases
foreign to Carrier experience. He borrowed Christian concepts and practices but acted as a shaman in the

way he acquired them and used them to heal. Bini was both chief and shaman, using his visionary dream¬

power to understand, negotiate with,and combat foreign traders - their ideology, trade goods and diseases.
One of the most contentious issues in the literature of Noth American prophet movements is based

on origins. Those who adhere to ‘deprivation theory,’ defined by Lessa and Vogt as “the assumption that
religious change grows out of psychological, social, economic, or political deprivation,”4 most often

understand prophet activity to represent a break from traditional cultural patterns. Others, following the
early work of Leslie Spier, have argued that post-contact prophet activity is a continuation of pre-contact
shamanistic beliefs and practices.5 Carrier prophet movements are best understood in light of those studies

3

See W.S. Simmons, “Culture Theory in Contemporary Ethnohistory,” Ethnohistory 35, no. 1 (1988), p. 9, for
an argument in favor of inclusion of individual “calculation, invention, choice, doubt, independence, and
experiment” in studies of cultural adaptations. Simmons complains, “having emphasized global process, received
structure, and the collective basis of individual action, anthropologists have tended to deny individual
consciousness an active role in culture theory.” W.G. McLoughlin argued in favor of specific contextual analysis of
prophet activity rather than general theorizing in his article “Ghost Dance Movements: Some Thoughts on
Definition Based on Cherokee History,” Ethnohistory 37, no. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 25-44. Against McLaughlin, see
R. Thornton, “Boundary Dissolution and Revitalization Movements: The Case of the Nineteenth-Century
Cherokees.” Ethnohistory 40. no. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 358-83.
4
W.A. Lessa and E.Z. Vogt eds., Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach (New York:
Harper & Row, 1979), p. 414. For a literature review on revitalization theory see Thornton, “Boundary
Dissolution,” pp. 359-62, and W. La Barre, “Materials for a History of Studies of Crisis Cults: A Bibliographic
Essay,” Current Anthropolgy 12, no. 1 (Feb. 1971).
5
L. Spier, The Prophet Dance of the Northwest and its Derivatives: The Source of the Ghost Dance (Menasha:
George Banting Pub., (1935). For further examination of this tension the reader is referred to E. Vibert’s recent
article, “‘The Natives Were Strong to Live’: Reinterpreting Early-Nineteenth-Century Prophetic Movements in the
Columbia Plateau,” Ethnohistorv 42, no. 2 (spring 1995), pp. 201-5. See also A. de Aguayo, “On Power and
Prophecy: A Nineteenth Century Prophet Movement Amongst the Carrier Indians of Bulkley River, British
Columbia, Canada” (London: London School of Economics M.Sc. econ. Thesis, 1987), pp. 3-10, and La Barre,
“Materials.”

44

of other Athapaskan prophets that point to older belief systems from which prophets arose as a natural and

pragmatic response to outside intrusions.6

Deprivation theory has been worked into various categories of religious phenomena termed
nativistic, revival, revitalization, renewal, redemptive, transformative, messianic, millenarian, cargo cult,

crisis cult and (G)ghost (D)dance among others. All of these at one point have been associated with the
negative effects and stress of culture contact The works of Anthony Wallace have been the most influential

on deprivation theory. Wallace, who coined the term “revitalization movements,” defined them as abrupt
culture changes designed to alter individuals' “mazeways”

- mental images of their society, culture and

normative behaviour - in an attempt to minimize stress.7 His model has been subsequently applied to other
studies of prophet activity. Christopher Miller, for example, applied Wallace’s model to the Columbia

Plateau prophet movements and concluded: “all of reality came to be seen in a new and revolutionary

way.”8 Charles Hunter, in an extreme example of deprivation theory, argued that Delaware prophets’
attempts to return to old ways that were already lost had the opposite effect of internalizing white culture

“to the extent that they could no longer distinguish it from their own.”9 Revitalization or deprivation

6

Antonia Mills first called attention to the similarities between Carrier, Sekani and Beaver prophets; “The
Beaver Indian Prophet Dance and Related Movements Among North American Indians” (Cambridge: Harvard U.
PhD. Thesis, 1981), p. 110.
7
A.F.C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements,” pp. 422-3. See also Wallace, “Mazeway Resynthesis: A
Biocultural Theory of Religious Inspiration,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 18 (1956), pp.
626-638, “The Dekanawideh Myth Analyzed as the Record of a Revitalization Movement,” Ethnohistory 5 (1958),
pp. 118-130, and “New Religions Among the Delaware Indians, 1600-1900,” Southwestern Journal of
Anthropology 12, no. 1 (spring 1956), pp. 1-21. Nativistic movements, according to Ralph Linton, occur mostly
when “both groups agree on the superiority of one of the parties,” and thus result from attempts to counter feelings
of inferiority, “Nativistic Movements” in Reader in Comparative Religion, Lessa and Vogt eds., p. 418,. Also see
B. Barber, “Acculturation and Messianic Movements,” American Sociological Review 6 (1941), pp. 663-9, and
more recently D. Champagne “Social Structure, Revitalization Movements and State Building,” American
Sociological Review 48 (1983), pp. 754-63.
8
C. Miller, Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau (New Brunswick: Rutgar U Press,
1985), p. 42. See also Thornton, “Boundary Dissolution,” and more recently William Pencak, “Placing Native
Americans at the Centre: Indian Prophetic Revolts and Cultural Identity” in Issues in Native American Cultural
Identity, M. Green ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 1995) pp. 167-99.
9
C. Hunter, “The Delaware Nativist Revival of the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Ethnohistory 18 (1971), pp. 3949.

45

theories were originally adapted in North America from those studies of sensational movements related to
forced removals and military action, such as the various Ghost Dances of the late nineteenth century.
Understandably these theories continue to be applied where the negative effects of colonialism are most

obvious.

Deprivation theory has not been effectively applied in all contact situations, however, despite
David Aberle’s insistence upon its inclusion in considerations of Prophet Dance activity.10 Not all areas
where deprivation occurred, in proximity to the Sioux Ghost Dances, adopted the dance as a response to

stress,11 nor does all prophet activity necessarily derive from the stress of culture contact.12 Rather than
attempting to explain away deviations from the model of deprivation, it would seem more provident to

conclude that deprivation theory may not be adequate to explain all prophet related movements, or may be
only one of many factors involved.13 Furthermore. James Mooney’s Ghost Dance, that he had portrayed as

a fanatical and reactionary ritual performed by desperate people, has been recently reinterpreted based on
notions of fluid rather than static religious traditions.14 Joel Martin argued after Raymond DeMallie that the

Sioux Ghost Dances did not represent a religious aberration but were rather based on “pre existing ritual
forms and mythic meanings of their religious tradition.”15

10

Aberle, “The Prophet Dance,” pp. 74-83. See also D. Walker, “New Light on the Prophet Dance Controversy,”
Ethnohistorv 16 (1969), pp. 245-55. For a refutation of Aberle, see Spier, Suttles and Herskovits, “Comment on
Aberle’s Thesis of Deprivation,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15 (1959), pp. 84-8.
11
See A. Mills, “The Beaver Indian Prophet Dance,” p. 142, for a list and discussion of those groups who had
not accepted the Ghost Dance. She speculates that there may have been other social movements that acted as
functional equivalents.
12
W. Suttles, for example, argued in “The Plateau Prophet Dance among the Coast Salish” in Coast Salish
Essays (Vancouver: Taion books, 1987), p. 153, that a form of prophet dance existed prior to deprivation resulting
from contact with Europeans.
13
See Mills, “The Beaver Indian Prophet Dance,” p. 143, and J. Jorgensen, The Sun Dance Religion: Power for
the Powerless (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 8.
14
J. Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1965).
15
J. Martin, “Before and Beyond the Sioux Ghost Dance: Native American Prophetic Movements and the Study
of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 4 (1991); p. 681. R. DeMallie, “The Lakota
Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account,” Pacific Historical Review 51 (1982). See also DeMallie and D. Parks
eds. intro. Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation (Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1987).

46

Hilary Rumley has examined prophets in British Columbia and concluded that their messages, and
the latter missionaries’, both contained strong millenarian features, defined as “a general expectation of a
better life to come.”16 In her attempt to make sense of the appeal Christianity held for First Nations, she
argued that contact had resulted in a weakening of indigenous assumptions about power and social unrest

that they then tried to combat through adherence to a religion that seemed to offer hope for the future. She
maintained that the introduction of fur trade wealth into First Nations cultures resulted in their social
subordination to the traders. She further argued that envy of traders’ wealth may in itself have resulted in

deprivation.17 The degree to which Carrier were able to exert some influence over the trade has already
been demonstrated, however. It is difficult to imagine Carrier being over-awed by traders’ wealth when
those very traders were seen to have trouble feeding themselves. It is equally difficult to imagine Carrier

jealousy of European trade goods when they often held back trading their furs in protest to traders who
could not effectively keep the posts stocked with goods they most desired. While Carrier could survive, and

often did, without trading at the posts, traders relied entirely on the trade for their existence among the

Carrier .

Elizabeth Vibert, following Deward Walker, has argued that prophet movements in the Columbia
plateau, south of Carrier country, were reactions to European originated disease.18 This theme has been

previously worked into most other deprivation theories. Vibert, however, differs in her analysis by
examining the “internal logic” of the prophet movements to argue that they were not simply reactions to
colonial incursion. Plateau groups, she asserted, did not blame these early epidemics on outsiders, but
instead believed them to result from spiritual crisis within their communities.19 Carrier prophets did indeed

16

H Rumley, “Reactions,” p. 14.
Ibid, p. 28. For the argument that deprivation could result from exposure to new wants or First Nations
“obsession” with European goods, See Aberle, “Prophet Dance,” p. 79, and Walker, “New Light,” p. 251.
18
Vibert, ‘“The Natives Were Strong to Live’.” Walker, “New Light.” Vibert, however, concedes, p. 220, that
17

not all prophet activity resulted from this type of deprivation.
19
Vibert, “‘The Natives were Strong to Live’,” p. 199.

47

exploit new avenues of power in order to combat new forms of illness. There is, however, not the same
evidence of pre-contact widespread disease and prophetic messages of epidemic to fully support Vibert's
theory as applied to the Carrier. The prevalence of disease among the Carrier is perhaps the single most

difficult factor to gauge in their acceptance of Christian concepts and practices. Whatever the level of
devastation disease wrought, a direct relationship with the acceptance of Christianity still needs to be

articulated. While there is good evidence that disease played a role in the Carrier's acceptance and
utilization of both the prophet’s and missionary's messages, this single-cause explanation cannot alone
account for the existence of Carrier prophets or all Carrier conversion experiences.
Those who have studied Athapaskan prophet movements have proposed various theories of cultural
continuity from pre-contact cultures to the post-contact prophet dances.20 Robin Ridington argued, as

Wayne Suttles had with the Coast Salish, that the essential elements of the prophet dance pre-dated contact
with the European and thus acculturative revitalization can not account for its geographic and temporal

persistence.21 While the prophet dance was indeed a world renewal ceremony, it was not, wrote Ridington,
“a revitalization or messianic movement providing symbolic form for an overall transformation of society,”
but rather, was an “experience of individual transformation inherent in an adaptively stable cultural system

of great antiquity.”22 Both Ridington and Antonia Mills have equated the post-contact Beaver, or Dunne-za,
prophets with the pre-contact shaman or hunt chiefs power to dream.23 They believe the Dunne-za had

adopted the Christian ethic of non-violence and used it to promote harmony within their communities.24

20

Spier, p. 5, first argued that the origins of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dances could be found in the Prophet
Dance of the interior Plateau, “where there was an old belief in the impending destruction and renewal of the
world.”
21
R. Ridington, Swan People: A Study of the Dunne-za Prophet Dance (Ottawa: National Museum of Man,
1978), p. 5. Suttles, “The Plateau Prophet Dance,” pp. 175-6, argued that many elements of the prophet dance were
common to both European and Salish traditions.
22
Ridington, Swan People, p. 26.
23
Mills, “The Beaver Indian Prophet Dance.” Ridington has written extensively on this topic; see Swan People,
“The Prophet Dance among the Dunne-Za” in Problems in the Prehistory of the North American Subarctic: The
Athapaskan Question, J.W. Helmer et al. eds. (Calgary: U of C, 1977), pp. 211-223, “From Hunt Chief to Prophet:
Beaver Indian Dreamers and Christianity” in Ridington, Little Bit Know Something: Stories in a Language of

48

Kerry Abel has also argued that Wallace’s model of ‘revitalization movements’ does not fit the

Dene situation.23 Rather than a reworking of cultural traditions she understands the Dene prophet

movements to be continuations of traditional cultural responses to change. Prophets were in fact shamans
who, she implied, may have made use of Christian concepts in order to better compete, especially with later

missionaries.26 While John Grant favours Wallace’s model of revitalization, he too reasoned that an
indigenous tradition of such movements may indeed have been prevalent previous to contact: “there seems

to be no reason other than racial arrogance to assume that only Europeans could precipitate crises serious
enough to call forth a prophetic tradition.”27 Post-contact prophets, wrote Grant, represented “attempts to

open Christianity to appropriation by Indians on Indian terms.”28
Guy Lanoue, who characterized Sekani post-contact history as “an attempt to hold the middle

-

ground to be flexible on the smaller issues but to retain the core unchanged,”29 argued that while prophet
activity may have resulted from contact, it did not result from ‘crisis’. Lanoue briefly examined the prophet

Anthropology (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990), pp. 64-83, and Trail to Heaven; Knowledge and Narrative
in a Northern Native Community (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988). See also J. Lewis “Shamans and
Prophets: Continuities and Discontinuities in Native American New Religions,” American Indian Quarterly 12, no.

3 (1988), pp. 221-8. Spier, p. 14, was the first to make a specific connection between shamanic healing practices
and the Prophet movement.
24
See Mills, “The Beaver Indian Prophet Dance,” pp. 54-60, for a full discussion of the change in ethic reflected
in the stories of early prophets. While shamans’ dreaming was generally a private matter, involving the curing of
illness or retribution in the form of medicine fights, the prophet’s dreaming was made public and often contained a
message of non-violence.
25
Abel, “Prophets, Priests and Preachers: Dene Shamans and Christian Missions in the Nineteenth Century” in
Interpreting Canada’s North, K. Coates and W. Morrison eds. (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd., 1989), pp. 221-

2.
26

Ibid. Abel makes a similar argument in “The Drum and the Cross,” p. 232. Along with Abel, Grant,
“Missionaries and messiahs in the northwest,” Studies in Religion 9, no. 2 (1980), pp. 125-36, and R. Janes and J.
Kelly, “Observations on Crisis Cult Activities in the Mackenzie Basin” in Problems in the Prehistory of the North
American Subarctic: The Athapaskan Question (Calgary. U of C, 1977), pp. 153-164, have outlined a number of
examples of hostility between prophets and missionaries in the Canadian Northwest.
27
Grant, “Missionaries and messiahs,” p. 133. This sentiment is echoed by Vibert, “‘The Natives were Strong to
Live’,” p. 220. See also Janes and Kelly, p. 160. In fact, Wallace did not limit his notion of revitalisation to contact
with western culture; see, for example, “The Dekanawideh Myth Analyzed as the Record of a Revitalization

Movement”
28
29

Grant “Missionaries and messiahs,” p. 134.
Lanoue, “Continuity and Change,” p. 6.

49

movement led by Bini and concluded, similar to more recently posed Sekani solutions to political problems,
that it “was a continuation of an already long established tradition of cultural expression.”30 In Lanoue’s
model, cultic movements could represent a form of problem-solving in anticipation of change or crisis.31

Anna de Aguayo examined Bini, and the movement touched off by him, using models of political and

economic motivation mostly developed in relation to studies of Melanesian Cargo Cults, de Aguayo argued
that the concepts and symbols of Christianity were incorporated and manipulated in traditional ways, “due

to their association with wealth and the importance placed upon wealth in Carrier culture.”32 She further
conjectured that by incorporating Christian symbols of prestige into their messages, Carrier prophets turned

traditional shamanistic quests for power into quests for European goods and status.33

R. Janes and J. Kelly argued that Athapaskan prophet activity represented on-going adaptations to
stress prevalent in cultures whose subsistence was necessarily based on unpredictable hunting. In their

process of examining documentation on early prophets, they reported difficulty “drawing an effective line
between prophets in the narrower sense of crisis cult agents and other forms of Athapaskan prophetic,

visionary and shamanistic activities.”34 Their difficulty partly arises from their initial assumption that

prophet activity is necessarily the result of crisis, but is also indicative of a greater problem of using non¬

Native paradigms to order Native cultures. Ethnographers, anthropologists and historians use convenient
categories of ‘chief, ‘shaman’ and ‘prophet’, among others, to explain roles within Native communities the

only way they know how, in terms relative to their own cultural understandings. The present study is no

exception. There is considerable cross-over within and between these categories, however, and it is

30
31

Ibid. p. 341.
Thornton, “Boudary Dissolution,” p. 375, argued that revitalization occured among the Cherokee when

potential crisis was percieved.
32
de Aguayo, p. 36.
33
Ibid, p. 39.
34
Janes and Kelly, p. 160.

50

I

somewhat false to assume that Carrier prophets represented a wholly new category created out of the stress

of contact.
An example from Ogden’s journal illustrates the degree of cross-over, and thus the difficulty of
making rigid distinctions, between ‘chief, ‘shaman’ and ‘prophet’. An example of Ogden being feasted by

Chief Hanayah of Stella in the 1830s has been given in the previous chapter. This chief, according to
Ogden, ruled over his people by playing on their ‘superstitions’. Not only was he believed to have the “evil

eye,” Ogden wrote, but was “a seer of undoubted pretensions; and could utter oracles like the Delphian

Apollo.”35 In a familiar voice of racial superiority and arrogance, Ogden wrote that such behaviour from a
ruler in “enlightened England, would have gained him the compliment of a faggot and a tar-barrel.”36
Towards the end of the feast Hanayah and “two other craftsmen of the same art” took part in what could

only be described as a shamanic ceremony. “Each of them,” described Ogden, “wore a kind of coronet

formed of the inverted claws of the grizzly bear,...the badge of the supernatural powers to which they

aspired.”37 This ‘coronet’ is the most striking feature of the Carrier shaman’s attire when he or she is
healing.38 What is significant here is not only that one person could simultaneously be ‘chief, ‘shaman’ and
‘prophet’, but that there is a certain commonality between the different attributes that have been assigned to
each of these roles, thus calling into question the accuracy of any such hard-and-fast categorizations.

An examination of the Carrier prophet Bini, coupled with even a limited understanding of Carrier
concepts of power and its acquisition through dream-knowledge, helps to dissolve these boundaries and
discern clear links between ‘chief, ‘shaman’ and ‘prophet’. Dreaming as a source of knowledge, and thus

power, was of paramount importance to the Carrier in their daily patterns of subsistence. When Carrier
35

Ogden, pp. 149-50.
p. 149.
37 Ibid,
p. 158-9.
38
Morice, “Notes Archaeological, Industrial and Sociological on the Western D6n6s,” Transactions of the Royal
Canadian Institute, 4 (1892-93), p. 181, “The Great D6n6 Race,” p. 8. Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley
River,” p. 560. I. Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier of British Columbia” (Brownville: Sarah Lawrence Coiledge
Thesis, 1953), p. 274. See figure 4, p. ix, below.
36 Ibid,

51

dreamed, their ‘shadow’ (using Diamond Jenness’ terminology) was able to contact shadows of the animal

world, and thus foretell where and when a successful hunt would take place. This Carrier concept is similar

to the Beaver or Dunne-za’s dreaming ahead along the trail of animals, as described in the many works of

Ridington.39 An informant of Jenness’ explained his success at easily killing a black bear: “for I had often
dreamed of killing bears.’’40 Another informant confided to Jenness: “I have never dreamed a great deal, so I
have never been a very successful hunter.’’41 The arrival of salmon, a staple food of the Carrier, could also
be predicted and influenced through the efforts of a successful dreamer. The great salmon spirit or “salmon

boss,” who lived by the sea, could be propitiated by a successful dreamer’s soul or shadow to release the
salmon up-river.42
Those who were most successful in their dreaming garnered the most respect and gained the most

wealth with which to establish their ‘nobility’ through potlatching. In short, dream-power was an essential
requirement of the chiefs. Their authority, wrote Mills, “came not only from the assumption of the highest

chiefs’ titles but from individual contact with the spirit realm through dreams, medicine-dream sickness,
and visionary experiences.”43 Those successful shamans who were not chiefly title holders were also highly
regarded and were, like chiefs, reported to have gone through a potlatching initiation procedure.44 While
dreaming for subsistence needs was a common enough occurrence, the shaman was mostly called upon in

more unusual cases, such as when an individual’s shadow, soul or spirit was trapped or captured resulting
in a condition of sickness or imbalance.45

39

See footnote 21, this chapter.
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 541.
41
Ibid. See also Jenness, “Myths of the Carrier,” pp. 170-1, and Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier of British
Columbia” (Bronville: Sarah Lawrence College Thesis, 1953), p. 222-9.
42
Morice, “The Western D6n6,” p. 157. Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 548.
43
Mills, Eagle Down, p. 40.
44
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 564. Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier” in
Acculturation, Linton ed., p. 365. For the assertion that effective shamans often became chiefs, see Goldman, “The
Alkatcho Carrier of British Columbia” (Bronville: Sarah Lawrence College Thesis, 1953), p. 243.
45
Morice, Souvenirs D’un Missionnaire en Columbie Britannique (Winnipeg: Editions de la Liberte, 1933), pp.
89-90, “The Western D6n6,” pp. 158 and 161, “Notes on the Western D6n6,” p. 107 and 118. Jenness, “The
40

52

It would only have been natural for some individuals to use their dream-power to help their
communities explain and adjust to the various new challenges brought about by contact with western
culture. According to an informant of Jenness', a medicine man, who pre-dated Bini, regularly made visits

to the “home of the salmon” to predict their migration up-stream. This same shaman also began sending his
46
soul to make regular trips to “sky-land.”* How much of a jump is it, then, to make from a shaman’s or

chiefs visiting salmon country to predict the coming of salmon and a prophet’s visiting heaven to predict
such events as the coming of dogs of heaven, or horses?47

Bini was a chief whose soul travelled to heaven to receive information regarding some of the
changes that would come to the Carrier, as well as instruction about change that he himself was to

implement. The information on Bini comes almost entirely from Carrier oral sources collected by Morice,

Jenness and Barbeau. Jenness has three published accounts while Morice and Barbeau published accounts
that combined different oral sources.48 There are four brief accounts of Bini recorded in a collection of

Elder’s oral accounts produced by the Moricetown Indian Band Council,49 and eighteen of Barbeau’s
original informants’ accounts are also extant, for a total of twenty six versions of the story of Bini.50

Barbeau’s transcribed informants’ accounts prove much more useful than his entertaining account of

Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 544-5 and 559-581, “An Indian Method of Treating Hysteria”
Anthropological Quarterly 6 (1933), pp. 13-20, and “Myths of the Carrier,” various accounts. Goldman, “The
Alkacho Carrier of British Columbia” (Bronville: Sarah Lawrence College Thesis, 1953), pp. 221-257, “The
Alkacho Carrier” in Acculturation. Linton ed.. pp. 364-5.
46
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 548.
47
The single most common prophesy in the various accounts of Bini is the coming of horses to Carrier country.
It appears m 14 of the 18 oral accounts from Barbeau’s field notes, CMCA B-F-322.1-20, as well as his published
account in Indian Davs in the Canadian Rockies (Toronto: MacMillan Co., 1923), p. 47, all three of Jenness’
informants’ accounts in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 551-7, and three of the four accounts in C.
and N. Naziel eds. Stories of the Moricetown Carrier (Moricetown: Moricetown Indain Band Council, 1978).
48
See Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, pp. 239-40, Barbeau, pp. 17-58, and Jenness, “The Carrier
Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 550-7. Oral accounts of Bini have also been worked into J. Miller’s article
“Tsimshian Religion in Historical Perspective: Shamans, Prophets, and Christ” in The Tsimshian and Their
Neighbors of the North Pacific Coast, M. Miller and C. Eastman eds. (Seattle: U of Washington Press, 1984), pp.
137-47.
49
C. and R. Naziel eds., Stories of the Moricetown Carrier.
50
There are many other oral accounts of Bini, under his chiefly name Kwess, before he become a prophet. See,
for example, Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp 479-60, and “Myths of the Carrier,” p. 232.

53

“Beeny” in Indian Davs in the Canadian Rockies. A comparison between his informants’ accounts and
published narrative indicate a considerable degree of embellishment in the latter. He had both failed to
mention elements common to many of his informant’s accounts, and turned uncorroborated evidence into

i,

major themes in his publication. His claim that part of Bini’s message forbade the continuation of

potlatching is not supported in any of his informants’ accounts, and is directly contradicted by Jenness’

informants who maintain that Bini “participated in potlatches like other Indians,” as well as having erected

a special totem pole to consolidate his power.51
Placing Bini in time and space is difficult because of inconsistencies in the oral records. Most

accounts refer to him as either a Hagwilgate (Rocher D&oul6) chief, or a chief recently moved to
Hagwilgate. Jenness believed him to have died around 1870,52 and many of Barbeau’s informants in the
early 1920s claimed to have known Bini when they were young, or legitimated their accounts as having

come from close relatives who had known Bini either in their youth or adult lives. And yet many accounts
are made of Bini prophesying the coming of horses, white men and other events that would have had little
significance had they been voiced in the mid-1800s.53 Negative evidence also calls into question the dating

of Bini to mid-century, for it is a little surprising that there is no mention in any of the traders’ journals or
correspondence of such a expansive movement as is attested to in the Carrier oral record. Bini was

remembered as a key transitional figure, from a purely indigenous to a fur trade culture, who was able to

51

Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 552.
Ibid, p. 551. In a letter to Barbeau, Jenness dated Bini’s death to “about 1868,” CMCA B-F-198.8.
53
There are three related difficulties with using these oral accounts in an ‘historic’ sense. The first is a question
of translation from circular to linear understandings of time. First Nations oral accounts do not necessarily work
with the same notions of ordered time as western accounts. It is therefore not unusual to find recent ‘historical’
figures in stories that relate to the distant past. Secondly, some oral accounts speak of many ‘Binis’ in different
villages. ‘Bini’ seems thus to be a title that others, possible the original Bini’s deciples, took on. A final difficulty
is that Carrier notions of hereditary title and belief in reincarnation make it difficult to know for sure if the original
‘Bini’, Chief Kwess, is always the one being referred to. See Mills, Eagle Down, p. 176, for an account of the
reincarnated Bini, Chief Wigetemskol, who continues the tradition of acting as a transitional figure mediating
between cultures.
52

54

negotiate elements of Christianity while maintaining the basics of Carrier culture intact. It would thus seem

best to place him at the beginning of the century, when the land-based fur trade was in its infancy.

Some of Bini’s messages were obviously indigenous in content, as is exemplified in his
remonstrations regarding the treatment of game: “He always instructed the people from time to time to have

every respect for the salmon.’’54 The following account exemplifies the mixture of new ideas and older
values in the prophet’s messages: “...he would tell them that fish came from the heavens and not even the

smallest trout was to be wasted or made fun of because it was a food sent by God.”55 One of Barbeau’s
informants related the tale of Bini’s ascent to heaven with older traditional stories of the land of the dead.

Versions of a Carrier tale of a land where the dead reside are recorded in the writings of Morice and

Jenness.56 In these accounts the land of the dead lies on the opposite bank of a river and only by yawning
will the dead cross over in their canoes to collect the still living. The following is an account of Bini’s travel

to the land of the dead:
When he got to the edge of the river he called like he had when he was on earth and nobody
heard him, and nobody came, and he sat all day calling: taqa'iha.o cross me man. and
nobody came and it was getting dark and he got sleepy and he opened his mouth and
yawned and immediately a canoe came right over.57

A similar mixing of traditional oral stories of the land of the dead with more recent accounts of prophets’
travel to heaven is provided by one of Jenness’ informants regarding Bopa, a woman from Fraser Lake.
She, like the medicine-man in the traditional oral story,58 is careful not to eat the food offered to her by the

dead lest she be unable to return to the land of the living.59

54

Barbeau Collection, CMCA B-F-322.4, p. 4.
Barbeau Collection, B-F-322.5, p. 7.
56
Morice, “The Western D6n6,” pp. 159-60, Souvenirs, pp. 90-2, and “Are the Carrier,” p. 123. Jenness, “Myths
of the Carrier Indians,” pp. 143-9.
57
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.10, p. 1.
58
See Jenness, “Myths of the Carrier Indians,” p. 144.
59
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 549.
55

55

*

Some of the Christian content that appears in Bini's messages included making the sign of the
cross, use of a white cloth (a vestment cloth or stole and surplice for liturgy?), baptism with water,
renaming of individuals, and the observance of Sunday as a day of rest and prayer. Some informants

reported that God spoke to Bini directly and two accounts mention that he brought back commandments for
the people to follow.60 One of Jenness’ informants made the following distinction between the

commandments Bini received from heaven: “do not kill another by violence” and “do not kill another by

sorcery.”61 Thus was the Christian message adopted to promote harmony in a uniquely Carrier way.
Common Oblate practices whose origins are attributed to Bini in the oral records include the handing out of
crosses, wooden or tin, and the arranging of formal marriages. Most accounts also mention a high degree of

proselytizing whereby Bini sent out his ‘disciples' to far away places, or put in place disciples to minister
his religion in nearby villages. This system of disciples is highly reminiscent of the Oblate programme of
nominating influential Carrier with specific titles and duties, described in the following chapter.

There are various theories, other than the prophetic belief, as to where these Christian concepts

came from. The earliest contact with missionaries occurred in 1842 when the Roman Catholic Bishop
Demers visited Carrier country. In the latter half of the 1840s the Jesuit John Nobili also made periodic
visits to the Carrier. Both of these missionaries made use of the Catholic Ladder as a teaching aid.62 This

was a visual representation on cloth or paper that was drawn with lines and dots and Christian symbols to
teach both the history of Christianity and which Christian morals to follow to remain on the straight and

narrow path to heaven.63 There is some inconclusive evidence from the oral accounts of Bini that may point

60

Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.3, p. 6. Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 555.
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 555.
62
For an account of both Demers’ and Nobili’s trips to the Carrier, see Morice, The History of the Northern
Interior, pp. 227-38, and R. Fowler, “The New Caledonia Mission: An Historical Sketch of the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate in North Central British Columbia” in Sa Ts’e: Historical Perspectives on Northern British Columbia
(Prince George: Coiledge of New Caledonia Press, 1989), pp. 129-30.
63
For a history of the Catholic Ladder, see Hanley, “The Catholic Ladder and Missionary Activity in the Pacific
Northwest” (Ottawa: U of O M.A. Thesis, 1965). See also Whitehead, “Christianity: A Matter of Choice,” pp. 98103. The prototype of the Catholic Ladder, the ‘Sahale stick’ or ‘stick from heaven’ was created in 1839 by the
61

56

to the adoption of the Catholic Ladder concept of teaching by him. Seven of the twenty six extant accounts
mention Bini’s use of some kind of wooden board with symbols or lettering for teaching his message. The

most telling account is as follows:
When the people found Bini he had on his bosom a black stick which was notched. It was
on this stick that the inscription and the instruction was given to the people, what to do to
64
be saved, and what to do that would cause their death.*

Some Carrier were baptized in these early encounters with either Demers or Nobili.65 The Oblate
James MacGuckin, who toured much of the Carrier country in 1870, met a Babine woman whose husband
had been baptized by Nobili: “They tell me that before he died he sang very distinctly the words he had
learned in the past: Et salutare tuum du nobis. Et clamor meus ad te veniar, then he made the sign of the

cross and expired gently.”66 Lejacq reported to D’Herbomez, within the first year or two of the permanent
founding of Notre Damn de Bonne Esperance in 1873, that there were already 631 baptisms on the register:

“You know that there are a great number of baptisms among our sauvages; they have been baptized by
Monseigneur Demers or Father Nobilis.”67 Morice believed the prophet movements to have been a direct

result of these early furtive attempts to introduce Christianity.68 There is good reason to believe, however,
based on the oral records, that prophets pre-dated even these early efforts. Furthermore, there seems to
have already been an interest in Catholicism prior to 1842 that encouraged Demers to make the initial tour,

and may in fact indicate some earlier prophet activity. The Jesuit DeSmet travelled with Demers for part of

Vicar General of the Oregon territory Fr. Blanchet. Demers worked closely with Blanchet and their arrival among
First Nations is actually represented by two verticle bars at the top of the first Catholic Ladder.
64
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.15, p. 3. Another account mentions that Bini had ascended a ladder to
heaven, CMCA B-F-322.3, p. 3.
65
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, pp. 232-5, wrote that Demers had baptized a total of 151
children at Fort Alexandria, 5 at Fort George and 13 at Fort St. James. Of Nobili at Fort Babine Morice wrote, p.
237: “he baptized many children and old people, to each of whom he gave brief certificates of admission into the
Church, some of which are still treasured by the survivors.” See also Morice, The History of the Catholic Church,

p. 289-93.
66
MacGuckin report to Bishop D’Herbomez, Nov. 1870, Missions 11 (1783), p. 87. All translations herein,
unless otherwise stated, are my own.
67
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, dated sometime in 1873, Missions 12 (1874) p. 349.
68
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 238. See also Grant, Moon of Wintertime, p. 123.

57

his trip north in 1842 and reported of the First Nations within New Caledonia: “according to the accounts

of several Canadian travellers, [they! were most anxious to see a Black-gown and hear the word of God.”69
Hilary Rumley developed the theory that when Bini first went missing he may have contacted the

Russian missionary Veniamenov along the coast, and that in fact the name Bini, that he had claimed had
been given him by God in heaven, was a corruption of the shortened “Veni.”70 Some of Barbeau’s
informants do relate that he had gone missing for a period of weeks or months, and others that either his

mind or physical self had met one or two strange looking men (white men?) who led him up to heaven.
Morice, however, who had an exceptional penchant for learning the very difficult Carrier language, claimed

that his name was Peni, containing the root ‘ni’ meaning mind. The full name was meant to indicate that he

could send his mind to many places.71 Morice’s explanation is corroborated by one of Barbeau’s informants
who explained the translation of ‘Bini’ meaning “his-mind-all-over-the-world.”72

Common to almost all accounts of Bini is the tale of his dream-state travel up to heaven and his
receiving of songs containing messages that were to be accompanied by drumming and dancing. The

acquisitions of songs through dreaming as a form of medicine power is something that most Carrier youths,
according to Jenness, attempted as they sought their personal animal protector or guardian spirit.73

Informants of Jenness outlined three methods of attaining a medicine song, including the following:

You will lie as if dead, but your shadow, travelling away to a mountain or a river, will
encounter a fish, a bear, or other creature and learn from it a song. Return to your home in
the morning, but at evening sleep under the log again in order that....your shadow may
perhaps acquire a second song.74

69

Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet, S.J. 1801-1873, Chittenden and Richardson eds. (New

York: Francis P. Harper), p. 389.
70
Rumley, pp. 51-6.
71
Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 239. Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p.
535, translated Bini simply as “his mind.”
72
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.16, p. 2.
73
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 542-3. Jenness, p. 543, believes this practice to have
changed among the Fraser Lake and Stoney Creek Carrier, so that only a few select youths were able to attain their
medicine songs, thus becoming medicine-men, “able to cure diseases and to foresee the future.”
74
Ibid.

58

Some of Barbeau's informants related that Bini had in fact received two songs on his initial shadow’s
journey to heaven. The Carrier concept of heaven could be incorporated into existing concepts of either the

‘land of the dead’ or spirit realms where animal spirits or “bosses” resided. Personal or clan songs, like
titles, were passed on to succeeding generations.75 The prophet’s song was also passed along, the difference

being, rather than owned by a specific family, the prophets’ songs were public property containing

messages meant to benefit all. Many different informants remembered songs that Bini had received from
heaven.

The medicine-sickness that some Carrier contracted on their way to becoming shamans is very

similar to the accounts of prophets’ having died and come back to life with songs and messages from
heaven. Jenness claimed that coastal influence was responsible for a fundamental change in Witsuwit’en

conceptions of medicine-power. He believed that instead of certain Witsuwit’en actively seeking out
medicine power in order to become shamans, the spirit world came to select those who would become

shaman “whether they willed it or not,” by inflicting the candidate with a “state of dreamy phthisis ending,
unless properly treated, in death.”76 Some of Jenness’ informants asserted that the shadow of the inflicted

travelled to the home of some animal spirit thereby becoming trapped, others believed the shadow to have
received a song from the spirit realm that became “pent up like an ill-digested meal” in the inflicted until a
shaman or shamans were able to secure its release.77 Many accounts of Bini related that a song issuing
from his body was the first sign of his coming back to life. Laura Boyd, of Southern Carrier ancestry,
stated that there were two types of shaman, or duyunne - nulhjun, translated as “he who sings with us” and

nek’ununih “he who draws the bad spirits out.”78 Irving Goldman wrote that the Ulkatcho Carrier

75

76

Morice, “The Western D6n6,” pp. 144 and 155.
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 559.

77 Ibid,

p. 560.
Furniss, Dakelh Keyoh: The Southern Carrier in Earlier Times (Quesnel: Quesnel School District 28, 1993),
p. 60.
78

59

translation of the shaman neltcEn, was “causing to sing.” “The general characteristic of a neltcEn illness,”
he continued, “was a dream in which some spirit appeared and gave the subject a song.”79 The Carrier

means of dreaming to attain power and knowledge in the form of song was thus an ancient practice
continued by the prophets.
Bini may have used strange language, symbols and paraphernalia, but his means of curing was also

based in a long tradition. There is debate between Jenness and Barbeau as to whether Bini was a shaman
prior to his becoming a prophet. While Jenness, in a letter to Barbeau, flatly denied that Bini was a

shaman,80 at least three of Barbeau’s informants suggest that he was.81 Other accounts mention his use of
bells instead of the shaman’s rattle to cure the sick.82 Whether or not Bini was a healer prior to his

shadow’s visitations to heaven, many accounts mention his attaining a shamanic-like ability to cure the sick

upon his return from heaven. An example of one such account is as follows:
God had told Bini what to do to cure the sick. When the person was very sick he was to
sing his songs and dance around them and in his hands he was to carry bells, something
that tingled and shake these shingles as he went around the sick person singing.83
Unfamiliar diseases and illnesses called for new cures. These cures, however, were new only in-so-far as

their adoption of new paraphernalia. The means of curing, through the utilization of dream power brought

on by dancing and singing, remained the same.
One notable difference of Bini’s healing with that of the shaman’s was his incorporation of a white
cloth. Some accounts related that the sick person was laid out on white cloth and others that it was used to

cover the patient. The most interesting of these accounts tell of Bini having used a white cloth, dipped in
water, to strike his patients with:

79

Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier” in Acculturation, Linton ed., p. 365.
Jenness letter to Barbeau, Jan. 13, 1924, Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-198.8.
81
One account clearly stated that God had forbidden Bini from continuing bis shamanic practices, Barbeau
collection, CMCA B-F-322.1, p. 4.
82
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.3, p. 4, B-F-322.5, p. 7.
83
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.5, p. 7. In all, eleven accounts of Bini mention his ability to cure the sick.
80

60

When one man got sick at the point of death they sent a message to Bini, calling him to
come to the sick person. He just took the cloth and put it all in water, and struck the sick
person and that man got cured.84

Another account exemplifies the integration of the old and new in Bini’s healing:
Bini used to go around and to cure sickness by sickness at the sight of the pain and spitting
out blood. He would sometimes take his patients up to a post, and whip them with a cloth
which he had. He effected many miraculous cures by messing over the person and sucking.
he was acting as a swa-nasa [shaman].85

A pre-missionary healing ceremony that involved striking the patient with a wet cloth may partly
explain Carrier acceptance of the Oblate practice of whipping transgressors of church sanctioned rules.
Especially in a time when Carrier were becoming infected with unfamiliar disease might they have been

willing to undergo unusual cures advocated by missionaries who promised salvation. Mrs. C. Holland of

Witsuwit’en ancestry described missionary induced whipping having been applied “until they believed all
his bad spirits were out of him.”86 Carrier sickness was commonly believed to result from a foreign spirit
becoming trapped within an individual, at which point the shaman’s services would be called upon to

remove it An understanding of whipping as a healing process would probably not have been discouraged
by Oblates who believed whipping to be an atonement for sin, and thus itself a form of healing.

There are other accounts of Bini, however, that clearly relate his introducing of whipping as a form

of punishment or penance. One of Barbeau’s informants stated: “If anybody does not know how to dance,

Bini took a cloth and dipped it in the water and struck that man with the cloth.”87 Jenness’ informants gave
the following account of Bini’s use of the whip: “he gathered all the Hagwilgate Indians inside his house
and ordered them to confess their sins and be purified with whippings from his aides.”88 A Fraser Lake

84

Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.17, p. 6.
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.14, p. 4. For evidence of the shaman’s practice of sucking at wounds and
spitting out bad blood, see Morice, “D6n6 Surgery,” Transactions of the Canadian Institute 7 (1900-01), p. 22. See
also Morice, “Notes on the Western D6n6s,” p. 107, and for the Sekani, G. Denniston “Sekani” in Handbook of
North American Indians Vol. 6. Subarctic, J. Helm ed. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1981), pp. 439.
86
Account of Mrs. Christine Holland in C. and R. Naziel eds. Stories of the Moricetown Carrier, p. 24.
87
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.2, p. 3.
88
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 552.
85

61

woman named Nokskan was also reported by one of Jenness’ informants to have been told by Sa (the Sky
God) to whip those transgressors of his rules “lest they go after death to an evil place.”89 The most telling
account comes from one of Barbeau’s informants:

Bini also told them that on high that people that sinned here shall be punished on earth.
And they should be flogged when they worked on Sunday, when they did any kind of sin.
That is how flogging was started at Hagwelgate.90

The notion of Bini introducing whipping as penance is perhaps best understood in relation to a
greater motif found in most of these accounts, namely that it was Bini rather than the missionaries who was

responsible for converting the Carrier to Christianity. Such statements as, “what the preacher teach of the
bible today, Bini preached us the same way before the preacher came up here,”91 and “he told them the very

same things that the clergyman tells to this day,”82 indicate that the telling of these stories partly functioned
to re-claim Carrier history as having been created from within their communities rather than imposed by
outsiders. Christian doctrine, morality, ritual and symbols are thus asserted in the oral record as having
been part of a pre-missionary influenced culture.
The stories of Bini are remarkably similar to the stories that Tlingit elders told to Sergai Kan
regarding the pre-missionary shamans who both taught the Tlingit to be Christians and predicted the
coming of missionaries. These stories, Kan argued, partly served the Tlingit by denying the whites their

claim of having brought ‘truth’ to their ‘primitive’ communities. “To assert one’s equality with the whites,”
he wrote, “by refusing to see them as givers is particularly important to the society where those receiving a
gift have traditionally been seen as less powerful than those giving it.”93 Rather than deny the ‘historical’
value in these shaman accounts, Kan demonstrates that the shamans had indeed borrowed elements of

89

Ibid. p. 549.
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.5, p. 6. Another informant related that Bini had been bathed and whipped
by the “chief’ in heaven, CMCA B-F-322.4, p. 3.
91
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.1, p. 4.
92
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.3, p. 7.
93
S. Kan, “Shamanism and Christianity. Modem-Day Tlingit Elders Look at the Past,” Ethnohistory 38, no. 4
90

(Fall 1991), p. 381.

62

Christianity in their attempts to use this newfound power for their own purposes. He reasoned of both the
historical borrowing of Christian elements and the contemporary accounts of the pre-missionary shaman’s

Christianity: “Thus the tables have been turned on the colonizers, whose own ideology becomes a weapon
in the hands of the colonized.”94

Evidence from oral accounts places Bini firmly in the context of the fur trade. Some of the stories

of Bini mention the use or existence of guns, and other stories explicitly tell of his owning a Hudson’s Bay

Company axe.95 Two accounts tell of Bini having acquired his bells, that he used instead of a shaman’s
rattle, from the Company. Upon the initial return of Bini from heaven, one of Barbeau’s informants related:

...Bini asked for some bells small bells which they got from the Hundson [sic] Bay Co. in
the early years which he used as rattles. And he said that this is what they used in the
heaven and white cloth. He held the white cloth in his right hand and the bells which he
used as rattles in his left.96
Both bells and white cloth were available as trade items at the Company posts.97 Other objects that were
prophesied and introduced to the Carrier through the fur trade included horses, wagons, cows, agriculture,
iron, houses (two-story), windows, flour and European clothing. Some accounts explicitly mention Bini

having acquired white man’s clothing. The Hudson’s Bay Company practice of providing chiefs with

European clothing has been described in the previous chapter.
Carrier participation in and readjustments to the fur trade resulted in the incorporation of Christian
elements into their belief system. It was demonstrated in chapter one that traders actively lobbied Carrier to

bury rather than bum their dead. Many accounts of Bini make explicit mention of his desire to be buried

and later dug up, at which time he would return back to life after having visited the four comers of heaven.

94

Ibid. p. 382.
For example, Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.2, p. 1 and B-F-322.4, p. 1.
96
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.3, p. 4. The other account is from Jenness’ informants, “The Carrier
Indians of the Bulkley River,” p. 552, who stated that Bini “carried a small bell that he obtained from the Hudson’s
Bay Company’s trading post at Old Fort Babine.”
97
See, for example, the Fort St. James Account Book for 1821-22, NAC HBCA B.188/d/l. See also Chance, p.
72: “Flags and bells were also paraphernalia acquired during this pre-missionary period,” i.e. the 1820s and 30s in
the Colvile district.
95

63

Because his body was either buried too deep, or was dug up and removed to a different local, or some other
of his instructions not properly followed, he was not able to return to life in his own body. One informant

related: “He asked his people to bury him, not to bum him as they used to. And they told his people do not
dig a deep place to bury him, but only shallow.”98 A possible explanation for the request of a shallow,

rather than deep, grave may relate to a belief in the deceased individual’s soul finding release through the
heat of cremation.99 There may have been some initial fear among the Carrier that burial in a ‘cold’ ground

would result in the soul or shadow being trapped. Stories of Bini having been buried in a shallow grave and
then dug up may represent negotiation with western culture on Carrier terms. Individual Carrier may have

had their own reasons for wanting to be buried rather than burned, one of which might have been the desire

to contact the afterworld of the traders.

One of the most interesting prophecies that is repeated often by Barbeau’s informants is that of an
impending reversal of fortunes.100 A typical example runs, “he [Bini] told them that those who were well off

and high, would be brought low, and that those that were low would be brought high.”101 These accounts

are often made in conjunction with admonitions to treat the poor kindly, since they will one day become

rich.102 The Biblical influence inherent in this message is obvious. Its use by the prophets, however, may
partly have been in response to the increase in wealth and power of certain individuals as a result of the
trade. Chiefs who began to acquire an inordinate amount of power through their acquisition of wealth and

98

Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.1, p. 5.
There is no direct evidence for this belief among the Carrier. However, such belief has been outlined in detail
for other First Nations who have practiced cremation; see, for example, S. Kan, Symbolic Immortality
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989) pp. 49-64.
100
Interestingly, despite the fact that this prophecy appears in ten of the eighteen oral accounts from his field
notes, it is not mentioned by Barbeau in his Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies. The only prophecy that appears
more often in the records is the coming of horses.
101
Barbeau collection, CMCA B-F-322.11, p. 2.
102
There are three accounts in Jenness, “Myths of the Carrier,” pp. 117, 141 and 183, of the sky God Utakke
telling Carrier not to laugh at or mock the poor. Jenness believed that because of Christian influence the Carrier
Sky God Utakke (Sa or Yagastaa), gained prominence in their belief system; “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley
River,” p. 546. Jenness wrote elsewhere that Utakke was in fact the name used for the Christian God; “The Ancient
Education of a Carrier Indian,” Bulletin of the National Museum of Canada 62 (1929), p 24.
99

64

privileged position accorded to them by traders, may have come to be resented by the less fortunate in

Carrier society. Although Bini was a chief, it appears that his position of influence was not great prior to
his becoming a prophet103 Many of Barbeau’s informants understood this prophecy to have come true:
whereas the Carrier were once rich and the traders poor, they saw themselves in the 1920s as having

become poor in relation to whites.
Traders, missionaries and ethnographers all believed that underlying the prophets’ teachings was a

simple desire to further their own positions within their communities. Both Jenness and Barbeau played-up

certain oral accounts to portray Bini as someone who competed with others for power.104 Anna de Aquayo
has suggested, following Jenness, that as the chief of a phratry recently decimated by disease (Tsayu or

Beaver phratry), Bini used his medicine power to become a prophet in order to counter his resulting loss of
status. She drew a distinction between Carrier prophets and the anti-white prophet movements to the south
and asserted, “Bini and other Carrier prophets may have incorporated Christian symbols into a pre-existing
shamanistic framework due to their association with prestige.”105
There is little doubt that the emergence of shamans with special abilities to predict and explain
change in a fur-trading culture added another element to Carrier power relations both within then-

communities and between themselves and the newcomers. Apart from securing for themselves a prestigious
place of power, the prophets served a valuable community function by maintaining the central elements of

their tradition intact while simultaneously borrowing dements from outside their tradition. The existence of
prophets represented a continuation of Carrier dialogue with Christianity in the nineteenth century. These

prophets’ adoption of Christian concepts and western paraphernalia did not represent a break from past

103

See Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 486, 494 and 500, and de Aguayo, pp. 40-3.
Barbeau made Bini’s competition with a traditional shaman the central theme in his Indian Days in the
Canadian Rockies despite the fact that only one of Barbeau’s informants clearly mentioned Bini in competition
with others, and that was with other prophets; see Barbeau Collection, CMCA B-F-322.9. Jenness, “The Carrier
Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 494 and 500.
105
de Aguayo, “On Power and Prophecy,” p. 40.
104

65

traditions, nor a desire to replace their tradition with another. Their Christian teachings represented a

creative adaptation to change, and also served to help Carrier accommodate later elements of the
proselytising missionaries’ Christianity. Carrier were anxious to hear what missionaries had to offer, and
continued to respond to change by adapting the missionary and his message to their culture.

66

-

CHAPTER THREE Carrier and Oblates of Mary Immaculate

The willingness of Carrier to adopt foreign material culture, concepts and practices and bend them to
their own uses has been demonstrated by both their interactions with traders and their own prophets’ messages
and teachings. Carrier negotiation with western culture and ideology continued with the presence of Oblate
missionaries. Why First Nations should actively seek out missionaries, and encourage their ministrations, is not

always easily understood. Those reasons that led Carrier to participate in the trade and initiate a dialogue with

Christianity through their prophets, also ring true for their relations with missionaries. A mixture of curiosity, a
search for new cures in the face of foreign diseases, and on-going attempts to find advantage from their

associations with whites, led some Carrier to accept, incorporate and actively participate in what the Oblates had

to offer. There was no uniform response either to the missionary or his Christian message, however, and some
Carrier either refused to associate with missionaries or actively resisted their intrusions.
Resistance, in fact, forms a major theme of this chapter, whether Carrier outright rejected the

missionaries’ teachings or attempted to incorporate them for their own purposes. Rather than pose ‘acceptance’
and ‘resistance’ in simple opposition, it is argued here that selective acceptance and creative incorporation can
indeed be subtle forms of resistance. Acceptance of some Christian elements, along with the rules and regulations

that adherence to Christian dogma often necessitated, did not mean rejection, or result in a wholesale
transformation, of Carrier society. Continuity as well as change, or rather continuity within change, played a role

in Carrier dialogue with Christianity.

While Carrier may have interpreted Christianity in a fashion congruent with their cultural and ideological
formulations of the world, contact with missionaries involved more that a simple dialogue with the Christian

message as reflected in the Bible. This chapter begins with an examination of the Oblate programme as applied to
the Carrier, and as it reflected Oblate aspirations to impose a foreign belief system and lifestyle. Such impositions

67

involved both subtle manipulation and overt, and sometimes brutal, suppression. There was a tension within the

Oblate missionary method between attempting to replace the indigenous culture from the ground up and making
practical adaptations to cultures and situations of the field. The second part of this chapter examines the extent to

which Oblates were compelled to adapt to Carrier culture.
The final two sections of this chapter attempt to come to terms with Carrier perceptions of the
missionary and his message, and possible reasons Carrier may have had for seeming to follow the Oblate’s

programme. The missionary was partly turned to for his shamanic-like power to heal, and partly for the authority
that he represented which certain Carrier attempted to manipulate for their own advantage. What following the

tenets of Christianity and the Oblates’ programme might have meant to Carrier converts is also briefly examined.

Carrier maintained a dose connection to the land, central to their belief system, throughout these early years of
mission contact. They not only maintained much of their traditional practices in spite of converting to

Christianity, but those aspects of Christianity that they did incorporate were uniquely interpreted within a Carrier
cultural context. In addition, their use of some of the Oblates’ beliefs and practices was an expression of a

continued desire to participate and compete in the wider political and economic setting on an even par with others,
without giving up their identity as Carrier.

i. The Oblates’ Programme

Oblates put in place a highly structured programme or ‘system’ that consisted of assigning roles to
influential individuals in their attempts to enforce the Christian moral code. Oblates proved to be inflexible on
practices such as polygamous relationships, divorce, any kind of sexual relations outside that of the Catholic
marriage bond, use of alcohol, gambling, traditional shamans’ healing, and certain kinds of feasting, dancing and

68

singing believed to have supernatural purpose. Breaking any of these moral codes resulted in the giving of

penance that could take the form of atonement through prayer, monetary penalty, forced fasting, corporal
punishment or any combination thereof. The introduction of this programme is examined in some detail, and it is

demonstrated that whipping, as an institution of punishment or penance, was widely applied by Oblates in their
zeal to impose Christian morality.

Bishop Louis D’Herbomez along with Father James MacGuckin were the first Oblate missionaries to
visit northern Carrier groups. They made this initial tour in 1868 in response to a delegation of Stuart Lake
Carrier who in the summer of 1867 came down to Quesnel to ask MacGuckin, who was visiting from Saint

Joseph’s, if a missionary could be sent to them.1 Jean-Marie Lejacq also visited some Carrier groups along the

Fraser as far as Fort George in 1868, probably in the company of D’Herbomez and MacGuckin. Prior to 1868 a
few irregular visits had been made to those Southern Carrier groups who traded at Fort Alexandria and those of

Quesnel from missionaries on their way to miners in the Cariboo, or from those stationed at the mission of St.

Joseph’s at Williams Lake, officially founded in 1867?
This thesis, however, is mostly restricted to those groups of Central and Western Carrier ministered to by
the Oblates of Stuart Lake.’ The Central Carrier comprise those of the Stuart-Trcmblcur Lake systems, Fraser
Lake, Fort George, Stoney Creek, Takla Lake and those of Stellatchoula between Fort George and Quesnel. The

Western Carrier can be roughly divided into three groups, the Witsuwit’en of Rocher D6boul6 (Hagwilgate) and
surrounding area, those of Babine Lake, sometimes referred to as ‘Babine’ in distinction from ‘Carrier’, and those

1

Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, p. 336, explained that a single Northern Carrier chief made the
request upon happening to meet MacGuckin at Quesnel. See also Morice, History of the Catholic Church, p. 333.
Whitehead, however, based on MacGuckin’s own account, wrote that the chief of the Stuart Lake band came to
Quesnel with 11 other northern Carrier to bring back a priest “by force, if necessary”; The Cariboo Mission, p. 47.
2
The Hudson’s Bay Company records indicate that Oblates, on their way to miners in the Cariboo, visited Fort
Alexandria once in 1865 and again in 1866, NAC HBCA B.5/a/ll. See R. Fowler, “The New Caledonia Mission”
in Sa Ts’e: Historical Perspectives on Northern British Columbia. T. Thorner ed. (Prince George: College of New
Caledonia Press, 1989), p 132.
3
Oblates from Stuart Lake ministered to Carrier as far south as Stellatchoula, half way between Fort George and
Quesnel, but did not travel to minister to the Carrier either at Quesnel or Fort Alexandria.

69

of Francois Lake (Cheslatta) to the south. These Oblates also ministered to some Sekani at TYout (McLeod’s) and

Bear (Connolly) Lakes to the east and north of the Carrier, and attempted to make inroads among the Gitksan (or
“Atnas”), a Tfcimshian speaking people to the west Gitksan showed little interest in what the Catholic’s had to
offer, however, and it was not until the Protestant Church Missionary Society and Methodists established

themselves among them that they showed any inclination towards conversion. A few Kaska (“Nehanais" or

“Stickeen River Sauvages”) were also ministered to at Bear Lake, the northernmost gathering centre visited
sporadically by the Oblates.

Between 1868 and the official founding of N.D. de Bonne Esperance at Stuart Lake in 1873, Oblates
made yearly visits to Carrier groups - preaching the word of God, setting up their self-regulatory system, and

searching out an adequate location for their permanent mission. Jean-Marie Lejacq made the tour in 1869,

followed by James MacGuckin in 1870, and Lejacq again in 1871 and 1872. Also, late in 1872, the elderly layBrother, recently turned reluctant missionary, George Blanchet briefly joined Lejacq in the North to begin the
4

mission that was permanently located in 1873. For the next 8 years Lejacq and Blanchet together ministered to
the First Nations in north-central British Columbia. Blanchet stayed at the central mission for most of the year,

occasionally visiting the Sekani at TYout and Bear Lakes, while Lejacq made the yearly summer tour attempting

to visit the major Carrier gathering centres twice per year. The Stuart Lake mission fell out of favour with

D’Herbomez during the 1870s, and Lejacq was recalled in 1880 to run a school in Kamloops.5 He was replaced

4

It was only at the insistence of his superiors that Blanchet was finally ordained in order to accompany Lejacq
to Stuart Lake. See Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Aug. 13, 1871, AD P-448. Blanchet had apparently some years
previously lost a finger in a hunting accident and taken it as a sign from God to remain a lay-Brother. Blanchet
was 54 years old when he was ordained after spending 25 years as a missionary in North America. See Blanchet
File AD HEB 1641.G35C 1.
5
D’Herbomez, in his report on the Vicariate of British Columbia in the mid 1870s, Missions 17 (1879), p. 4128, indicated that Kamloops was promising to be the place of most importance in the interior of British Columbia,
and of all the residents, was the least enthusiastic regarding the prospects of N.D. de Bonne Esperance at Stuart
Lake. The difficulty of growing sufficient food to support itself was most likely the reason for its falling out of
favour. Despite the Oblates’ desire to minister to First Nations away from the negative influences of white
settlement, they nevertheless often located near such settlements out of convenience; see Whitehead, The Call me
Father, p. 10.

70

by Charles Marchal, well known for his incompetence and failure as a missionary among the Shuswap.6 Blanchet
retired to St Joseph’s in 1882, upon which the recently reprimanded Charles Pandosy took tentative charge of the
mission until 1887.7
D’Herbomez and MacGuckin had made an impression on the Central Carrier in their initial tour, but

were received with a mixture of annoyed tolerance and hostility from those of Babine Lake. They were greeted
upon their arrival by Carrier in preparation for a potlatch. Upon realizing that he could not prevent it,
D’Herbomez gave his permission for the festivities to proceed, and spent the remainder of his visit vying, in a
loosing battle, for Carrier attention.8 Despite the setback at Babine Lake, D’Herbomez found an attentive and
willing audience among Central Carrier, many of whom made pledges of abstinence on their knees in front of the

Bishop. Such pledges were central to the Oblate programme, for they signalled the inauguration of D’Herbomez’

programme of church based rules and requisite punishments to be meted out to those who broke them. He further
baptized children and gave out temperance flags to chiefs who promised to undertake the building of small places

of worship, or chapels.9 Even if later Oblate reports are only half believed, it is evident that the initial tour of

D’Herbomez had made a strong impression on many Carrier. Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez in 1873, “...your

name has a great power over them: It suffices to say to them: ‘These are the orders of Monseigneur, Monseigneur
wishes it’ at that they never have a reply: they empress upon each other to obey.”10 Blanchet wrote eleven years

6

See Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, pp. 81-3, regarding Marchal’s ineffectiveness as a missionary.
Pandosy had been charged with some crime stemming from insubordination, and after going to France to
defend himself was sentenced to a period of time in a Monastery before returning to the Mission field. See
Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Feb, 2, 1881, AD P-515, and Pandosy letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P6555.
8
For a summary of D’Herbomez’ and MacGuckin’s 1868 tour, see R. Fowler, “The New Caledonia Mission,”
pp. 132-4.
9
Ibid, p. 133-4. Lejacq, in a report to Durieu written in the late 1870s, Missions 18 (1880), p. 59, complained of
the chapels in the major gathering centres being small and poorly build, “they were raised immediately after the
tour of D’Herbomez in these parages in 1868.”
10
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 17, 1873, AD P-4349.
7

71

after D’Herbomez’ tour: “Our sauvages have not forgotten Your Grace, and each time some news arrives by boat
they do not forget to ask us how you are and if you will comeback to see them.”11

D’Herbomez’ programme went beyond the simple desire to preach Christian doctrine. His was a much
greater ambition that smacked of state building. Oblates did not desire to mould First Nations into poor mimics of

an inherently superior race. Rather, Oblates were sharp critics of western civilization and saw in Native cultures
the opportunity to establish utopian-like Christian communities away from the negative influences of non-Native

settlement and its incumbent moral laxity. Oblates perceived Carrier to be like children in their development innocent, malleable of mind, but perhaps inferior in cognitive development.12 Nevertheless, for all their

ethnocentrism and negative character evaluation, Oblates believed Carrier to be fully capable of the highest

Christian spiritual attainments. Under their paternal guidance, Oblates believed that they could not only turn
individual Carrier into Christians, but construct belter Christian Carrier conununities, from the ground up, than

was probable among non-Natives.13 D’Herbomez’ ideal is best represented by the mission of St. Mary’s founded
in 1861 along the southern portion of the Fraser River. At St Mary’s there was a school for boys and one for

girls where both sexes were instructed in the Christian faith and given such gender differentiated skills as the

Oblates deemed necessary to lead the life of a Christian. When these children came of marriageable age it was
planned to unite the sexes and settle them in a village on the opposite bank of the Fraser, “to serve as a model to

an our neophytes.”14
The Oblate method, as applied to the Pacific mainland, was influenced in part from experience
proselytizing among the poor in the South of France, and part from experiences in the Americas, which included

11

Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 8, 1879, AD P-4999.
This belief is most extreme and most clearly expressed in the writings of Morice. See especially Morice, “The
Great D6n6 Race” Anthropos 2 (1907), p. 19: “Their physical constitution undergoes a normal development, but
their minds’ activities are only on the lines of childhood.”
13
For similar views regarding Oblate expectations see Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, p. 39, and D.
Thomson, “The Missionaries” in Okanagan Sources, J. Weber and En’owkin Centre eds. (Penticton: Theytus
Books, 1990), p. 137.
14
D’Herbomez report on the Vicariate of British Columbia, 1878, Missions 17 (1879), p. 417.
12

72

strong Jesuit influences.15 Oblates adapted the Jesuit 'reduction’ model, developed for use in South America and
later imported on a greatly reduced scale to North America, for their own uses among First Nations in British

Columbia.16 The Oblate missions of the nineteenth century differed from the Jesuit of the seventeenth mostly by
an increased centralized and authoritarian Church structure with the Pope acting as a distant sovereign leader. A
new-found emphasis on the civilizing aspect of mission work was part of this rejuvenated Ultramontanism.17
Oblates left for their foreign missions with a strict set of guidelines from their founder, Eugene de
Mazenod, regarding their civilizing goals, proselytizing method and personal spiritual exercises. Whatever the

degree of centralized authority in principle, however, as with traders, there was no real way to regulate the

conduct of missionaries in the field, especially in more isolated areas. Furthermore, Oblate policy and Oblate
chain of command were not so rigid as to discourage a degree of adaptation to the field. Although Carrier were

encouraged to follow the Oblate s ideal of Western ‘civilization’ - to settle in permanent dwellings and follow
agricultural pursuits - Oblates quickly realized the practicality of a Carrier subsistence based on partial mobility
and readily acknowledged the difficulty of plant domestication in the north. Lejacq wrote in the late 1870s:

They have now each a small garden where they cultivate some potatoes, some turnips, some
carrots, some onions, but as they live principally on hunting and fishing and procure there the
objects of primary necessity for another currency of trade with the fur traders, they are obliged
to be absent often and to pass a certain part of the year in the woods and the mountains.18

15

For a history of Catholic missions beginning in the seventeenth century and the founding of the Oblate order
in the early nineteenth century, see M. McCarthy, “The Missions of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to the
Athapaskans 1846-1870” (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba PhD. Thesis, 1981), pp. 1-106, Abel, “The Drum and
the Cross,” pp. 99-150, and R. Choquette, The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest (Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press,
1995), pp.1-38.
16
The Jesuit Pierre De Smet began missions among the Flathead and Coeur d’Alene in the early 1840s and
Jesuits later extended operations into the Okanagan; see R. Burns, “Roman Catholic Missions in the Northwest” in
Handbook of North American Indians Vol. 4, W. Washbum ed. (Washington: Smithsonian Institute, 1988), p. 494.
For a brief summery on the origins of the ‘reduction’ system, see Fowler, “The Oblate System,” Appendix B, pp.
52-3.
17
McCarthy, p. 51.
18
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, undated, Missions 18 (1880), pp. 59-60. MacGuckin reported to D’Herbomez,
Nov., 1870, Missions 8 (1873), p. 79, that he would be more sure of the Carrier’s sincerity if they would settle into
permanent residents where they could be better monitored, but added: “I believe strongly that they will never
cultivate with success, due to the frost of which the country is exposed.”

73

As applied to the Carrier, the programme first instituted by D’Herbomez had several related functions: to
settle and organize Carrier into model communities along western standards of ‘civilization’; to paradoxically

protect Carrier in self-contained communities from the negative impact of western civilization; and to help
monitor the new Christian societies that Oblates themselves could only periodically visit for short periods of time.

It was here where the Ultramontane mind-set of the Oblates had the most influence on field operations, for the
natural inclination was to mirror centralized Church authority in Carrier communities, with the missionary acting

as an often distant sovereign leader. Inseparable from Christian doctrine was Christian morality, and imposing
Christian morality for D’Herbomez meant formalizing a set of regulations and punishments. To this end the

Oblate programme involved handing out titles with specific duties to certain influential men. They gave existing
chiefs authority (sometimes called ‘church chiefs’, ‘prayer chiefs’ and ‘under-chiefs’) and created positions of

captain, chantenien or grands chantnes (leaders of hymn singing, prayer and possibly reading out of public sins),
watchmen, soldiers or policemen and tintin-men (bell ringers). This programme has been described in detail

elsewhere under the rubric of “Durieu’s system.”1’

It was Oblate policy, as it had been with traders, to first attempt to gain the favour of influential men.19 20
Whenever possible Oblates delegated duties to those who already had some influence, or were popularly backed

by their people. While at St Joseph’s, Lejacq was hesitant to nominate the Shuswap Kiouskrez because he was

once a shaman and ‘loves the old ways of the sauvages; the feasts and the distribution of blankets.”21 He
nevertheless consented to formally confer Kiouskrez in his position if the people were in favour of it Oblates

initially favoured chiefs, regardless of whether they were initially willing to submit to the Oblate’s regulations.

19

See Morice, The History of the Catholic Church, pp. 349-375, Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, pp. 17-19
and 93-99, and. They Call Me Father, pp. 15-21, and especially Lemert, “The Life and Death of an Indian State,”
Kennedy, “Roman Catholic Missionary Efforts,” pp. 80-85, Gresko (Kennedy), “Roman Catholic Missions to the
Indians of British Columbia,” and Fowler, “The Oblate System at the Sechelt Mission 1862-1899.”
20
This had significant implications for gender relations within Carrier communities. Women who were shut out
of political life by trader’s and missionary’s insistence on dealing with men, were forced to find other ways to make
their voices heard. See J. Fiske “And Then We Prayed Again,” and “Gender and Politics in a Carrier Indian
Community.”
21
Lejacq letter to Durieu, Oct. 7, 1870, AD P-4292.

74

D’Herbomez, for example, in 1868 named the “famous Kelsha” prayer chief even though he was involved in a

polygamous relationship at the time.22

Oblates hoped to recruit chiefs and heads of families to entice their people to come to the designated
gathering centres, visit the central mission at Stuart Lake at least once per year for one of the main Christian

festivals held there, and minister a tight control on their communities in the absence of direct missionary influence.
This was especially important given the mobile nature of Carrier society, and the extensive amount of terrain that
the Oblate charged with ministering to the majority of outposts had to cover. Chiefs were given almanacs

sometime in the mid-1870s in order to keep track of the missionary’s next visit and assemble their people
accordingly. These almanacs were also designed for chiefs to be able to keep track of those days designated for
abstinence and fasting, and the Christian feasts of obligation and devotion.23

Oblates gave out religious paraphernalia as rewards to those who incurred their favour, as incentive for
others to follow their programme, and especially to influential men as symbols of church-based authority. Small

crosses, medallions that displayed the iconography of saints, and rosaries were given, when available, to adult

couples who were married by the church, baptized, or both. Crosses, medallions, rosaries and especially
temperance flags were given to chiefs. In this the Oblates were continuing a practice of attempting to bolster and
manipulate chiefs’ authority that began in the fur trade. Lejacq regularly complained that his supply of such items

was low or had run out, and both he, and Marchal after him, attempted, with help from their relatives back home,
to have them privately supplied.24 On his way north in 1871 Lejacq occupied himself on the HBC barge making

25 rosaries from beads that had been sent to MacGuckin: “it is the money in order to pay those [Carrier] who will

transport or give some great service to me.”25

22

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 161.
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, undated, Missions 18 (1880), p. 60.
24
See Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 23, 1872, AD P-4336, and Marchal letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 30,
1881, AD P-4890.
25
Lejacq letter to Durieu, May 20, 1871, AD P-4320.
23

75

After the permanent mission was founded in 1873, six other gathering centres were officially created.

Four of these centres were visited twice per year and two of them once. A description of these missions, usually
lasting between six and eight days, is best given in Lejacq’s own words. Following the formal greetings and
opening prayer upon the priests arrival in the evening, a typical mission involved the following:
Mornings there is a mass and an instruction followed by some minutes of contemplation in order
to get the ideas that have been spoken firmly fixed in their minds. After breakfast, that is to say
towards 10 a.m„ the bell rings anew and calls the people to the exercises; this is the hour of
catechism with explanation.26 Some time after noon, they end the gathering by singing a hymn.
Towards two O’clock, [there is a] new gathering for a second catechism. At dusk, they make the
prayer for the evening, which is yet followed by an instruction. After supper, in the evening, they
examine the pending business, they end their differences, and mend the household disunities; the
great guilty receive penitence. During his free time, the Missionary says his religious office,
acquaints himself with his other religious matters, visits the sick, and is at the disposition of
those who have some advice to ask of him. The last day is consecrated for confessions, [then J
there are only common exercises morning and night27

At the central mission four Christian festivals were held annually in which contingents from various Carrier

groups were expected to attend. Festivities were held at Stuart Lake a week at Easter (the Holy Week), the first
week of June, the week preceding Allsaints Day and over Christmas from the fourth Sunday of Advent to New

Years Day.28 It was during these times, especially at Christmas, that Carrier en masse assisted in the building of
the church on the edge of Stuart Lake.

Paul Durieu, who was named coadjutor Bishop in 1875 as a result of D’Herbomez’ failing health, made

two tours of the northernmost diocese in 1876 and 1883. His main contribution to the Oblate programme lay in
his emphasis on well-attended and elaborate ritual. During his first tour of 1875 he took special interest to

encourage all Carrier to attend the gatherings held four times per year at Stuart Lake. He attempted to have
regulated that all Carrier were to visit at least one of the major gatherings at least once per year.29 Christmas was

26

Catechism constituted a set of questions on the main tenets of Biblical history and Christian doctrine whereby
formulaic answers were required of the participants.
27
Lejacq report to Durieu, undated, Missions 18 (1880), p. 61.
28 Ibid,
29

p. 69.
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 9, 1878, AD P-4417.

76

the largest gathering with numbers as great as eight hundred reported in attendance.30 In fact, Christmas and

Easter were both times when Carrier usually came into the Fort to trade.31 In 1883 Durieu introduced the ritual of
the Eucharist, in which churches were elaborately decorated and Carrier instructed in detail as to the required

procedure. The ritual was portrayed as marking the entrance of Jesus to take up permanent residence in his small
house above the alter, the tabernacle. Durieu taught the Carrier that Jesus was “in body and in mind" under the

Eucharistic veil, and to him they should come to profess their faults and ask for pardon.32

In their yearly tours, both prior to and after 1873, Oblates acted as judge and jury in settling differences
within Carrier communities. There was time allotted at each ‘mission’ for individual Carrier to bring forth any
disputes that may have arisen in the Oblates’ absence. As well, public confession and penance were instrumental

to the Oblates’ programme of imposed Christian morality and surveillance. A typical passage from MacGuckin’s

report of his tour in 1870 runs: “...they [Carrier of Stdlatchoula] came to make honourable amends, by publicly
admitting to their faults; I settled their differences of opinion, nominated the captain, under-officers and soldiers,
and solemnly closed the mission in the evening.’’33 Oblates also performed marriage ceremonies and, as well as
attending to the sick, vaccinated for small-pox during their visits to Carrier centres.34

It has been demonstrated that whipping as a form of punishment was first applied by fur traders and
government appointed judges. Its practice for ritualistic purposes may have even been introduced by Carrier
prophets. Evidence strongly suggests, however, that whipping, if not introduced by Oblates, was certainly adapted

to their own purposes and eventually instituted in most every Carrier community under the aegis of the Church.
Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez in 1872, “the regulations that Your Grace had established in 1868 are always in
vigour; rope around the neck [la corde au cou], discipline, penitence at the door of the church, [and] financial

30

Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 8, 1882, AD P-520. The attendance reported was for the year 1878.
Fowler, “New Caledonia Mission,” p. 139.
32
Durieu report to Martinet, Sept. 10, 1884, Missions 23 (1885), p. 56.
33
MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 72.
34
See, for example, Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 156.

31

77

amends awaiting those who do not keep the promises that were made at your generosity.”35 Whippings commonly
took place outside in front of the church or possibly inside in front of the altar. George Dawson, upon being given

a tour of the Church at Fort George in 1876 by a Carrier man, commented on a whip, “a pretty formidable one,”
that was displayed hanging up to the right of the altar.36

Punishment depended on the severity of the crime, and the maximum sentence was flogging, as many as

40 lashes.37 Other sentences involved kneeling with hands tied behind the back, again, either in front of the church

or alter. The following passage from Lqacq, while stationed at St Joseph’s, to D’Herbomez, is worth quoting at
length:

The cases of Liquor, Stealing women, and gambling are only found among a few ytxing men
who are always in company with the Whites. But I believe that the chiefs have decided to put an
end to this: At the time that I spoke to them of the Whip, they found me too severe: I
communicated to them the regulations that you have given me. No chief wanted to adopt the
whip for the first offence of Fornication: But today they were stimulated to whip and I was
obliged to stop them. They have asked to establish the whip for the first fault of Drinking and
gambling - I responded to them that I did not want to change what you have established: The
whip for the first fault of Fornication. And for the other breeches, at the 4th fault: For the 3 first
faults, on knees: good is the penitence designated by the Bishops. Now without going against
your intentions, nothing stopped the Chiefs from making the waiting chi knees for 12 hours, 24
hours for the drunkards and gamblers and that with [only] bread and water. My proposition was
adopted unanimously and they decreed: 1. for those who break their pledge, for the 1st offence it
will be possible to [make the penitent wait] 8 hours on knees, ditto the gamblers: of the second
offence, it will be possible for 1 2 hours and already for the third offence, for 24 hours.
2. At the 4th offence they will have recourse to the whip.
3. The fornicator will be whipped at the first offence.38

35

Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, undated, Missions 12 (1874), p. 347.
The Journals of George M. Dawson, D. Cole and B. Lockner eds. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), p. 282.
37
Testimony from two affidavits signed by Shuswap chiefs against Marchal indicate that he proscribed as many
as 40 lashes to men who slept with women outside of wedlock and for female prostitution, BCARS (British
Columbia Arckives and Records Service) RG10, Vol. 3617, File 4606. Significantly, the chief of Fontain added at
the end of his affidavit a request that the Shuswap be able to follow their traditional methods of punishment: “We
had no such thing as whipping before the Roman Catholic priest came among us.” For the argument of an
indigenized practice of whipping on the plateau prior to direct contact, see T.R. Garth, “The Plateau Whipping
Complex and its Relationship to Plateau-Southwest Contacts,” Ethnohistory 12 (1965), pp. 141-170. Garth argues
that the practice of whipping most likely diffused from earlier contacts with Spanish in the Southwest. See also T.
Lascalles, “Leon Fouquet and the Kootenay Indians, 1874-1887” (Vancouver: Simon Fraser U. M.A. Thesis,
1986), pp. 56-7.
38
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Dec. 2, 1868, AD P-4239. Oblates may also have had certain individuals
incarcerated.
36

78

There is no such precise evidence of specific punishments meted out to Carrier, but it can be assumed
that Lcjacq had imported a similar system to the north. In the report of his 1872 tour, he wrote of the Sekani met

at McLeod Lake:
The Sikken6s continue to be good. All the regulations that exist among the other sauvages, have
introduced themselves among the latter. As the Company [HBC ] says, those sauvages, who, in
the beginning, would rather die than receive the whip, now beg the chief to inflict them when
they themselves are found guilty of the lesser faults.39

Oblates do not appear to have applied the whip themselves, and were often not present on such occasions; that
task was given to others, either those designated chief, captains, watchmen or soldiers.*1 Dawson commented of
the Carrier, “for offences they are flogged by the appointed officers & with the consent of the tribe.”41 Lcjacq,
while later posted to Kamloops, wrote to D’Herbomez regarding recent government criticisms of the practice of

whipping instituted by the Oblates:

Down to recent years, the Chief was enjoying a certain power of repression. He had power to
punish severely. The Indian practice gave him the right to lash, handcuff, condemn, to fine, to
lock up, to fasting etc. Consequently he was feared and as fear is the beginning of wisdom it
meant the reign of order and discipline.42

Such corporal punishment was not foreign to late nineteenth century Victorian thought, but even so, Oblates’
justification took on a certain righteousness bom from belief in a ‘higher’ purpose. Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez
in 1877 regarding the Witsuwit’en of Rocher Ddbould, who of all Carrier outwardly resisted Oblates the most:

“The good Lord had whipped than in order to impose silence and they have profited of the lesson.”43

39

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), p. 226.
A Shuswap chief of Fontain, for example, testified that Marchal refused to be witness to the 40 lash whipping
that he had proscribed, BCPA RG10, Vol. 3617, file 4606.
41
The Journals of George M. Dawson, Cole and Lockner ed., p. 284.
42
Cited in Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, p. 96. Translation by Whitehead.
43
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 15, 1877, AD P-4400.
40

79

IL Oblate Adaptations

Oblates did not simply represent a unified, unyielding and monolithic force to which Carrier reacted
against, either rejecting or accepting on missionary terms. Any study of cultural dialogue must take into account,

as much as possible, all parties involved. Accommodation worked both ways, and Oblates in the field were often
compelled to adapt to Carrier institutions and power relations. The Oblate programme outlined above was not a

fixed entity; it not only took on particular attributes depending on the culture contacted but was subject to change
in accordance with circumstance. Early Oblates made concessions to Carrier regarding their mobile subsistence

patterns, holding of potlatches, debts to the Hudson’s Bay Company and traditional matrilineal marriage laws.
Emphasizing specific instances of Oblate adaptation is meant to be as much an indication of Carrier cultural
strength as it is of Oblate flexibility.

Robert Choquette, in the most recent treatment of Oblate missionaries in Canada entitled The Oblate
Assault on Canada's Northwest, analyzed the Oblate missionary method with a keen sense of the Catholic
Ultramontane mind-sei from which the Oblates operated. The Oblates of Choquette’s book represented a highly
structured, unified and disciplined assault on First Nations world wide in which, “there is no room for negotiating

with the enemy.”44 This general overview of Oblate policy, along with other works that do not adequately analyze

missionary response to First Nations, leave a false impression of weak and malleable cultures meeting a strong
and uncompromising one. Even biographies of missionaries often portray than as ‘types’; something to be
reacted against while remaining themselves relatively unchanged.

The case that Oblate experiences in France mostly shaped how they applied their programme in North

America has been overstated by both Choquette and Mary McCarthy. McCarthy, arguing that Oblate missions to

44

Choquette, p. 4.

80

the Dene were almost entirely European in content, put missionary practice that had clear origins in fur trader -

First Nations relations down to importations from the South of France. The ritual of shaking hands, for example,
she likened to the Oblate practice of travelling from door to door in southern France,45 and the gun shot salute at
the missionaries arrival she implied had origins in the processions of France.46 In north-central British Columbia,
these practices were initiated by Carrier and adapted to by Oblates. Also overstated in these works is the
contention that the realities of Ultramontanism severely limited Oblate options of response in the field.47 Oblates

at distant missions, out of necessity caused by poor communication, were often given allowances to act on their

own volition in ways that would not normally be granted by their superiors. Oblates were criticized by fellow
Roman Catholics precisely because of their flexibility in the field.48 There were other ways as well in which
Oblates adapted to the Carrier, both aspects of their traditional culture and fur trading milieu.
Given the realities of Carrier hunting, fishing and other food gathering, Oblates were often forced to
accommodate their schedule to that of the Carrier’s.49 Oblates often found villages deserted when they first began

making their tours.50 MacGuckin was angered to find, upon his arrival at Fort Babine, the Carrier inhabitants

away at a potlatch at Whittat (Hotat), at the north end of the Lake. He sent a messenger telling them of his arrival
and requesting that they come to hint The messenger reappeared instead with a return invitation for MacGuckin,

informing him that the feast was not yet over.51 In the case of fishing sites, Oblates would either send word for the

Carrier to meet them or would go themselves to the site to give their mission. Even after regularly scheduled pre-

45

McCarthy, p. 219.

46

Ibid, p. 228.
Ibid, pp. 47, 218 and 256. Choquette, p. 16.

47
48

Able, “The Drum and the Cross,” p. 205; see also pp. 122, 213, 225-7 and 251 for evidence of Oblate
adaptations to the MacKenzie valley Dene. The so-called “Durieu system” was itself, of coarse, a major alteration
to the mission field from missions in the South of France.
49
For Oblate adaptation to the annual cycle of the MacKenzie Valley Dene, see Abel, “The Drum and the
Cross,” p. 145.
50
Carrier villages were, for the most part, gathering centres where different families or clans united for limited
times of the year. Exceptions were the more permanent villages of the Babine and Witsuwi’en that served as
important centres of the coastal - inland trade.
51
MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1869, Missions 11 (1873), p. 85. MacGuckin did not attend the
feast, but instead insisted that the Carrier come to him, which they eventually did in a flotilla of twenty canoes.

81

arranged meetings were established, Carrier subsistence patterns took precedence. Occasionally a mission was

interrupted by the arrival of salmon and the visiting Oblate was obliged to minister to the Carrier at an alternate

site between times of fishing.52 Carrier also played a role in the initial decision of where to locate the central
mission. Lejacq reported having some difficulty convincing Carrier to meet at MacGuckin’s favoured spot, near

Tachy, being, they argued, too far to travel to see the missionary.53
The potlatch was the Carrier cultural institution that Lejacq had most difficulty responding to. Oblate

response to the potlatch in general was varied and ambivalent. Potlatching was correctly viewed as an important
foundation of First Nation’s cultures, and was also often perceived to run contrary to both Christian morality and

western ‘civility’. Oblates objected to feasts mostly when they involved liquor, gambling, or any “superstitious”
shamanic practices. Rather than view the giving of goods at potlatches as a form of Christian charity,
distributions were often frowned upon as fostering one of the sins Oblates frequently spoke of in relation to
themselves, that of pride. Oblates were still more ambivalent regarding what they called “little feasts,” which

could be shame feasts, funeral feasts or feasts of title conferral or succession.54 Dance, song and use of the drum

were other aspects of the potlatch that Oblates did not always know how best to respond to.
When Lejacq toured the western region for the first time in 1869, he reported on potlatch activity that he

had witnessed at Rocher D6boul£, the main centre of trade between coastal and Carrier peoples. Lejacq claimed

to have precipitated a peaceful agreement between the Nisga’a and Witsuwit’en, who had been at odds with each
other over the killing of two Witsuwit’en men.55 He wrote:

52

See Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 160, for evidence of eloquent
speeches made by chiefs, designed to convince Lejacq to retire with them to their fishing grounds.
53
Lejacq letter to Durieu, May 20, 1871, AD P-4321.
54
See Morice, “The Western D6n6,” pp. 147-153, for his description of a series of six potlatches involved in the
conferral of a new title upon the death of a ‘noble’. See Mills, Eagle Down, for an analysis of recent Witsuwit’en
feasting.
55
The Babine are generally understood by anthropologists to be a sub-grouping of the Western Carrier.

82

Conforming to the traditions of the sauvage, it was necessary to dance to render the peace solid.
The Naaska came to dance and sing in two lodges to make honourable amends for the two
warriors killed by them, whose deaths had not yet been avenged. I allowed them to make it56
Lejacq was willing to abide by First Nations customs when those customs were seen to benefit his cause, in this

case to put an end to the practice of revenge killings. When he had returned to his home mission of St Joseph’s,
Lejacq wrote to Durieu asking:

Is it necessary to ban all the old songs of the sauvages? Is it necessary to ban the feasts, with
and without distributing blankets, with and without singing? Is it necessary to ban the tom tom?
I address to you these questions as regards the mission at Stuart’s Lake. You are not without
knowing that the sauvages keep to their feasting and their distribution of blankets: how will it be
best to proceed under this relationship?'7

Nearly two months later Lejacq witnessed along with fellow Oblate, Father Gendrc, a “feast and

distribution of booty” of a Shuswap captain. Lejacq wanted to put a stop to it, but Gendre allowed it to continue:
He told me that all the distributions that the Shoushouopes have made are not bad; that
D' Herbomez never had the intention of condemning them: I would thus like to know what policy
we must adopt vis-d-vis these distributions: Is it necessary to ban them? Is it necessary to
tolerate them? Is it necessary to approve of them?58
Lejacq next informed the Shuswap that he would allow them to continue their feasting provided D’Herbomez
does not condemn it, but that they were to desist until he hears one way or the other from his superior.

Unfortunately the replies to these queries were not found. However, in a letter to D’Herbomez in 1875 Lejacq

wrote:
The feasts have never been abolished in this district: they no longer occur, it is true, with all the
superstitious apparel of the old days: but they are practising them always: And it will be easier
to Christianize them than to abolish them: They are profoundly rooted in the hearts of our
sauvages. Fer a long time I no longer spoke against the feasts: I contented myself with saying to
them that I do not like them, that you will give them your orders when you will next come: In
certain places they sing: these songs I have been convinced contain nothing bad: Nevertheless I
guard myself from approving them: This is for Monseigneur to judge.59

56

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870) p. 156.
Lejacq letter to Durieu, Sept. 12, 1869, AD P-4254.
58
Lejacq letter to Durieu, Nov. 7, 1869, AD P-4263.
59
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 14, 1875, AD P-4378. See also Mills, Eagle Down, p. 94.
57

83

Lejacq further wrote that the Witsuwit’en of Rocher D6boul6 had been punished for dancing at their feasts. The

Carrier of Stuart Lake, however, informed Marchal, who replaced Lejacq in 1880, that Lejacq had permitted
them to dance, as long as it was only the men together.60 The fact that Lejacq, six years after having asked his

superiors for policy regarding the potlatch, wrote D’ Hcrbomez that it would be easier to Christianize the potlatch
than abolish it, indicates that not only Oblates in the field but Bishops too could be convinced of the practicality

of adapting to Carrier culture.
Another Carrier practice, this time post-contact in nature, that Lejacq agonized over how best to respond

to was the system of credit established with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Lejacq fully realized the politics behind
the company’s giving goods on credit, namely to keep Carrier attached to certain posts.61 He believed that the

company was continuously pressuring the Carrier to increase their debt in order to keep them in economic
servitude, and that Carrier were as so many children who did not know how to refuse such ‘gifts’, a belief that the

company documents do not bear out. There are clear strictures in the Bible, and subsequent Christian theology,
against debt, and Oblates commonly refused to baptize those in such a state.62 When Lejacq first told the Carrier

of Stuart Lake that he could not baptize anyone with a debt to the company, he recounted how they fell into
despair and Prince went so far as to want to tender his resignation63

This issue of debt, Lejacq bemoaned, “is a cause of spiritual ruin for our sauvages.'^ He thus put his

case to D’Herbomez:
Currently they are all indebted 100, 200, 300, some of them 600 piastres [i.e. “Canadian
Dollars”]:...The rule that I have posed of not baptizing those who have a debt of more than 40
piastres will serve me nothing: That win only dismiss their baptism for an indeterminate time, at
the hour of their death for several: Furthermore those who have already been baptized are in no
60
61

Marchal letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 30, 1881, AD P-4890.
See Lejacq letter to Durieu, Jan. 8, 1875, AD P-4361 and Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 24, 1875, P-

4377-8.
62

This, however, did not prevent the missionaries themselves from receiving goods on credit from company
stores. Lejacq’s repeated requests that the company stop giving out debt was a constant source of annoyance for
company officers; see The Journals of George M, Dawson, Cole and Lockner eds., pp. 283-4.
63
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), p. 226. Lejacq first asked his superiors to
rule on whether Carrier in debt should be allowed baptism in a letter to Durieu dated May 5, 1870, AD P-4282.
64
Ibid. AD P-4378.

84

better circumstances. And in keeping with the strict principles of theology, the majority of them
are not in the state to receive absolution [Le. their sins remain unabsolved]. Now, Monseigneur,
how will you have me act? I am in a strange predicament: Must I keep obstinately to the
principles of theology, to consider their debt as a true debt such as the theology intended? or
must I be a little closed-eyed over this, consider these debts as non existent, allowing the
Company and the sauvages to arrange what’s best... I cannot consider this as a true debt, it is an
expedient which serves the interests of the company and its commerce.65
Clearly it was in the Oblates’ best interests to make practical adjustments to the particular mission field and
culture that they were proselytizing. Lejacq here showed himself willing to alter the basic requirements of baptism
in a way that would have not likely occurred in the European mission.

Other adaptations to Carrier customs and particular circumstances included the granting of dispensations
from Catholic marriage laws. Carrier culture was mainly matrilineal and exogamous, which meant that ttey were
required to marry outside their group (clan or phratry), and the men would usually live with their intended brides’

parents for a period of a year or two in servitude, after which point they became ‘married’ and he settled within
his wife’s group and took on her family crest name.66 The matrilineal marriage custom was still practiced among

many Carrier as late as 1885, despite the missionaries’ best efforts to discourage it. Charles Pandosy wrote in
1884, “around here it is not the woman who follows her husband, but the husband who is obliged to follow his

wife,”67 and again, “the women ... do not yet want to understand that they must follow the husband and not the
husband the wife...sometimes one succeeds to subjugate the woman, but hardly for very long....”68

There was some debate among the Oblates whether or not they should consider marriages of natural
contract, those marriages that had not been conducted through the church, legally binding, and whether or not

couples, either those married through the church or by natural contract, should be baptized as a matter of course.
Lejacq queried his superiors in 1868 on the matter of baptism and marriage, and which should come first, and

65

Ibid. AD P-4377-8.
For analyses of Carrier matrilineal marriage laws, see Morice, “The Western D6n6,” pp. 118-21, and Jenness,
“The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” pp. 527-9.
67
Pandosy letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P-6559.
68
Ibid. AD P-6562.
66

85

whether those who were already baptized should be married before those who were not69 MacGuckin believed
that all baptized adults should be quickly married and that those couples married by natural contract who were

not yet baptized should automatically have the holy water applied.70 Pandosy was informed by Marchal in 1884
that Bishop Durieu, during his recent visit, had expressly stated that all Carrier married by natural contract were

to be considered as legitimately married in the eyes of the Church. Pandosy complained to D’Herbomez that
Durieu had told him no such thing, and proceeded to argue against inconsistencies in such a policy.71 The
consideration of marriages by natural contract as legal in the eyes of the Church subverted the normal order of
sacraments, whereby marriage and extreme unction should have been preceded by baptism, penance, the

Eucharist and confirmation. On the other hand, if Oblates did not accept these marriages as legal, then they had
the problem of illegitimate children to contend with. The Oblates’ stand on divorce was further complicated by
this issue, for it was a top priority of the Oblate’s to see that married couples stayed together and that separated

couples reunited. It appears that in most cases Oblates did consider it in their best interests to concede marriages
by natural contract as legally binding.

Carrier traditionally preferred cross-cousin marriages in order to retain title and land within a designated

group or kin.72 That this preference was often accommodated by Oblates is evidenced by the numerous
dispensations that were granted to cousin marriages of all degree, dating back to 1873.73 Pandosy, in unusual
circumstances, passed cm to D’Herbomez in 1884 a series of requests made by Carrier couples few dispensation

from the Catholic marriage laws, two of which involved the marriage of first cousins. Pandosy favoured one of
them believing it would help a man get around complying with the matrilineal custom whereby he would be

69

See Lejacq letter to Durieu, April 5, 1868, AD P-4226, and Lejacq letter to Durieu, Sept. 27, 1868, AD P4235. Durieu replied in a letter dated Feb. 2, 1869, AD P-4247, that each couple had to be examined for true
contract of natural marriage, before they were married by the church, whether they were baptised or not.
70
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Sept. 27, 1868, AD P-4235.
71
Pandosy letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P-6557.
72
Douglas, “Traplines,” p. 77. Tobey, p. 428.
73
Marriage register from N.D. de Bonne Esperance at the Prince George Diocese Head Office. See also Hudson,
“Traplines,” p. 117.

86

forced to move outside of his group. By marrying his first cousin, Elizabeth, Donat Prince, Pandosy reasoned,
could stay within his group and thus remain in proximity to his father’s hunting territory.74 In the other petition to

grant marriage to first cousins the woman, Jenny, as was customary, insisted on remaining within her clan, and
because the man, Joseph, lived close by, he became a suitable candidate. It was on the grounds that Joseph was an

abusive man who readily acquired liquor through his job as cook at the fort, that Pandosy encouraged
D’Herbomez to refuse this petition.75 In another petition of dispensation favoured by Pandosy, he argued that
although the man, a Sekani named Katalpa, was married by natural contract previously to a Witsuwit’cn woman,
he had been living with his current wife, his sister-in-law, for several years and had children by her. In pleading

Katalpa’s case Pandosy used the Sekani’s mobile hunting lifestyle in far away northern lands to argue that this
couple needed to be together in order that the children be provided for.76

Oblate policy was thus somewhat flexible and could be altered to suit a particular culture or situation.
Oblates were not entirely unyielding, but were willing to make certain changes when those changes were

perceived to be in their best interests. The sheer volume of questions that Oblates posed to their superiors
regarding the degree to which they should accommodate in order to most effectively apply their programme,

indicates the extent to which that programme could adapt to field conditions. Lejacq, tor example, asked Durieu

in 1870:
when the sauvages were hungry and stole from the whites but did not know the law of
restitution, and the property is unrecoverable, is it necessary to make them replace [what was
stolen]? when the property is known is it necessary to differ their baptism until they find the

means of restitution?77
In other matters Oblates in the field were given special permission to make decisions. The queries of Pandosy
regarding dispensations was an exception, probably as a result of his recent reprimand prior to being sent to

74

Pandosy letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P-6559.
Ibid. AD P-6562-3.
76
Ibid.
77
Lejacq letter to Durieu, May 5, 1870, AD P-4283.

75

87

Stuart Lake, for field Oblates were normally granted special powers on a yearly basis to deal with marriages case

by case as they saw fit78

Nor did Oblates necessarily represent the united or common front against the evils of “superstition,” or
the “work of the devil,” that is so often attributed to them. There was both considerable debate over how best to
minister to Carrier as well as serious friction among Oblates in the field, and between field Oblates and their

superiors. Similar to traders, Oblates in the field had clear directives from their head offices on how to best

conduct themselves in relation to First Nations, but did not always follow them. Oblates in the field felt that they
knew better how to respond to any given situation than did their distant superiors, and often acted accordingly.

Lejacq’s disregard for the Constitutions and Rules set out by De Mazenod, was a constant source of complaint
from MacGuckin at St Joseph’s. “Unfortunately for Father McGuckin,” wrote Whitehead, “Father Lejacq was

more concerned with his missionary work than he was with the ‘letter of the law’.”79 Lejacq at St Joseph’s wrote
to Durieu apologizing for the disgruntled tone in his last few letters, but added: “...you are not here at this place:

You cannot know the state of tilings [as we do].”80 Oblate superiors usually realized this as well, and their stamp
of approval on any changes of practice in the field was often a simple matter of formality.

Oblate friction in the field was common. Lejacq and Blanchet’s amicable working relationship was an
exception to the rule. When Marchal took over for Lejacq in 1880, he was horrified at the degree to which, as he

saw it, Carrier had the run of the place and habitually took advantage of Blanchet’s generosity. Marchal strongly
objected to the fact that Carrier could use the mission house to gatha- in, wander about, or sit and relax with a

pipe any time that they pleased, and that they habitually wae permitted to borrow the tools of the mission without

returning them.81 “Imagine,” he wrote indicating the degree of racial prejudice that he was capable of, “how that

78

Lejacq and Marchal were both given these powers, Marriage register from N.D. de Bonne Esperance at the
Prince George Diocese Head Office.
79
Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, p. 84.
80
Lejacq letter to Durieu, Feb. 2, 1870, AD P-4271.
81
Marchal letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 30, 1881, AD P-5887-90.

88

must please me to see all these dirty and smelly sauvages comi ng to look and scrutinize all that I do and al1 that I
have in my room.”82 When he asked Blanchet to throw visiting Carrier out of the mission house, Blanchet replied

that he and Lejacq had created a system that had worked well for eight years and he was not about to change it83
Pandosy and Marchal spent much of their time and energy at odds with each other, as did Blanchet and

Morice after 1887. Pandosy wrote to D’Herbomez,

I must say in all truth that a single day does not pass where I do not receive some rude remark,
some needling point or other things worse still and must let [Marchal]..talk in order to have
peace in the house, furthermore after having been i nsulted, he makes me out to be the i nsu11er.84
Pandosy and Marchal each claimed that Durieu had made rules the other was not aware of. Pandosy claimed,
against Marchal, that Durieu had wanted winter Mass to be held in the Church rather than the mission house.

Marchal’s reply, according to Pandosy (‘1 cite literally”), was, ’’what is this that that imbecile of a half-bishop has
made in secret.” “And certainly,” Pandosy continued, “if someone could complain of secrets, it would assuredly
be he who writes and not Marchal.”85 Pandosy and Marchal were both bitter men who resented their having been
posted at the distant mission of Stuart Lake.86

82

Ibid. AD P-5888.
Ibid.
84
Pandosy letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P-6553. Pandosy was in frequent conflict with other
Oblates regarding how best to minister to First Nations, see E. Kowrach, Mie. Charles Pandosy, O.M.I. (Fairfield:
Ye Galleon Press, 1992), p. 55.
85
Ibid. AD P-6554.
86
Marchal wrote to D’Herbomez, Jan. 30, 1881, AD P-5888, that he could never love it at Stuart Lake, and it
was only his vow of obedience that kept him there.
83

89

iii. Oblate as Shaman, Fool, and Chief

Carrier willingness to convert can be partially explained by the initial attribution of Oblates with

shamanic-like power, and perception of some Oblate ritual, especially baptism, as a form of ‘medicine’ or power.

Power was seen to be manifested through the personality and actions of individual Oblates. Lejacq, who was seen
to occasionally be willing to apply his powers for the benefit of others, and to negotiate with Carrier on certain
issues, had gained an enthusiastic following in some quarters and was treated for the most part with respect,

unlike those who proved too timid or too rigid in their ministrations. After Lejacq left in 1880, Carrier enthusiasm

for the mission declined noticeably.
As traders had been incorporated into the feasting system of the Carrier, so too might Oblates’ Catholic

festivals and regular missions, along with the giving of syyh gifts as medallions, crosses, and rosaries, be

perceived as types of potlatches - and the missionary as a type of ‘chief’. Other Catholic conventions and beliefs
could be incorporated into Carrier culture, especially Oblates’ teachings about guardian angels. The extent to
which Carrier might incorporate Christian doctrine and practice into their daily lives without losing their spiritual
connection to the land or sense of being Carrier should not be underestimated. Rather than supplant or undermine

Carrier beliefs, aspects of Catholicism could be incorporated and interpreted in ways congruent with Carrier

cultural patterns and belief systems.

One explanation of First Nations’ accommodation to missionaries given in other studies of mission
history has been that traditional means of healing had failed First Nations who, out of desperation, turned to the
missionary and his message of Christianity to save themselves.87 Foreign diseases that became prevalent in

Carrier communities as a result of contact, and for which Carrier had no natural immunity, include small-pox,

87

J. Axtell, “Were Indian Conversions Bona Fide?” in Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of
colonial North America (New York: Oxford U Press, 1988), p. 120. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, pp. 46 and 245-6.
Rumley, p. 12.

90

measles, influenza, tuberculosis and various venereal ailments. The two most notable occurrences of disease were

the spread of measles in the late 1830s and 1840s and the small-pox epidemic of the early 1860s.88 The

impression of disease from both Hudson’s Bay Company and Oblate records, however, is not only one of
occasional epidemics, but a rather more constant and chronic problem of recurring ailments that may not always
result in fatality.
Disease, and the fear of disease, did indeed play a role in Carrier conversion. Rather than displacing a

belief system that had fallen out of use, however, Carrier showed themselves willing to use elements of
Christianity alongside their traditional means of healing. A Witsuwit'en chief, for example, asked, while Lejacq

was residing in his lodge, if a shaman’s services might also be tried to heal him.89 Blanchet, Lejacq and later on
Morice wrote often of Carrier reverting to their own medicine men in the absence of the priest.9*1 Goldman wrote
of the Ulkatcho Carrier in the 1940s, that shamans continued to be frequently called upon, often after Carrier had

already tried pharmaceutical products, or sometimes before when their going price of ten dollars was found to be

less than the pharmacist’s.91 More to the point of whether Carrier ‘believed’ in one or the other of these seemingly

88

See Morice, The History of the Northern Interior, pp. 307-8, for the smallpox epidemic of 1862 among the
Southern Carrier. Morice claimed, however, that the epidemic did not effect the communities of Fraser and Stuart
Lakes. A similar claim is made for the Stuart Lake Carrier by L. Hall, The Carrier, My People (Cloverdale: Freisen
Printers, 1992), pp. 19-20. See Furniss, “Resistance,” on this smallpox epidemic among the Shuswap, and among
the Southern Carrier in Changing Wavs: Southern Carrier History, 1793-1940 (Quesnel: School Dist. # 28, 1993),
p. 6, and “The Carrier Indians,” p. 543. See also Fiske, “Gender and Politics,” p. 73, for its effects on the
community of Stoney Creek. On the smallpox epidemic among the Witsuwit’en see Jenness, “The Carrier Indians
of the Bulkley Riva-,” pp. 485-6 and 539, and Mills, Eagle Down, 92. For the measles epidemic of the late 1840s
see Hudson, “Traplines,” p. 99, and R. Galois, “Measles, 1847-50: The First Modem Epidemic in British
Columbia,” BC Studies 109 (Spring 1996), pp. 31-43. For evidence of early epidemic in the Columbia Plateau,
especially smallpox in the 1780s, see R. Boyd, “Smallpox in the Pacific Northwest: The First Epidemics,” BC
Studies 101 (Spring 1994), pp. 5-40, C. Harris, “Voices of Disasta: Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia in
1782,” Ethnohistorv 41, no. 4 (Fall 1994), pp. 591-626, and Vibert, ‘“The Natives Were Strong to Live’.” Vibert
argues, based partially on archaeological evidence, for widespread depopulation of plateau groups in the 1700s.
89
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 152.
90
Morice, “The Great D6n6 Race,” pp. 18-9 and 712, and Souvenirs, p. 164.
91
Goldman, “The Alkatcho Carrier of Northern British Columbia” (Bronville: Sarah Lawrence College Thesis,
1953), pp. 221 and 242.

91

opposing traditions, is that they did not perceive the same contradiction as Oblates did in maintaining elements of
their traditional beliefs intact while simultaneously adopting elements of Christianity.92

Carrier were not only willing, but anxious, to follow the Oblate’s teachings as a way of testing their

power against illness. Carrier may have been introduced to Christian paraphernalia and ritual in a healing context
prior to the Oblate’s arrival. It was demonstrated in the previous chapter that Bini served a healing function

similar to that of the shaman, except that he incorporated Christian elements into an older healing system in his

attempts to combat newly introduced disease. Illness, as understood by Carrier, could be caused either by one’s
‘shadow’ becoming lost or captured, or something foreign to the sick individual having become lodged within him

or her causing a state of disequilibrium. The shaman’s skills were called upon cither to locate the lost or captured
shadow and return it to its owner, or extricate the foreign spirit or other such substance from within the patient.91

An individual’s illness was often blamed on bad medicine-power sent from outside the group.
The following account, quoted at length, demonstrates that the missionary, if not perceived as a shaman,

was at least believed to have the potential for shamanic-like healing powers:
During my stay at Rocher-Ddxxil6 there was a curious case of sickness. The wife of
one of the watchmen fell subtly sick without knowing it. A long time she remained in this state,
and when she went out, she suffered a great sickness of the head and a lot of difficulty
breathing... She assured [me] that during these moments of crisis she saw a wicked man who
wanted to take away her breath. [When] the sauvages had gathered themselves to pray around
her bed, the wicked man went and a good man took his place; he was making the sign of the
cross and instructing the sick woman to do the same. The latter asked to be baptized with a lot
of insistence, assuring [me] that she had only a little time to live She had several crises of this
nature, but I believed it was best to defer her baptism. All the sauvages and the sick woman
herself attributed this strange sickness to a spell of the Tamanoas [shaman]. Finally she had an
attack so violent, that they came in all haste to search for me. I rushed up and found her to have
all the symptoms of death. I was afraid of not having the time to baptise her and I made haste to
administer this sacrament. Knowing she was going to be baptized, she began to revive little by
little; her sickness disappeared as if by enchantment and only a little weakness remained. When
she made her goodbye to me, at the moment of my departure, she said to me: “If I am still to
92

See Mills, Eagle Down, p. 165-6. For other Athapaskan groups see Mills, “The Meaningful Universe:
Intersecting Forces in Beaver Indian Cosmology,” Culture 6, no. 2 (1986), pp. 81-91, and J. Goulet, “Religious
Dualism Among Athapaskan Catholics,” Canadian Journal of Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1982), pp. 1-18, and
“Representations of Self and Reincarnation Among the Dene-Tha,” Culture 8, no. 1 (1988), pp. 3-18.
93
See footnote 45 in Chapter two.

92

live, it is the grace of your baptism, or of your medicine,” since the sauvages employ the same
word for these two things.
This adventure has produced a great effect on these sauvages and has given them a

high idea of baptism.94

The dreamed “wicked man” in this account is likely indicative of a shaman applying his ‘medicine’ with
malevolent intent, while the “good man" making the sign of the cross, represents anticipation of baptism from the

Oblate to counter the illness. In attempting to comprehend Carrier perceptions of the missionary it is most
significant that the same language was used for the shaman’s ‘medicine’ and for the missionary’s ritual of

baptism Elsewhere Lejacq mentions that Carrier put a great amount of faith in the Oblates’ healing ability, to the

point of being able to effect psychosomatic cures:
These sauvages [of Stuart Lake] have a great faith in the word of the priest...When a sauvage is
sick, they question the priest, wanting him to say that he will recover: if the priest says: “he will
recover” The sick person is saved; he cannot die.95

Oblates. however, could themselves be blamed for malevolent use of their power.96 Lejacq reported in his
tour of 1869 that coastal First Nations who came among the Witsu wit 'en to trade were spreading the rumour that
missionaries were causing death through the ritual of baptism especially of children.97 This is hardly a surprising
conclusion given that Oblates only baptized small children or those on their death beds during their initial tours.

Some Witsuwit’en who had been baptized by D’Herbomez in 1868 had since died, and Lejacq was told that the
first missionary to set foot in Witsuwit’en territory would be killed because of suspicion surrounding the practice

of baptism Lejacq was met by one angry Witsuwit’en man:

94

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), pp. 234-5.
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, April 9, 1877, AD P-4405.
96
This was a common phenomena resulting from missionary contact with First Nations that has been most
famously documented in the case of early Jesuit missions among the Huron. See also Abel, “The Drum and the
Cross,” K. Morrison, “Baptism and Alliance: The Symbolic Mediations of Religious Syncretism,” Ethnohistorv 37,
no. 4 (Fall 1990), pp. 416-437, and R. Kugel, “Of Missionaries and Their Cattle: Ojibwa Perceptions of a
Missionary as Evil Shaman,” Ethnohistorv 41, no. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 227-44.
97
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 142.
95

93

He presented me with a paper: this was a billet of baptism of his child: “He is dead, my child,”
he told me, and he here threw [down the paper]. He put to the Priest his cruel reproaches:
“Why,” he said, “did the priest come before the sauvages to make them die before their time?”98

Lejacq proceeded to lecture this man and others present on western understandings of epidemic, and what he
considered to be the true cause of their deaths, namely that T^imshian and Gitksan bring measles from the coast
when they come to trade.99

A relationship can be tentatively drawn between the prevalence of disease and desire for conversion,
although conversion did not solely depend on the existence of disease nor did the presence of disease always result
in Carrier conversion. The Witsuwit'cn were in fact, next to Southern Carrier groups, the hardest hit by disease,

and yet remained the most defiant in the face of the Oblates’ moral code.100 The majority of Carrier were
nevertheless anxious to be baptized, and Oblates, by their accounts, appear to have been endlessly petitioned to

apply the holy water.

Baptism was used by Oblates as a reward for those who conformed to their rules and practices. Those who
agreed to be formally married by the church, for example, were often baptized at the same time. Chiefs were

known to petition Oblates for baptism,101 and those who gained favour with the missionaries were baptized as an
example to others. Carrier also attempted to trick Oblates into applying their ritual of baptism. Knowing that it

was Oblate practice to baptise those who were close to death, Lejacq reported that many Carrier either feigned
their illness or exaggerated their age in hopes of receiving a baptism.102 The majority of Carrier appear to have

attributed much power to the ritual of baptism, which in itself helped Oblates to create at least an outward show

of Christian faith in their Carrier charges.

98 Ibid,
99 Ibid,

pp. 143-4.
p. 145.

100

See footnote two, this chapter.
See, for example, Lejacq letter to Durieu, Nov. 7, 1869, AD P-4264.
102
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), pp. 139-40.
101

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Kerry Abel has argued that Dene viewed missionaries as shamans, and just as they tested their own

shaman’s power so they tested the missionary.103 Dene response was a pragmatic one whereby missionaries were
initially treated with respect, given audience and their ministrations followed, on the off chance that they might

indeed be as powerful as they often claimed. Dene switched allegiance between missionaries as they did between
their own shaman, and once the missionary’s power was proved to be of no, or little, value the Dene rejected him

and his Christian teachings. Missionaries were almost always treated with respect, however, as were shamans and
prophets, in the eventuality that they could yet work their power for malevolent purposes. The Oblate practices of
making the sign of the cross, prayer, hymn singing and baptism, might all have been perceived as part of a

shamanic-like healing ritual. Confession was an Oblate practice that had clear parallels with the shaman’s
healing. Daniel Harmon wrote of the importance of confession to traditional Carrier healing:

When the Carriers are severely sick, they often think that they shall not recover, unless they
divulge to a priest or magician, every crime which they may have committed, which has hitherto
been kept secret. In such a case they will make a full confession, and then they expect that their
lives will be spared, for a time longer. But should they keep back a single crime, they as fully
believe that they shall suffer almost instant death.104

Two incidents recorded by MacGuckin and Lejacq of an abundance of game having been attributed to their

presence, offer further evidence that Oblates were perceived to have strong ‘medicine’.105
Carrier perception of Oblates in these early years was based as much on the personality of individual

Oblates and Carrier concepts of an Oblate’s access to power or ‘medicine’, than on any merit of the Christian

message itself. By the aid of Lejacq’s stay among the Carrier he had gained some notoriety and was generally
treated with respect during his visits. Blanchet, however, was extremely uncomfortable in his missionary role and

103

Abel, “The Drum and the Cross,” pp. 237-242, and “Of Two Minds,” pp. 81-3.
Hannon, p. 300. See also Morice, “Notes on the Western D6n6,” p. 107. Confession was also reported to
compose part of the shaman’s healing ritual among the MacKenzie Valley Dene; see Able, “The Drum and the
Cross,” pp. 259-60, and “Of Two Minds,” p. 87.
105
MacGuckin in his report to D’Herbomez of 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 82, wrote that the First Nations of
Bear Lake had caught a seven foot sturgeon and due to the rarity of such an event had attributed it to his presence.
Lejacq in a letter to D’Herbomez dated Aug. 13, 1873, AD P-4347, wrote that the reappearance of Salmon after a
long absence was attributed to his presence.
104

95

failed to attract many Carrier to his ministrations. He dreaded his yearly visit to Bear Lake and wrote often of
how much happier he would be building, chopping wood and tending to his garden.106 After eight years among

the Carrier he was still complaining:

I do not know ten words of their language and thus it is impossible to understand confessions, I
am not even able to speak the French of the country [the common Chinook trading jargon], the
interpreters do not understand me. Also when Lejacq is at the mission [of Stuart Lake] I am
content to say a few words at the Sunday mass: this is the extent of my ministering.107
Blanchet’s lack of ability and charisma was directly responsible for his failure to gain converts. In 1876 he wrote
that his frequent self-criticisms regarding his “incapacities for the apostolic ministry” had been falsely perceived

as humility by his superiors, and added,
...the salvages themselves demand another priest, as well those at trout lake who I visited three
years ago asked on several occasions for Lejacq himself to come; this year the Chief carrier of
bear lake came because that old priest [i.e. himself] does not know how to speak with

strength.108
Any expectations that Carrier may have had regarding missionaries’ power, and any hopes of advantage they
might have gained through propitiation of such power, clearly remained unfulfilled in the person of Blanchet.

Both the ineptitude of Oblates and the mutual enmity that existed following Lejacq’s departure, had
noticeable effects on the Carrier’s enthusiasm for the Oblate’s presence and proselytizing. Similar to Blanchet’s

personality problems, Pandosy confided in D’Herbomez that he was struck with fear each time Carrier came to
speak with him at the mission house.109 Marchal, as had been the case with Shuswap, was disliked by Carrier

who had grown accustomed to Lejacq. Blanchet wrote to D’ Herbomez of Marchal’s progress:
If the sauvages habituate themselves to his brusque ways and his assertive character he would
perhaps be able to accomplish a few things with them; for the moment the memories of Lejacq
and his paternal ways are too recent, the contrast in the character of these two fathers is too
great for them to have the same affection for both.110
106

In January of 1875, for example, Blanchet wrote Durieu that he had not spoken as many as four words at
Bear Lake, and all he did there was chop wood and cook, AD P-475.
107
Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, March 15, 1880, AD P-505.
108
Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, June or July (illegible) 24, 1876, AD P-488.
109
Pandosy to D’Herbomez, Feb. 23, 1884, AD P-6555.
110
Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Feb. 2, 1881, AD P-515.

96

Blanchet, as well as Durieu in the report of his 1883 visit, commented on a marked decline in the Carrier’s

Christian faith, especially those of Stuart Lake, for whom both applied the adage “near to Church, far from

God.”"1
Oblate disunity and the apparent ineptitude of Blanchet, Pandosy and Marchal are only partial
explanations for Carrier loss of interest in Christianity. Other scholars of mission history have found that First
Nations interest in Christianity had often waned after a brief period of enthusiasm."2 Lejacq and Blanchet, both
with mission experience elsewhere, were fully cognisant of this possibility when they first began the mission at

Stuart Lake. One of the reasons given for their wanting to have the mission building go up as soon as possible

was to take advantage of early Carrier enthusiasm that they both believed would be short lived.11’ If the initial
Carrier willingness to provide audience for missionaries is attributed to their testing of the missionaries’ power, as

seems likely, then depending on what advantage could be had from the missionaries’ presence, and from following
his programme, Carrier may or may not have continued to show interest.

Another factor in Carrier accommodation to Christianity was the degree to which Christian doctrine and
practice could be related to traditional beliefs and practices. The main Christian festivals at Stuart Lake to which
all Carrier and Sekani were invited, and the missions given in Carrier villages by visiting Oblates, may have been

understood as types of potlatching.1111 14 It appears, for example, that Carrier expected to be feasted by missionaries.
Carrier were willing to help when Blanchet first began building the mission at Stuart Lake, but this relationship
did not last and Blanchet was soon deserted. He was later told that he had been abandoned because he had not

111

Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 8, 1882, AD P-518. Durieu letter to his superior in France, Martinet,
Sept. 10, 1883, Missions 23 (1885), pp. 59-60.
112
Abel, “The Drum and the Cross,” pp. 236-50. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, pp. 190-3 and 239-40.
113
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 23, 1872, AD P-4334-5. Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, March 19, 1873,
AD P-456. The belief that initial enthusiasm and tolerance for the missionary could often be attributed to novelty
was common among Oblates. See, for example, Morice, History of the Catholic Church, p. 317.
114
Many scholars of mission history in British Columbia and Alaska have commented on the similarity between
Christian festivals and potlatches. See Harkin, ‘Tower and Progress,” p. 6, S. Kan, “Russian Orthodox
Missionaries and the Tlingit Indians of Alaska, 1880-1900” in New Dimensions in Ethnohistory, B. Gough and L.
Christie eds. (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1991), p. 145, Fowler, “The Oblate System,” p. 46,
Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, pp. 93-4, and Kennedy, “Roman Catholic Missionary Effort,” p. 61.

97

given a feast upon the arrival of Mission provisions.115 Most likely the Carrier had left having been insulted as a

result of the priest’s ignorance of the etiquette of reciprocity, rather than as Blanchet was want to believe, out of

greed.116 Stinginess was a sure way for chiefs to lose both power and respect in Carrier society.117 There is some
evidence, as well, that missionaries were feasted by Carrier, just as traders had been previously. Lcjacq,

MacGuckin and Durieu all attest to gifts having been given to them at Carrier gatherings. 1 1 8

The major Christian festivals evolved into important social gatherings where Carrier re-established ties

among themselves, settled disputes, arranged marriages, Waded news from afar and shared information generally.
The missionary was given authority in these gatherings not only to settle Carrier disputes and formalize Carrier
marriages, but to reaffirm the role and authority of chiefs. The Oblatcs’ programme of conferring titles with

requisite duties to influential individuals was likely related to an ancient system of title conferral at potlatches,

even if the expectations placed on those holding Oblate titles were far different than Carrier expectations of their
traditional title-holders. The naming or renaming of individuals at Catholic baptisms was also likely to have been

regarded similarly to traditional title conferral119 Titles and names provided by Oblates may have been collected,

as traditional titles were, and added to ones power and influence.
Oblates acted similarly to chiefs in both their holding of feasts and their distribution of gifts in the form
of standard Catholic paraphernalia. There is little evidence regarding what, if any, spiritual or magical

115

Chief Factor Hamilton informed Blanchet of this. Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, June 26, 1873. AD P-470.
Blanchet also believed Carrier lacked foresight, and that the concept of providing stores for more than two
weeks in advance was foreign to them. Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, March 19, 1873, AD P-456.
117
Jenness, “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley Riva-,” p. 518.
118
Lejacq, for example, in his report to D’Herbomez of 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 141, wrote of the Carrier of
Tachyi “In order to give me a sensible mark of their joy, each of them brought me an offering”; see also p. 153.
MacGuckin wrote in his report to D’Herbomez of 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 94, of his meeting with a
“Kispiook” (Gitksan) chief: “the chief gave a small feast in my honour and allowed me to take as much salmon as I
wanted.” Durieu, in his report to Martinet of Sept. 10, 1883, Missions 23 (1885), p. 48, wrote of Fraser Lake
Carrier: “Each came to make their offering [to me]; one bringing flour, another sugar, a third tea, etc. etc., even
matches.”
119
For a similar assertion on the syncretic nature of baptism among the Tsimshian of Port Simpson, see J.
MacDonald, “From Ceremonial Object to Curio: Object Transformation at Port Simpson and Metlakatla,” The
Canadian Journal of Native Studies 10, no. 2 (1990), pp. 193-217.
116

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significance Carrier may have given to such objects as crosses, medallions and rosaries. They may, however, have
been perceived as having some protective or curative powers, as has been asserted for other Dene peoples where
such objects had been incorporated into the shaman’s traditional medicine bundle.120

A major difference between Catholic festivals and Carrier potlatchcs was the calendrical nature of the
former versus the life-cycle institution of the latter. It is not argued here, however, that Catholic festivals came to

replace the potlatch. Rather, it is simply suggested that the potlatch provided Carrier with a frame of reference
with which to perceive the Catholic festivals that Oblates held. Carrier continued to hold their traditional

potlatches away from the influence of the missionary, whether officially sanctioned by him or not .

One of the most striking similarities between Oblate Christianity and the Carrier belief system was based

on ideas of spirits or unseen beings who could offer either protection or harm. Catholics believed in the existence
of ‘demons’ or ‘devils' (fallen angels) who were often blamed for tempting sin. as well as personal guardian
angels who offered protection from sin and mediation between heaven and earth. Despite the Oblate’s railings

against Carrier “superstition” of animal spirits, the guardian angel concept could be easily understood in terms of

the Carrier’s personal animal ‘medicine’.121 The following account of the death of a Carrier chief’s son, on the
occasion of one of Blanchet’s visits to the northern Bear Lake gathering centre, illustrates the potential ease with

which the concept of guardian angel could be incorporated by the Carrier:

A few hours before his last sigh, he had entirely lost consciousness, about fifeteen people were
around him when they saw him stretch out his right hand as if to ask for something. Immediately
they lit the consecrated candle and put it in his hand, he gripped it At the same time a pretty
bird appeared suddenly without anyone seeing it otter the lodge, it flew two or three times
around the consecrated candle, then landed on the shoulder of the child who immediately made
his last sigh. The bird disappeared at the same time without anyone seeing it leave - they looked
for it everywhere, but could not find it The sauvages asked me what I thought of that I told
them that the bird was perhaps the guardian angel of the child who came to look fix his ‘friend’

-

120

Abel, “The Drum and the Cross,” p. 263. McCarthy, pp. 237-8.
Whitehead, They Call Me Father, p. 19, For similarities between the Jesuit concept of guardian angels and
the Iroquois manidos, see Grant Moon of Wintertime, p. 44.
121

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in order to bring him to paradise. This explanation has satisfied them because they know a little
of what the church tells us about the guardian angel.122

Although Blanchet believed that Carrier satisfaction with his explanation originated from prior Christian
knowledge, it is more likely that Blanchet’s knowledge was being tested and his answer proved satisfactory
because it meshed well with their own beliefs inspirit helpers or ‘medicine’.

To what extent Carrier strictly followed the Oblate's programme is difficult to judge based on Oblate
accounts alone, for missionaries obviously tended to exaggerate the importance of Christianity in the lives of
Carrier. Carrier’s perception of their religious relationship with Catholicism would have been far different than
the Oblate’s for whom the religious relationship with Carrier formed the entire basis of their existence in the
north. George Dawson's journal, written while making geological surveys in the area in 1875 and 1876, provides

some insight into Carrier life away from the missionary. Dawson’s own opinion of the effects of the missionary

was mixed. He was on the one hand surprised at finding how much of a hold the missionaries had, but also
commented that Carrier “though in the main amenable to the priests teachings are not Always & altogether under

subjection.”123 Dawson collected many oral stories from First Nations, and wrote how the Carrier, when asked to
tell of their traditional stories, related to him “Leprates” stories as well as those of the culture hero Us-tas or

Es’tace.124 “Leprates” (i.e. “priest”) stories were variations of Old Testament creation stories along with tales
designed to poke fun at the missionaries. What is interesting about the telling of these stories is the extent to which
the Carrier claimed them as their own and interpreted them in an uniquely Carrier fashion. Thus Adam in the

garden took on characteristics more akin to the culture hero or trickster figure Es’tace. Carrier were adding to

their own stock of knowledge by incorporating knowledge from the missionary and his Bible.

122

Blanchet letter to D’Herbomez, Aug. 8, 1877, AD P-493.
The Journals of George M. Dawson, Cole and Lockner eds., p. 284.
124 Ibid,
pp. 261-2.

123

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The Carrier yearly round was occupied with traditional subsistence activity, and the average Carrier’s
interaction with the missionary was minimal - a few weeks of each year at best.125 The oral account of Elicho
Prince recorded under the title To the Nahani and Back bv Trail provides a fascinating view of a group of Carrier
and their winter hunt in the early 1900s.126 The extent to which the missionary and aspects of his Christian

message were incorporated into traditional Carrier lifeways is powerfully revealed in Elicho Prince’s recounting
of this epic hunt. During their round they attempted, when convenient, to make it to the various Christian festivals

and places where they knew the priest to be at any given time. The priest conducted baptisms, married couples
and took confessions at these gatherings. While on the hunt Carrier rested on Sunday, held Sunday service,

prayed for a successful hunt, gave thanks to God for surviving a difficult winter, and prayed using a rosary over a
sick man. Christianity was not the centre of this tale, however, and formed but an occasional backdrop to this

group’s traditional subsistence activity. Dawson also related how Carrier prayed each day in the evening when in
the bush, and twice on Sunday, “a sort of humming choral service.”127 Evidence, however, is found in Prince’s
account of the shaman’s or medicine man’s skills of prediction used alongside Christian prayer, without

contradiction.128 Carrier spent their time on the land as they had always, and that relationship to the land, so
central to their spiritual well being, was not undermined by incorporating some rudiments of the Christian faith
and interpreting them in a traditional cultural context

125

For the most recent discussion of the traditional Carrier annual subsistence round, see Furniss, “The Carrier
Indians,” pp. 520-25.
126
E. Prince, To the Nahani and Back by Trail (Fort St James: Carrier Linguistic Committee, 1984).
127
The Journals of George M. Dawson, Cole and Lockner eds., p. 256.
128
Prince, pp. 88-9.
101

iv. Powerful Carrier and Their Relations with Oblates

The Oblates’ propitiation of chiefs was similar to that of the traders before them. Oblates gave chiefs
authority from the church symbolized in the form of medallions, crosses and temperance flags. Chiefs used
authority from the Church, as they had used authority from traders, in attempts to better their personal and clan

power bases. Chiefs’ authority quickly became entwined with that of the missionary, and chiefs could use the
authority of Oblates for their own purposes. Oblates were met by a culture that had been trading directly with fur

traders for over sixty years, and the missionary presence is partly understood in the context of an on-going

jostling of position among and between Carrier and traders. The possibility that acceptance of certain Oblate
practices and tenets of Christianity might in fact indicate a subtle form of resistance to assimilation is also
examined. Chiefs continued to be responsive to the needs of their communities, and by initiating Carrier

participation in the Oblate's programme, they reflected the wider desires of Carrier to compete with others on an
equal footing, without giving up their unique identities. Oblate relations with shamans and prophets, on the other
hand, were characterised by extreme antagonism and overt resistance.

Resistance to Oblates could take many forms, overt as well as subtle. Missionaries occasionally believed
their lives to be in danger from Carrier they had insulted or from those who perceived the missionaries to be of
evil intent There was strong opposition recorded among Western Carrier to both D’Herbomez’ and Lejacq’s

initial tours of 1868 and 1869, including an attempted assassination of Lejacq. MacGuckin related in the report of
his tour the following year that the would-be assassin, Asalaka, had travelled far to give him the gun that was to
have been used to kill Lejacq, as a peace offering.129 Oblates’ authority was sometimes publicly challenged, as

was their knowledge, behaviour and beliefs. MacGuckin described a fascinating encounter with a Carrier man,

129

MacGuckin letter to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1870, Missions 11 (1873), pp. 80-1.

102

possibly a prophet, who had turned his knowledge of Christianity for use against the missionary. At a gathering of

some four hundred Witsuwit’en MacGuckin related:
I was not long to perceive that the devil had sowed ill feeling among them; since last year [1869]
the deception, lies and slander were worse. Only two hours in camp and I had received strong
complaints, I told them to speak to me of their differences after Monday... I firmly stuck to my
decision among several complaints... However, a foolish pretentious man carried against me two
accusations that he believed without doubt to be very serious. The first, is that the border of my
hat was too wide; the second, is that it was my duty to speak to them for t wel ve days and not for
only five, because, he said, God spoke twelve days to the Angels in heaven, and also twelve
days to Adam and Eve in paradise. Here is a new revelation! I reduced very quickly to silence
our scholar, that I have other more serious matters to take into account.130

In later years Oblates were treated cordially, and with some distinction, by Western Carrier communities.
Missionary regulations nevertheless continued to be disregarded in the priest’s absence.
The most direct resistance commonly came from shamans and prophets. They were believed by

missionaries to be their personal enemies with whom they were in direct competition for the allegiance of the

group.131 Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez in the late 1860s,
Among the Sikken£s of Portage, there is a visionnaire [prophet] who has made some visits to
heaven and given those salvages all the recent news from paradise; some of my people have
met [him] in their peregrinations in the woods and have allowed themselves to be a little
impressed by the playacting of this pretend sauvage priest 132

One group of Sekani, when asked by Lejacq why they did not come to visit the missionary, told him that they had
three of their own priests who did not make them apply the whip, and permitted them to gamble. “These three
priests,” Lejacq wrote, “of which they are proud, are none other than three sauvages visionnairs, the same kind

as those that yyu found at Stuart Lake in 1868.”133 By no means did all First Nations ministered to by the Oblates
of Stuart Lake willingly accept the prescribed penance of whipping.

130 Ibid,

pp. 86-7.

131

Morice, Souvenirs, p. 160, wrote of the Oblate’s competition with shamans: “Nemo potest duobus dominis
servire” (a person cannot serve two masters).
132
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, undated, AD P-4381.
133
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874) p. 227.

103

Of all the Carrier groups, the Western Carrier shaman, or “tamanoas”, offered the greatest resistance.
Oblates went on at great lengths in their correspondence about shamans’ failures to heal the sick, often attributing
their own success to these supposed failings of Carrier traditional healing methods.134 The conclusion that Carrier
turned to Christianity when their own healing methods failed them should not be too hastily made from this

evidence. It has already been demonstrated that rather than replacing older methods with newer ones, the Oblate’s
healing power was added to a list of options available to the Carrier.135

The final facet of Carrier negotiation with Christianity to be examined is chiefs’, and those aspiring to be
chiefs’, relationships with Oblates. John Grant hypothesized that in the interior of British Columbia, “an area

with a very diffuse political structure, a major incentive to the rapid acceptance of Christianity may have been the

desire of chiefs to bolster their authority and especially to secure places in the fur trade hierarchy,” a suggestion,
he related in an endnote, that he owed to an Okanagan student in one of his classes.136 The extent of the role

played by Carrier chiefs in their people’s acceptance of missionary authority is mostly a matter of conjecture. A

cursory analysis of the Oblates’ relationship with Carrier chiefs does, however, exemplify a complexity of power
relations that both chiefs and missionaries were creating and reacting against.

Some chiefs’ power and authority quickly became enmeshed with that of missionaries. Chiefs, for
example, travelled extensively with missionaries, and showed their displeasure if missionaries used the HBC
barges instead. During his initial tour of 1869, Lejacq received complaints from Alexis, chief of the Fort George
Carrier, for travelling with the whites:

The rapid passage of the Priest through their villages has weighed on their hearts...at my return,
Alexis, escorted by all the important men of his tribe, came to sit himself by the door of my tent
and spoke to me thus: “We are sick at heart! Why do you travel in the boats of the whites? Is it
134

See, for example, the story of a shaman who died in the midst of healing a sick child in Lejacq’s letter to
D’Herbomez, Aug 28, 1869, AD P-4250, and his report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 143:
“This played into my hands as the club of Hercules to reduce to nothingness all the false stories of the bad
sauvages”
135
For similar arguments made regarding other First Nations interactions with missionaries, see Abel, “The
Drum and the Cross,” “Of Two Minds” and S. Kan, “Russian Orthodox Brotherhoods Among the Tlingit:
Missionary Goals and Native Response,” Ethnohistorv 32, no. 3 (Fall 1985), p. 198.
136
Grant, Moon of Wintertime, p. 124. See endnote 9, p. 286.

104

because we, the sauvages, do not have such boats? When you travel with the company, you are
not the chief of your boat... It is necessary that you are the chief of your own boat, yourself. You
leave when you want to, you stop when it pleases you. Look, when you travel in the boats of the
whites: perhaps you meet on the banks of the river some sauvages who would want to speak to
you, to shake your hand; M. Ogden says “En avantl” and your boat docs not detour from its
route. In future thus, if you want to make us happy, travel in the boats of the sauvages, we will
be happy to transport you from village to village.”137

It became common practice for chiefs to escort the missionary through their territory to the next gathering centre.
Not travelling with the chiefs whose territory the missionary was traversing may well have been considered an
affront to that chief’s authority. Using the company barges instead of travelling with the chiefs might as well have
been perceived by Carrier as an indication of chiefs’ weakness in relation to the company.

Fur trader practices of honouring chiefs through gift giving and hand-shaking were continued in Carrier
chiefs’ relations with missionaries. Chiefs were given special rosaries, medallions and crosses by missionaries as

part of their recruiting attempts. When Lejacq first visited the Witsuwit’en at R ocher Ddbould in 1869, he
discovered that the “grand chief’ Telusa was absent with most of the people fishing. After having come so far

Lejacq decided to wait for him to return, and to signal his presence sent a messenger to Telusa with an envelope
containing the gifts of a small cross and medallion.138 The greatest distinction given to chiefs, and strongest

outward show of authority granted through the church, was the giving of a flag of temperance.139 From the first

tour of D'Herbomez in 1868 those chiefs who had built chapels had been given or promised temperance flags.140
This flag would grace the chiefs’ boat when his group travelled to meet the missionary,141 and was hoisted in the
gathering centres upon the missionaries arrival.142 Following a volley of gun-shots, Carrier would line themselves

137

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869. Missions 8 (1870). pp. 137-8. See also Lejacq letter to Durieu,
Aug. 28, 1869, AD P-4249.
138 Ibid,
pp. 150-1.
139
This flag was white, with a symbol of Christ in the form of a red cross and the words “Religion, Temperance
and Civilization” emblazoned on it.
140
Lejacq, in a letter to Durieu dated Oct. 15, 1870, AD P-4298, asked to be provided with a dozen temperance
flags for his trip up north, to be given to those chiefs who had built chapels. Oblates also asked to have plaques
made for the finished chapels or churches with the name of its particular patron saint engraved upon it.
141
See, for example, MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 86.
142
See, for example, Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 138.

105

up to greet the missionary in order of prestige, with the chiefs first, followed by those others who had gained
added titles through the Oblates’ programme, such as captain, watchman, etc..141 Gunshot salutes were used by

Carrier as a show of distinction towards the visiting Oblate. Certain Carrier were distinguished in turn by being
first to shake the Oblate’s hand.

Chiefs were lobbied by missionaries, as they had been by traders, to keep the peace and prevent reprisals
in the form of revenge killings between both groups and individuals. Chiefs in turn could use the missionary’s

presence to effect a peace between their group and another for purposes of trade. The following is an account of
the peace that Witsuwit’en and Nisga’a arranged with Lejacq presiding:

I placed Telusa with his sub-chiefs in a line, and in face of them, on an opposite line, the grand
chief of the Naaska, named Kia-lar, and all his little chiefs....! made the opening discourse. The
chiefs also spoke each in their turn. All conducted themselves with order, calm and dignity....!
wrote up the treaty of peace and all the chiefs signed it, in the way of the knights of the middle

ages.144
During MacGuckin’s tour the following year a group of coastal Tsimshian headed by two chiefs who had been in
conflict with the First Nations of Rocher D€boul6 for two years, arrived for purposes of trade: “The Chiefs came

to me and begged me to carry to the Akwilgates [Witsuwit’en of Rocher D6boul6] the assurance that their goal

was trade and to bury their differences in the past”143145
The presence of the missionary within many Carrier communities came to be regarded as a status
symbol of sorts. Oblates were constantly harangued to stay longer than they intended in any given community. At
Chinlac, Lejacq reported that a “little chief’ had come to him offering “a small sack of flour, a dozen pounds of

sugar, tea..etc., and said to me: ‘Do not fear of staying with us, you will not starve’.”146 Carrier used other means,
such as removing or hiding their boats, to try and prevent or delay the missionary from visiting another, possibly

143

Lejacq letter to Durieu, undated. Missions 18 (1880), p. 60, and Morice, History of the Catholic Church, p

309.
144

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), pp. 155-6.
MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1870, Missions 11 (1873), pp. 91-2.
146
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 (1870), p. 161.

145

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rival, group. While attempting to visit the WiLsuwit’en in 1870, MacGuckin was stopped by the Stuart Lake

Carrier at the mouth of the Tachie: “In vain I pressed them to go on, this was a plot formed between them, and I
had to resign myself to it”147 If Carrier did indeed incorporate the visiting Oblate’s mission into their potlatching

system, or simply used ‘potlatch’ as a frame of reference for their understanding of ‘mission’, then the longer an
Oblate was ‘feasted’ by the host group, the more prestige could be had from the interaction. Oblates, of course,
viewed any sustained interest in their presence as a mark of the Carrier’s Christian faith.
Oblates were almost always housed in the chief’s lodge when they were giving a mission, and from there

gave formal sermons, lessons and took confessions. Prince, for example, gave his house to Lejacq for use prior to
the building of a mission house and Church at Stuart Lake.148 This practice was also considered an attirmation of
the chief’s position within the village or group. When Lejacq heard that Telusa, the grand Babine chief of Rochcr
D6boul6, had spoken against him in his absence, he went to the lodge of the second chief Nadipis and called for a

gathering to take place there instead of at Telusa's lodge as was customary. His authority having been
undermined, and possibly out of fear of losing his position to Nadipis, Telusa approached Lejacq afterwards and

made, as Lejacq reported it, an “honourable amends.”149

Chiefs used Christian gatherings as forums in which to legitimize their status and re-affirm their position
of respect and authority, similar to the potlatch, where they spoke in affirmation of their position within the
community. Shuswap chiefs wanted a forum in church, following the priest’s sermon and prayers, in which to
make speeches. Lejacq at St. Joseph’s wrote Durieu asking if this should be allowed: “I always thought that no

one had the right to speak in a blessed church without special authorization. It is the habit of the Chiefs around
here to speak to their people in church.”150 Durieu replied:

147

MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 81.
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), p. 225.
149 Ibid,
p. 233.
150
Lejacq letter to Durieu, Jan. 6, 1868, AD P-4206.
148

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]

...it would be better not to, but since the habit has already taken...and since this is perhaps the
only place where they can assemble united...only allow those to attend who have been well
affirmed in the good way.151
This habit also took hold among the Carrier of Stuart Lake: “Sundays, the days of [Christian] feasts, and at other
times, the chief addresses words to his people at the leave of the priest, outside, in front of the church if time

permits, or in his lodge if the time is not favourable.”’52
The Oblate practice of conferring title to influential Carrier was quickly bound with Carrier power
relations. It is difficult to discern whether the Oblate and his programme were drawn into existing relations of

power and lines of conflict, or whether they in fact were responsible for community frictions where none had
existed before. Oblates’ involvement in Carrier power dynamics was more complex than cither of these

explanations alone would admit. Lejacq did not purposely sow dissension among Carrier by elevating others to

compete with those in existing positions of influence. Any struggle between Carrier factions that resulted in
different candidates put forth to fill a vacated position of power was generally considered to be problematic by
Oblates, on both political and spiritual grounds. Lejacq attempted to take a conciliatory position in such cases,

usually favouring an outcome that would cause the least amount of community friction.

Oblates did nevertheless attempt to use entitlement as part of their overall system of rewards and
punishments. Finding in his tour of 1869 that a Protestant minister had already been among the Gitksan, Lejacq
promised chief Loularx that the Catholics would name him grand chief of the Gitksan, symbolized by the gift of a

temperance flag, if he proved his fidelity towards the Church.153 Alternatively title conferral could be used in
attempts to punish. Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez in 1873, “I degraded Alexis, the Carrier chief: he had removed
his daughter from her husband and did not want her to be returned: I named a replacement for him.”154 This

Durieu letter to Lejacq, Feb. 2, 1869, AD P-4247.
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, undated. Missions 12 (1874), p. 347.
153
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Sept. 12, 1869, Missions 8 1870, p. 164.
154
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 17, 1873, AD P-4351.

152

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falling out of favour was short lived, however, and a few years later Lejacq agreed for Alexis to go to Quesnel in

order to accompany the visiting Bishop, D’Herbomez, to Fort George,155

Power struggles occasionally arose between chiefs and others whom the Oblates had given title, such as
captains or watchmen. Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez in 1877:

At Natl6 1 found already gathered all the sauvages of that place and Stella: The people of Natld
are not more fervent: Furthermore there are two parties in the camp: The party of the chief and
that of the Captain: this is the source of much misery: The people of Stella really want to save
themselves [from this division].156

Some Carrier were able to use the titles invested in them by missionaries to elevate their position within the group.
Authority was only effectively challenged, however, when the challenger had public backing tor his claim to

power, as the following example of the report of Lejacq’s 1872 tour indicates:
You understand already the schism that has taken place at Stellachoula. The p<xx chief has been
abandoned by all his own, all the camp is arranged around one of the watchmen who has the
intention of asking the Priest to be chief. With this goal, a small, but charming chapel had been
built at the mouth of the Blackwater, that is to say twelve miles from the poor chapel of
Stellachoula. The chief had come to Quesnel [to meet Lejacq on his way up from St. Joseph’s]
to put forth his side and gain my good graces. This was a terrible affair to arrange. For the
moment I succeeded in accommodating them, but I do not believe that will last long. 157
Knowing that it was Oblate practice to confer authority in the form of a temperance flag to chiefs who built

chapels, this watchman built a superior chapel than the existing chief had in hopes of himself gaining chiefly

status from the missionary. The outcome of this power struggle is not known, but Lejacq did in the end bless the

chapel built by the watchman under the name I’ Ascension.

Carrier invested Oblates with the authority to choose successors, but Oblates were not above being
swayed or manipulated in their decision making. Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez:

You know that Jean Baptist the grand chief of the Babines died last winter, it was thus necessary
to name a successor: It was not chosen easily: There are three parties in the country, one wants
the son of Jean Baptist, the other wants the Captain, a third named Bsauiz: ...the people who
155

Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, undated, AD P-4379. D’Herbomez never did manage a return visit to the
Carrier. A combination of poor health and unfavourable travel conditions prevented his promised visit of 1875.
Durieu, who was named coadjutor Bishop in 1875, visited the Carrier in 1876 in D’Herbomez’ stead.
156
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 15, 1877, AD P-4396.
157
Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), p. 217-8.

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want the son of Jean Baptist for chief, pretend that, when you created Jean Baptist chief [in
1868], you told them that his son must succeed him, I did not want to take it upon myself to
name another until I consult with you, I thus left the business in status quo...158
Lejacq was fully aware that his presence and position could be used to further the personal goals of others. He

wrote of a Shuswap chief’s son in 1868: “he has rejected one of his wives...he wants to be good, he said, but I
believe that his only goal is to be able to replace his father [i.e. to be named replacement for his father by the

priest].”159
Chiefs also used authority from the priests in their interests against the Hudson’s Bay Company.160
Twice Prince attempted to have engages of the company punished on the supposed authority of the priest. On

New Years Eve of 1875/76 Billy Favd got drunk and caused some trouble in the Carrier village of Stuart Lake.
Prince had him put in “chains” for his disorderly conduct. This, and the following events of New Years Day,
almost led to violence between Prince and members of his clan, and chief factor Hamilton and others stationed at
the fort Lejacq. in his letter to D’Herbomez, took credit for defusing the situation. Prince, however, continued to

show his displeasure at the conduct of company men, and once again attempted to use the Oblate’s well-known

strictures against alcohol to punish an engage of the fort:
Under the pretext that I had given him reason to have Billy Favel chained, who caused the
trouble in his camp, he wanted now to send his soldiers to a person of the Company who was
accused of bad conduct at Bear Lake, and to chain him up in his house at the Fort. Before he
put the thing into execution, someone consulted me: I put a stop to it! I said that prince
overstepped his bounds and I told the soldiers to rest easy. For that Prince is angry: He is too
proud, I have little doubt that he will yet cause trouble.161

Prince’s actions were fundamentally pragmatic, and represented his taking a position on the double standard that
had been established by the Oblates whereby Carrier, and not company personnel, were given penance in the form

of corporal punishment. Prince, and Carrier in general, would have likely seen no reason why the same rules.

158

Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, undated, AD P-4381.
Lejacq letter to either D’Herbomez or Durieu, Feb. 22, 1868, AD P-4221.
160
Thomson, “The Missionaries,” outlined a similar use of the priest’s authority among the Okanagan, but
against Justices of the Peace rather than traders.
161
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Jan. 19, 1876, AD P-4384-6.
159

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reportedly from God in heaven, should not apply to the traders as to themselves. Prince was both asserting his

own authority in the face of traders, and using authority invested in him from Lejacq to apply the missionaries’
own justice.
Community factionalism represents one of many negative consequences on Carrier society that resulted
from their accomodation to some of the Oblates’ programme. Incorporation of corporal punishment within their
communities represents another. While chiefs appear to have initially resisted whipping as a form of punishment
some, in the end, incorporated it into the existing structure of authority. One possible explanation for this may

relate to the perception of whipping as a rite of healing or protection against disease. It was demonstrated in the

previous chapter that some stories of the prophet Bini recount his having used a cloth dipped in water to strike his
patients to effect a cure. There is no evidence, however, of sick Carrier asking for the whip to be applied.
Among the most serious crimes for which whipping was ministered, were those committed while in the

company and under the influence of whites or Chinese. In this regard, then, chiefs’ and missionaries’ goals may
have somewhat coincided, and corporal punishment may have been adopted by influential men as a means of

attempting to keep their young people from leaving their communities and associating with non-Native settlers
and miners. It is apparent, for example, that both Shuswap and Okanagan men of influence used authority from
the priest to have those women who had left their communities to “associate” with white or Chinese men punished

by whipping.162 While Carrier youths’ associations with non-Natives was considered a problem,163 this danger

was not so great as it was for more southerly First Nations who had experienced a relatively greater amount of

*

direct colonization from settlers and miners.164 Lejacq, who was quick to point to any negative effects on Carrier

t

A
162

For the Shuswap, see both Loo, “Tonto’s Due,” p. 153, and a forthcoming Masters Thesis out of Simon
Fraser University by Colleen Doty. For the Okanagan, see Thomson, p. 131.
163
Lejacq wrote to D’Herbomez, Jan. 15, 1877, AD P-4395, that a young woman from Fort George had left with
a member of the government survey crew. He sent Carrier ‘soldiers’, along with her father, to bring her back. She
was eventually apprehended at Quesnel and returned to her parents.
164
See Furniss, “Resistance,” for the argument that Shuswap at this time had experienced extreme deprivation
from contact with miners and disease.
Ill

culture as a result of their contact with miners, wrote in 1872 that such contact, “has not failed to make them a

little bad; but they have undergone the ‘trial by fire’ better than I had expected.”165

None of these explanations for the application of the whip by Carrier chiefs are entirely satisfactory, nor

can one be offered here. John Grant hypothesized, regarding First Nations adherence to the Jesuit’s programme in
the seventeenth century, of which whipping was a part, that an increased authoritarianism, while running contrary

to traditional individualism, may have come to be favoured as a response to deprivation.166 Kenneth Morrison
argued that the Montagnais had internalized the Jesuit concept of sin “to such an extent that continuing crisis over

which they had little or no control implied their overwhelming guilt”167 Could it be that Oblates too may have
impressed upon the Carrier enough Christian rhetoric of sin and salvation, especially in the face of prevalent
disease, to convince them of the need to do penance? There is insufficient evidence to cither support or fully refute

this theory.

Many studies of missionary relations with chiefs have pointed to chief’s ability to use the missionary for
their own economic or political advantages.168 Abel has argued that Dene used missionaries as a means of

acquiring gifts,169 and Jennifer Brown has shown that missionaries were viewed by Ojibwa in terms of existing
trade relations, and with an eye to possible economic advantages.

1 7n

Rebecca Kugel has outlined a case study of a

Fond de Lac village leader who supported missionaries for purely political reasons that had little to do with the
Christian message.171 Jean Usher argued that the Protestant lay-missionary William Duncan’s much acclaimed

165

Lejacq report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 29, 1872, Missions 12 (1874), p. 346. See also Hall, The Carrier, My

People, pp. 77-8.
166

Grant, Moon of Wintertime, p. 45.
Morrison, “Baptism and Alliance,” p. 432.
168
Patterson, “Kincolith, B.C..” J. Foster, “Le Missionnaire and Le Chef Metis’' in Western Oblate Studies I, R.
Huel ed. (Edmonton: Western Canada Publishers, 1990), pp. 117-27. S. Kan, “Memory Eternal: Orthodox
Christianity and the Tlingit Mortuary Complex,” Arctic Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1987), pp. 32-55, “Russian
Orthodox Brotherhoods,” and “Russian Orthodox Missionaries.” Thomson, “The Missionaries.”
169
Abel, “The Drum and the Cross,” pp. 249-52.
170
Brown, ‘“I Wish to be as I See You’.” See also Kan, “Russian Orthodox Missionaries,” p. 133, for the
assertion that Tlingit initially saw relations with the missionary in terms of exchange.
171
R. Kugel, “Religion Mixed with Politics: The 1836 Conversion of Mang’osid of Fond du Lac,” Ethnohistory
37, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 126-57.
167

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model community of Metlakatla ultimately succumbed to factionalism because of his inability to find roles for

those traditional holders of authority in Tsimshian society.172 A final brief examination of the Carrier chief Prince
and his role in welcoming the missionary to Stuart Lake helps to shed some light on Carrier motivations.

In heading the initial delegation to Quesnel to petition for a permanent missionary, Prince was following
the example that his father, K’ wah, had set with respect to initiating relations with whites. As K’ wah had made

active overtures of alliance with traders in his attempts to gain advantage, so Prince made active overtures of
alliance with Oblates. Fowler has argued that this initial petition, along with evidence that Prince hosted the
missionaries upon their arrival and sent out i nvitation for others to come and listen to what the missionaries had to
offer, was an attempt, “to assert his authority against the H.B.C. and to reify his ascribed position of ‘Trading

Chief’ against the established system of deneza [dan leaders] within his own village.”173 It is misleading,
however, to assume that this delegation’s asking for a priest was due entirely to the political aspirations of one

man. Some chiefs within Carrier communities may have been able to increase their influence through the trade,
but to maintain their influence they ultimately needed to remain responsive to community concerns.

Carrier were not ignorant of the political and economic changes that were happening in other areas of
British Columbia. Their extensive trade networks with neighbouring and coastal groups was a constant source of
information on happenings elsewhere. “Although the sauvages have neither newspapers nor telegraphs,” wrote

Lejacq, “news travels among them quicker and easier than in civilized countries.”174 Carrier were often reported

to have eagerly sought information from other places, especially at the large trading fairs with coastal First
Nations held at Rocher Dd>oul6 and elsewhere at the border of Western Carrier lands. Of particular interest to the
Carrier would have been the reports from Duncan’s model village among the coast Tsimshian. Tsimshian from

Port Simpson commonly came to Carrier lands to trade and MacGuckin reported in his tour of 1870 meeting

172

J. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1974).
Fowler, “The New Caledonia Mission,” p. 133.
174
Lejacq letter to D’Herbomez, Nov. 17, 1873, AD P-4350.

173

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T^imshian “belonging to Monseigneur Duncan” at Rocher D6boul6.175 Duncan at that time had already become
involved with various economic ventures among the T^imshian at Metlakatla, and their relative wealth and health
compared with other nearby groups did not go unnoticed.176 Dawson wrote in 1876:

I am told that... Rocher de Bouler Indians laugh at those of Fraser & Stewarts Lakes for their
extreme devotion [to the Catholics], & while professed Catholics themselves, contrast the state
of “Mr Duncans Indians” with theirs. The priest they say has taught us prayers &c. & now we
know them all but learn nothing else, while Mr Duncans Indians learn to read, & have always
plenty of money & plenty to eat’177
Carrier followed some of the priests’ ministrations in an attempt to effectively compete with others in a
world, they were fully cognisant, that was rapidly changing. When Prince and others lobbied for a missionary in

1868 they were, according to MacGuckin, most anxious to have education for their children.178 Two years later
79

Prince agreed to send his son Joseph with MacGuckin in order to be instructed as an interpreter. 1 The perception
that allowing children to be educated and brought up Christian was a means of gaining power has been
commented on by both Michael Harkin for the Heiltsuk and Palmer Patterson for the Nisga’a.180 Morice

eventually fell out of favour with many Carrier precisely because he had not taught them what had they most
wanted to learn - the English language for example.181 Fowler raised the possibility in an endnote that Carrier

enthusiasm for following the Oblates’ programme may have stemmed from a mistaken belief that they were in

fact receiving an ‘education’ comparable to what Duncan was accomplishing at Metlakatla.182 While this

interpretation does not give the Central Carrier enough credit for realizing full well the disparity between the

175

MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov. 1870, Missions 11 (1873), pp. 92-3.
See Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla. Patterson, “Kincolith, B.C.,” has understood the Nisga’a, having
the example of Duncan’s successful economic ventures near at hand, to have had economic reasons for seeking out
the missionary and following his ministrations.
177
The Journals of George M. Dawson. Cole and Lockner eds., p. 284.
178
Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission, p. 48, and The Call Me Father, p. 26.
179
MacGuckin report to D’Herbomez, Nov., 1870, Missions 11 (1873), p. 103.
180
Harkin, ‘Tower and Progress,” pp. 14 and 20. Patterson, “Nishga Perceptions,” pp. 125 and 134.
181
Mulhall, WiU to Power, p. 170.
182
Fowler, “The New Caledonia Mission,” p. 153, note 11.
176

114

Oblates’ and Duncan’s methods, it is nevertheless possible that Carrier were willing to make some concessions to
the Oblates in hopes that they would eventually benefit in practical ways from a missionary-based education.

Carrier did not believe that their traditions were inferior to those of the newcomers to their lands. They
did however realize that changes were occurring at an alarming rate in British Columbia, and knew that other

i

groups had benefited, at least in the short term, by their interactions with missionaries. Nor does the Carrier desire
to compete with others on an equal footing indicate a desire to give up their identities as Carrier. Learning the

ways of others was a potential source of power, and adapting aspects of the missionaries’ teachings to their own
belief systems indicated their resistance, not acceptance, of assimilationist tendencies.

115

CONCLUSION

This thesis has attempted to provide some insight into the early history of Carrier contact with
traders and missionaries prior to settlement of Carrier lands and significant contesting of resources. Carrier

actively worked towards the betterment of their lives in a changing world during the period that frames this
study, from approximately the beginning of the 1800s to 1885. Carrier knew there were significant changes
under foot, their prophets had told them as much prior to any white man's arrival to their country. The

advent of the land based fur trade saw Carrier enter into trading relationships that did not fundamentally
compromise their cultural integrity. Carrier found ways to explain the strangers among them and minimize

the disruption to their culture through certain persons who have come to be called prophets. Prophets
attained knowledge of the strangers as Carrier had always attained their knowledge, through dreaming.

Missionaries too were actively courted by some Carrier, especially Central Carrier groups. Carrier
continued their attempts to find advantage from associations with whites by adding the missionaries' stock

of knowledge to their own.
Carrier first became familiar with European trade goods, and likely European diseases, through
their traditional trading routes with coastal groups. Once the land based fur trade was established Carrier
and traders entered into alliances of trade in which each side attempted to gain advantage over the other.

Carrier maintained alternate sources of trade goods throughout the period in question, and were never fully
dependent on the land based trade for their existence. Some chiefs, such as K'wah and his son Prince, were

able to increase their personal and clan power bases through their associations with traders. These were

uneasy partnerships at best Traders attempted unsuccessfully to institute a system of rewards and
punishments in order to control the trade through the manipulation of chiefs. Chiefs accepted the trader's

116

I

gifts and credit, but did not always, or very often, conform to traders' values or wishes. Traders attempted

to put an end to certain Carrier practices that ran counter to their trading interests and Christian
sensibilities, but Carrier had their own reasons for making adjustments to the trade. Traders, and those

associated with the trade such as First Nations or Mdtis wives, daughters or employees of traders, were
instrumental in introducing early concepts of Christianity among the Carrier. Carrier were curious to learn
the traders' peculiar knowledge of the world, and interpreted that knowledge in ways congruent with their
traditional beliefs and cultural patterns.

Carrier prophets provided explanations of the traders and their world in ways that could be
culturally understood by all. Prophets incorporated aspects of Christian doctrine, practice and

paraphernalia into their messages and ritual. To this end they attempted to reconcile their belief system with
the changes consequent from their participation in the trade, which included the need to combat foreign

diseases. Dreaming was a traditional means of gaining knowledge in Carrier society, and prophets
continued an age-old shamanic tradition of dreaming for purposes of healing and prediction. Bini, the most

famous of Carrier prophets, served a valuable function of mediator or 'Bridge figure' between cultures. He

I

travelled to the Christian heaven and there received information of changes that were to come, as well as

s

Carrier desire to know the strangers and gain their power, on Carrier terms. Bini's incorporation of certain

instructions for changes that he himself was to implement. His messages from heaven represented the

notions of Christianity did not simply represent an attempt to alter Carrier beliefs in order to combat the

forces of destruction. Rather, he used Christian concepts in an entirely traditional way to effect a creative
synthesis designed to help mediate a sometimes difficult ideological encounter between themselves and the

newcomers.
The bulk of this thesis has been devoted to an attempt to understand Carrier negotiations with
missionaries and their Christian messages. Examination of the fur trade and prophets' pre-missionary

I
117

incorporation of Christian concepts are central to understanding the context with which missionaries were
first introduced to Carrier communities. The trade with Europeans, if not necessary for Carrier survival,
had nevertheless become an important part of the Carrier's world. Missionaries were forced to adapt to

Carrier power dynamics and cultural institutions as they existed in a long standing trading environment.
Many of the practices begun in the fur trade were continued by missionaries, and were even incorporated
into their ritual. When Durieu was visiting in 1883, for example, he had the Carrier perform a twenty gun
salute to welcome Jesus into the Church at Pinchi during the rite of the Eucharist.1 Carrier chiefs could use
the missionary in their interests against traders, and just as Carrier were able to use traders and their goods

for their own advantages, so they attempted to use the missionary and his ministrations to try and gain a
stronger foothold within a wider political and economic setting.

Carrier may have turned to the missionary, as they had their prophets, to both effect cures and
provide knowledge. Lejacq was perceived to have shamanic-like powers of some consequence, and some of
his ritual, especially baptism, may have been perceived as a form of healing or protection. Medicine power
could be used for harmful as well as helpful purposes, and thus reaction to the missionary was manifested

on occasion by outward hostility or cautious respect The willingness of Lejacq to use his power for the
benefit of others was partly responsible for a show of Carrier Christian faith. Not all missionaries were

seen to have powers of much consequence, and once Carrier realized the limited advantages that could be
had from following the Oblate’s programme, they lost interest. Certain Christian concepts and practices
were, however, adapted and interpreted within a Carrier cultural framework that continued to have strong

connections to the land and world of spirit or medicine power.

The purpose of this thesis is not to minimize the negative effects of culture contact on Carrier
individuals or communities. Rather, I have attempted to explore some of the complex circumstances and

1

Durieu report to Martinet, Sept. 10, 1883, Missions 23 (1885), p. 56.

118

reasons that may have motivated Carrier to actively pursue a cultural and ideological dialogue with
Christianity through Carrier prophets, Christian traders and Catholic missionaries. The possibility has been
examined that Carrier initially asked for missionaries and followed their ministrations partially in an

attempt to gain knowledge and learn the ways of the colonizers in order to most effectively meet new
challenges. If this argument is accepted, than it follows that Carrier were profoundly failed by Oblates,
whose paternalistic desire to segregate Carrier into Oblate dominated Christian communities, away from
what they perceived to be the negative effects of western culture, ran counter to Carrier concerns and ill

prepared them for future interactions with settlers and government.

Emphasizing Carrier attempts to better understand and participate as Carrier in an encroaching
world of foreign beliefs and values does not underestimate the truism that that world was often intent on
dominating. Carrier concerns have been consistently ignored by purveyors of western culture, whether as a
function of paternalism or strictly out of self-interest Carrier today, however, remain the distinct people

that they have always been

- those who are professed Christians no less than others who have come to

reject Christianity. Carrier are not nor were they ever, as Robert Choquette would have it, “conquered

religiously.”2 Carrier have demonstrated a considerable degree of cultural strength and resiliency by
creatively incorporating or adopting Christianity while maintaining a distinct sense of self and connection to

the past.

The dialogue between Carrier and Christianity up to 1885 is a complex tale of power relations, and
not simply a matter of happy conciliation. These power dynamics are nevertheless best understood as
‘negotiation’ between parties, and not as a simple tale of domination and acquiesence. Studies that pose

First Nations encounter with Christianity in a simplistic dialectic of passive acceptance or inevitable and

overt resistance, do not take into account incorporation and accommodation as strategies of survival. James

2

Choquette, The Oblate Assault, pp. 21 and 223.

119

Hackler had entirely ignored such strategies when he boldly concluded, “Stuart Lake Indians meekly

accepted the ascendancy of the white man and his religion.”3 Such studies perpetuate the traders,
missionaries and early ethnographers’ own conclusions that First Nations were unable to cope, at least

without help, with so-called ‘advanced civilization’. The opinion continues to prevail among the dominant
society in Canada today that social ills perceived within First Nations’ communities, both urban and

reserve, stem from an inevitable, albeit tragic, consequence of an historic clash between peoples at different

stages of cultural development. There is a certain comfort to such a belief. By exaggerating First Nations
inability to cope at first contact, we perpetuate a belief in that inability being inherent, and thus tend to

absolve ourselves from responsibility for the unequal relations of power that exist today. Assuming that

Carrier traditions were incapable of coping with change, or that Carrier would only adopt Christian

concepts if their own culture was firstly undermined, seriously underestimates their adaptive strategy of
coping with new challenges.

3

Hackler, “Factors Leading to Social Disorganization,” p. 112.

120

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