The Bible in the Frozen North
At Norway House, on a certain occasion, says Mr. Egerton Young, missionary of the Canada Methodist church there, a number of Indians came into my room, noiselessly, after their fashion, so that the room was filled with them before I knew it. When I became aware of their presence, I asked whence they were. “From a journey of fourteen nights,” they replied; for they reckon distance by the number of nights they are delayed to sleep. “We have got the Kessenaychen [the Great Book], but we don’t understand it, although we can read it.” I thought they were joking, for the Indians can not read unless some one has taught them, and I knew from their account they must live far away from any missionary; but I asked them: “From what missionary did you learn?” “We never saw a missionary nor a teacher.” I took down from my shelf our Bible, printed in the beautiful, syllabic character for the Creek language, and opened to Genesis; they read it with ease and correctness. I turned the pages, and they read in many places. I was amazed, and asked them again where they lived. They described it to me; it was far away, north of Hudson’s Bay, hundreds of miles from any missionary. Their hunting-grounds, it seems, adjoin those of some Christian Indians,—they cover great distances in hunting,—and, continued my visitors, “We visited your Indians, and found that they had the Kessenaychen. We got them to read it, and then to teach it to us; and we were so pleased with it that we all learned to read it during the winter.” Every soul in a village of three hundred population had thus actually learned to read the Bible without ever having seen any white teacher; and having providentially come into possession of some copies that happened to be in the hands of the Hudson Bay Company’s agent, these heathen Indians had journeyed through the snows fourteen nights’ distance, that to them might be given instruction in the Book they had thus learned to love.—Selected.