Edward F. Wilson’s Manual for Missionaries

This text can be found in Huron University College’s Rare Book Collection. Read about Huron’s copy here.

The Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries and others employed among the Ojebway Indians by Edward Francis Wilson is a small book. Measuring sixteen by sixteen centimetres and only two centimeters thick, it was printed in Toronto in 1874 shortly after Wilson had come to live at Garden River. Within the broader context of Missionary, Canadian and American history, it has played a small but important role. As the title would suggest, and the introduction confirms, Wilson originally penned this book as a source for missionary use in particular, but also for those working in the region more generally due to a shortage of books of this kind at the time.[1] Wilson was an advocate of learning the language of the people missionaries were attempting to convert, something which was not new; Stephen Return Riggs had made a similar dictionary on the Sioux language which had taken off twelve years ago and there is a long legacy of Jesuits making similar texts over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[2] However, according to Wilson, it was the first of its kind to address the Ojibway language in English in any useful way.[3]

Ojebway Language: A Manuel attracted the attention of several scholars over the following century. In 1881, J. W. Powell, a noted anthropologist in the United States, offered Wilson a chance to work with the Smithstonian institute as an informant for anthropologists, but Wilson refused.[4] Four years later, Wilson began his own research and corresponded with anthropologists like Powell, Horatio Hale and Franz Boas who remembered him as a good researcher who went on to publish two journals with the help of the Indian Relations Research Society.[5]

Wilson lived at a time when the political landscape between the Indigenous and settler societies was shifting in Canada. Wilson came to Canada expecting to change beliefs with ease. His experiences at the Sarnia, Kettle Point and Saint Claire Ojibwe communities quickly divested him of this notion when he came into conflict with the majority of Methodists in the community. When he moved to Garden River in 1871, he helped to open Shingwauk Residential School with the help of the community but not the backing of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which had up until then funded his work. As a principal at Shingwauk, he demonstrated his strict adherence to the society’s beliefs about language and education, and was clearly frustrated with his lack of success. During this time he also strode onto the nascent anthropological scene by writing original research with a particular interest in language and assisting in education. In 1893, he retired from missionary work and moved to British Columbia. Throughout all this, however, he maintained a view that Ojibway culture could not survive. Wilson’s book Ojebway Language: A Manuel is a book that was created based on his missionary experiences, experiences that affected his view of the Ojibwe community throughout his life.

*****

For a missionary, Wilson was in a rather unique position. At the time, many missionaries came from lower or lower-middle class backgrounds; artisans who had recently finished their apprenticeship.[6] Wilson, on the other hand, was of upper middle-class origins. His grandfather, father and one of his brothers were Oxford alumni.[7] The Wilson family also had strong connections with the Evangelical Anglican community; Daniel Wilson, Edward’s grandfather, had been the Bishop of Calcutta and had connections to the Clapham Evangelical community.[8] Edward Wilson’s father was an honorary council member for life in the CMS, and an outspoken defender of the faith.[9] His brother was a clergyman and three of his sisters were married to clergymen.[10] With this illustrious background, it is surprising that Wilson did not remain in England. Wilson was much more taken with what he perceived as a more adventurous lifestyle. Instead of following in the footsteps of his family, Edward Wilson decided instead to forsake Oxford and clergy life altogether and had spent time working on the family farm before going to work for a land agent family.[11] It seemed Edward Wilson would break the mold his family had made and create a life for himself outside the church.

This was not to be. Bishop Benjamin Cronyn and Archdeacon Isaac Hellmuth, the founders of Huron College, came to England and more specifically Wilson’s home at Islington in 1865.[12]Their goal was to raise money for the newly-founded Huron Seminary, an Evangelical school for clerics set up in opposition to the Toronto Trinity College, which Cronyn felt was teaching a theology too similar to Roman Catholicism for his comfort.[13] Their efforts appealed to Wilson and soon after he went to Huron College to become a missionary.

Wilson came to Canada in 1865, and quickly took an interest in his education at Huron, particularly after spending six weeks of his summer living in a local Indigenous community. [14] In the summer of 1868, having graduated from Huron, he went to the Sarnia mission to begin his work. [15] If he was expecting to find an easy place to begin, Wilson was very disappointed. While there were few people living in the area; 400 people in Sarnia, 100 at Kettle point and a further 1150 spread out through the villages of New Credit, Saugeen and Cape Crocker, the peoples of the lower Great Lakes had not been isolated from missionary efforts. [16] Before the Anglicans, Jesuit missionaries had arrived with the goal of teaching and conversion, the Methodists had followed the 1820s and had successfully integrated themselves into the community.[17] Anglicanism was a new addition to this community, and Wilson had to tread carefully.

If one listened to Wilson’s account of the Mission in Sarnia in his book Missionary Work Among the Ojibway Indians, one would have thought he quite successfully navigated these waters, and even managed to improve the situation for those who lived there. According to him, alcohol was a major problem in the community, which he attempted to curtail with the aid of a Temperance society. [18] Wilson also set up a network of Anglican cachitists to help him with his mission, one of whom was John Jacobs who was also ordained in 1869 and became a preacher and teacher at Kettle Point. [19]  The goal was to have a chachetist in each community, which Wilson would then visit twice or three times per year. [20] He also managed to help the women in Sarnia through the creation of a sewing circle where English fabrics and patterns were offered. While they sewed he read from religious texts, assisted by an Ojibwe interpreter. [21] This served two purposes: to teach women how to make clothing using European designs rather than more traditional patterns, while at the same time, it gave Wilson an opportunity to teach them about the Bible.

While Wilson’s account my contain truth, the way in which these stories are depicted in his writing is overly simplistic. On reading Wilson’s account, we can see that he was only interacting with small numbers of people. Not once does he mention how many people were going to the temperance meetings or sewing circles, only that he attempted to create them and succeeded. He also avoids any mention of the Methodists, for very good reasons.

Almost as soon as Wilson arrived, the missionary began treading on the toes of the Methodist community. This was unavoidable, there were very few non-Christians in the Sarnia/Kettle Point. According to David Nock, Wilson’s biographer, only fourteen families, or 300 individuals, were not either Methodist or Catholic and these were spread over a wide geographical range.[22] It was hardly feasible for Wilson to win them over with Anglican teachings, nor would it have been possible for him to provide them with enough preachers if he did. While Henry Venn, Wilson’s advisor from the Church Missionary Society, advised caution and discouraged the ‘poaching’ of souls, Wilson would have seen few other options.[23] Unexpectedly, Wilson had landed himself in direct opposition with the community he was meant to be integrating into.

Rather than leaving, Wilson dove into his work. His style as an early missionary was one consistent with his upbringing. Having been brought up in an Evangelical community, it is unsurprising that his mission would be evangelical in nature. Wilson wished to convert as many people as possible to his brand of Christianity in as little time as possible, preferably in one generation. As a result, he was a strict adherent to certain ‘moral’ rules. According to Evangelical teachings, alcohol consumption was to be strictly regulated and extramarital sex was abhorrent. These things, in particular, made Wilson’s experiences difficult. A letter of complaint he wrote to Alexander Mackenzie shows this. In the letter he labels the Ojibwe as ‘immoral’ and dispairs of the prevalence of alcohol in the community.[24] While the problem of alcohol was very real, and the idea of a temperance movement probably a wise one, Wilson’s demands for devotion to the church were almost too much for the community. All expenses for the church were, in his eyes, to be paid by the community, something with which the members of the Sarnia, Kettle Point and surrounding villages strongly disagreed.[25] These conflicts between belief systems meant that winning over a community was a difficult thing in the first place, and was in the back of Wilson’s mind when writing Ojebway Language: A Manuel.

Wilson’s goal for the community was two-fold, build a church and create an environment in which the next generation would be educated. These institutions were successfully built. The church, however, proved to be problematic, as Wilson illustrated in his June, 1869, letter to the Committee of the Church Society (Fig. 1, 2 & 3). In it, he explains that through his efforts, the community had managed to build a church that would contain fifty to sixty people as well as a small parsonage. [26] In addition, they managed to pay off the $1500 debt with the additional aid of friends of the community and a one hundred pound donation.[27] However, the land on which the church and parsonage was built had come into Wilson’s hands in a less than legal manner. The member of the community, a member of Wilson’s congregation by the name of Antoine Rodd, had signed over the land willingly as witnessed by the Indian Agent referred to only as ‘Mr. McKenzie’.[28] This was, however, not how land was meant to be sold. The transaction should have been approved by the Sarnia council, which Wilson had known from the beginning.[29] Wilson avoided this approach, however, because the majority of the council was Methodist and they could not win the vote.[30] Since Wilson had been angling for the conversion of Methodists in his work, it would be no surprise if the council felt that Wilson’s plans to actually build a church in the community was a threat.

Less is known about Wilson’s initial efforts at building a school in the community. Wilson himself only briefly mentions the education of children during his time in Sarnia. In his seventh, and final, chapter he mentions that around 1871 Jacobs had made room for two children to be taught by him in his and his new wife’s home. Though the chronology is difficult to determine from his narrative, this was likely shortly before he moved to Garden River. Two boys were accordingly found, one referred to only as ‘Willie’ and the other by the name of Tommy Winter.[31] Upon arriving at the school, the boys were “divest[ed] of their dirty rags and [given] a thorough good scrubbing’ then they were put into two new little suits of grey cloth” and “Thus, clean and neat, those two little fellows of six years old were shipped off to their new home. Walpole Island”.[32] They were then taught by Jacobs until they became homesick and attempted to run away.[33] Their attempt failed very quickly. A farmer from the area quickly picked them up and brought them back to Jacobs.[34]. The reticence of students in Wilson’s life would continue to affect his perception of Indigenous peoples when the missionary finally penned his manual.

*****

The reason for Edward Wilson’s move to Garden River has remained unclear. David Nock, the historian who has written the most on Wilson, remains vague as to why the move took place, mostly focusing on the failure of Wilson’s attempts to convert the Ojibwe in Sarnia.[35] J.R. Miller’s book, Shingwauk’s Vision, provides an alternative narrative. According to Miller, the Garden River Ojibwe had been receptive to Anglicanism since the 1830s, but “the connection was broken” in 1871.[36] Why this connection broke is unclear, whether it was due to the death of the Anglican priest or simply because he departed, the book does not say. However, Shingwauk, who was a chief in the community, decided to go to Toronto to ask for a new priest and Wilson was sent to reconnect the community.[37] According to Wilson, himself, the missionary had a moment of revelation while he was preaching to the Garden River Ojibwe, realizing that he needed to bring Anglicanism to the community.[38]

Much like the accounts of his earlier work, which focused on his successes, his stories about coming to Garden River must be considered a little suspect. He does mention a missionary already living in the region, a Mr. Chase, who lived in Garden River with his wife.[39] While he does not state their religious affiliation, the likelihood that the Ojibwe in the community had an Anglican clergy member in their community and the fact that Wilson makes note of him at all, rather than ignore him as he did with the Methodist priests, suggests that Mr. Chase was Anglican. This then makes Miller’s account all the more likely. Wilson was sent to Garden River, Nock and Miller are in agreement about this, and it is very likely that this was done to strengthen the Anglican position at Garden River.

Whatever his reason for coming, Wilson quickly grew despondent. In a letter to his father he expressed his concerns about paying for his children’s education, there were ten of them, and his general lack of satisfaction in his work.[40] Nevertheless, he persisted; creating a day school with the help of a young school mistress.[41] However, he was not very gifted at this work, and reflecting his cultural biases, at one point suspended all his students for going to a traditional Ojibwe dance.[42] Nonetheless, Chief Shingwauk approached Wilson about the creation of a much larger school in which students could learn trades that would be useful in the changing geopolitical landscape.[43]

This, Wilson took to eagerly and both Edward Wilson and Shingwauk’s brother Chief Bukhwujjenene travelled in England in 1872, attempting to raise funds together.[44] In 1873, the school was finally complete. It opened on the 22nd of September that year but was completely burned down only six days later.[45] So far, no reports have been uncovered as to what actually caused the fire, but this placed the founders of the Shignwauk Industrial  School in difficult straits as funds once again needed to be raised. It was in this context that a year later, while Wilson was raising funds for a new building, he wrote The Ojebway Language: A Manual.

The contents of the book are rather interesting as they give insight into what Wilson considered absolutely necessary for a missionary to understand. His introduction is modest, declaring very clearly that he is no expert in Ojibway, nor does he have any training in the teaching or study of languages.[46] He is also clear about his stated reason for creating this book. Despite his limitations, there is a need for an Ojibway-English textbook and none were available. According to Wilson, he was fulfilling a need created by the arrival of English-speaking missionaries. Their work was hindered by their inability to communicate directly with potential converts. It would seem, based on this introduction, that Wilson’s experiences at Garden River had tempered his desire for radical change in favor of greater understanding.

The manual is divided into four distinct parts: Grammar, Dialogue Exercises and a Dictionary. The portion on grammar is brief and direct. Wilson is clear about his understanding of the grammar rules of the Ojibway language, if not the mentality behind it. It is, however, his Dialogue and Exercises section that are of particular interest. In this section, Wilson provides translations for various ‘useful’ sentences for missionaries to understand. Some are common phrases used in the English language. He uses, for example, the common sayings “the cat has gone away, the mice go out to play” or “the lions are fighting fiercely” as his basic examples.[47]They are interesting for an English speaker, but not necessarily used in everyday conversation by the Ojibwa. Wilson, however, does become more specific. Useful phrases in the Dialogue and Exercises section are broken down into further conversational situations. Sometimes these examples become very direct and oddly specific. Such as in ‘visiting with the Indians’ where one of his phrases are “Are you Indians going to build yourself houses such as they have at Garden River” and “Do your children go to school?”.[48]

Wilson’s section on ‘Cultivating the Land’ is of particular interest. His phrases take on a conversational tone at this point, which is not consistent with his other sections. In response to a question about cultivation, Wilson translates the phrase “Just a little; I always plant some corn and potatoes”, emphasizing the expansion of European crops into the community.[49]Likewise, Wilson also translates “And when do you harvest? Oats are fit in August, and corn in September”.[50] Whether this refers to what people were growing and eating in Garden River, is unclear. However, if Wilson’s sentence about houses is to be understood, the missionary felt that Garden River was a place worthy of emulating.

Wilson’s manual was not as unique as it might seem. Similar resources had been created in the past. Some had even become incredibly popular, such as Stephen Return Riggs’ dictionary on the Sioux language, which increased in popularity after the 1862 uprisings in present-day Minnesota.[51] With no students to teach, and awareness of the school and mission to be raised, it is quite likely that Wilson saw an opportunity for his cause by following the examples of others. Although the introduction to his book suggested that Wilson had gained at least some respect for the Ojibwe, his actions suggest his philosophy was much more consistent with a missionary focus vision that focused on building ‘houses like garden river’ and a concern whether children were going to school.

Within a handful of years, Wilson had raised an additional $10,000.00 for the second incarnation of Singhwauk School, which was completed in August of 1875.[52] This version was far more permanent; a stone building that housed sixty students partially supported by the government, and partially by English donations as well as from the Church of England Sunday Schools.[53] Nock suggests that Wilson saw the teacher at a residential school as a replacement parent, as it were, who would teach the students a so-called ‘civilized modes of life’. [54] He made this more complete by creating a sister-school for Shingwauk, Wawanosh school for girls, opened in 1879. [55]

These schools formed the basis upon which Wilson hoped to build the town of Batchwana with the aid of the schools’ graduates. His plan only fell through because he could not get government funding.[56] The basis for this was simple, by keeping the alumni separate from their communities, they would avoid the risk of former students returning to the earlier and non-Anglican traditions. It was remarkably similar to the Evangelical beliefs at the time, which believed that with enough missionary effort it would be possible to convert the world’s population within one to three generations.[57]

In addition to wanting to rapidly change Ojibwa communities, he was also desirous for them to give up their mother tongue. According to Wilson, the boys at the Shingwauk school were to be “induced, in a good humored way, to keep a check on one another about talking Indian”[58]Wilson even boasted that children in his school would only speak English after the first six months.[59] Like other residential schools, Wilson took in a number of Euro-Canadian orphans to act as role models and encourage more ‘European’ behaviour such as competition.[60]

This was hardly what Chiefs Shingwauk and Bukhwujjenene had in mind when they approached Wilson and his superiors about founding a school. However, Wilson’s vision complied with the changing directives coming from both the CMS and the British government. As early as the 1850s, the missions were thoroughly frustrated with the lack of converts, especially in comparison to more willing reception from other countries such as China.[61] In order to support themselves, the CMS worked with the Canadian government, seeking financial resources from the government, which it received with little oversight.[62] When missions, such as the one in Sarnia, continued to ‘fail,’ the government shifted from their earlier stance encouraging First Nations to become British subjects and instead began to introduce white settlers, reserves and legislation such as the 1876 Indian Act, targeted at more directly transforming Indigenous ways of life.[63] With orders from above insisting on a change in lifestyle, Wilson eagerly sought to make his students suit his definition of ‘success’.

Even with these strict rules, however, there were few ‘success’ stories. As Wilson himself reported in 1890, of the 442 students who had passed through the doors of the boys and girls schools at Garden River, and the Washakada Home for girls and Kasota Home for Boys, which he later started in Elkhorn, Manitoba, the statistics were fairly disparaging.[64] 286 had been boys, while only 156 had been girls, of those; 15 became school teachers, 20 carpenters, 17 farmers, 3 weavers, 6telegraph operators, 12 tailors, 19 boot-makers, 13 printers, 13 girls in domestic service, 1 girl music teacher, another 39 had run away and 15 had died.[65] This hardly paints a heartening picture of the school, particularly when one considers that of those 442, Wilson had no knowledge of what 316 of them were doing with their lives after their time at the school.[66] While this may have been due to the fact that they were living in remote areas, Wilson was clear that he had sent out questionnaires for his former students to complete. That 74.8% did not respond suggests that many had ignored these efforts completely.

*****

In what might seem like direct contradictions to his directives in his schools, by the early 1880s Wilson began to further his research into Indigenous languages as a part of his increasing role on the anthropological stage. This new phase in his career was a direct result of the publication of the Ojebway Language: A Manual. Initially, he was reticent to work with anthropologists such as General J. W. Powell of the Smithsonian Institute [67] With time, however, he began reading more about the nascent academic field and corresponding with leading anthropologists like Powell, Horatio Hale, Franz Boas and A. F. Chamberlain.[68]

This was not a new role for missionaries. In 1880, John Maclean, a Methodist Episcopal Missionary, went into the Canadian prairies and came out of the region nearly a decade later an anthropologist [69] Others, like Myron Eells, Stephen Return, Thomas Crosby, among others took up similar mantels in anthropology, sociology and history.[70] This change can hardly be considered surprising. For centuries, governments had been depending on missionaries to spread their influence over the inhabitants of the colonies and First Peoples of the Land. It was hardly surprising that when an academic field devoted to the analysis of societies and culture emerged, missionaries were eager to join the fray.

Wilson’s move into anthropology is sometimes considered to be a pivotal moment of transition in Wilson’s life. Nock, for example, points to Wilson’s manual as the beginning of this process, ending with real change in his views of Indigenous cultures; arguing for their protection by the 1890s. [71] This argument, however, neglects to take into account what Wilson was saying and what it meant. Yes, Wilson was critical of the government’s role in the process of settling what was then known as Canada-West, but his description of Indigenous peoples was hardly an improvement over the view of the so-called ‘wretched Indian’. [72] In an 1890 lecture, he continues to espouse these views, while also referring to the importance of research on ‘Ancient America’ by ethnologists and anthropologists.[73] Likewise, in the Canadian IndianWilson compares Ojibwa lore and traditions to those of the Greeks and Romans, threatening that in fifty years all this might be lost, as he feared the Ojibwa would be ruined by ‘white society’ and will be the equal of only the lower class.[74] This may seem romantic, and even rather complimentary, but what Wilson was doing was making the Ojibwe seem like a living fossil of Ancient cultures. By painting them this way, Wilson implied that they were either doomed to failure or fated to evolve into a European culture. In short, his life’s work, though changed in its tenor, was consistent with the stereotype of the ‘Noble Savage’.

While it must be admitted that missionaries were known for playing to their audience, as Wilson did with his autobiography, this belief that the Ojibwe were a noble but doomed society is consistent with everything Wilson had done in the past. His belief that strict rules would eventually change Ojibwe society first in Sarnia, then at the schools he founded at Garden River and in Manitoba, had not changed. The manner he treated the Ojibwe language, as something to be taught to missionaries going out into communities only to be suppressed by schools, his belief that the phrases necessary to a missionary were ones that should be used to chide and encourage change, all of this suggest that Wilson’s goal was always to ensure that the traditional Ojibwe way of life and language was recorded, and then steadily phased out and replaced with a more ‘European’ one.

Edward Wilson’s Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries was the product of his experiences with the Ojibwe communities up to the book’s publication in 1874. These views continued even after his evangelical focus changed. Due to his upbringing he was raised with a certain set of beliefs that, when he arrived at the St. Claire Reserve in Sarnia, resulted in conflict. His transition to the Garden River reserve was an uncomfortable one due to his inability to relate to the very people he was meant to work with. The creation of Shingwauk gave him new goals, that were not consistent with those of the Ojibwe who had asked for the school. Wilson’s work at Shingwauk clearly illustrates what he felt was the future of Ojibwe society: to create a new cultural identity in which the next generation would have nothing to do with the old and would identify more with European Settlers than their own forefathers. At the same time, Wilson looked on those generations he could not attempt to change with schooling as relics of the past. They were, like the Greek and Romans he compared them to, worthy of note for their stories and their language, but would be inevitably changed by the society that surrounded them.

In 1893, Wilson retired from Missionary life.[75] His reasons for this are unclear. Even Nock’s views conflict, stating in one article that Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown in 1892 and in another that Wilson despaired of any potential of recognition of the Ojibwe by the government.[76] Whatever the case, it is clear that Wilson felt that missionary work was no longer a means of influencing European understanding of Indigenous cultures. This, however, did not stop him from continuing his work. In 1895 he published another book, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.[77] Despite retiring from missionary work, Wilson was still eager to add his voice in the conversation about the depiction of Indigenous communities, though at this point he was more focused on the peoples of the West Coast.

Bibliography

Higham, Carol Lee. The Savage and the Saved: Protestant missionaries, the image of the Indian    and native policy in the United States and Canada, 1830-1900. PhD Diss. Duke University, 1993.

Higham, Carol Lee. “Saviors and Scientists: North American Protestant Missionaries and the Development of Anthropology” Pacific Historical Review. vol. 72 no. 4 (2003): 531-559.

Miller, J. R. Shingwauk’s Vision A History of Native Residential Schools. University Toronto Press: Toronto, 1996.

Nock, David. “E. F. Wilson: Early Years as Missionary in Huron and Algoma.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society, vol. 15 no. 4 (1973): 78-96

Nock, David. A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy: Cultural Synthisis Vs. Cultural Replacement. Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religon, Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1988.

Nock, David. A White Man’s Burden: A Portrait of E. F. Wilson, Missionary in Ontario, 1868-1885. PhD Diss., Carlton University, 1973.

Wilson, Edward F. Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Victoria: Colonist Press, 1895. Accessed online December 5, 2015. <http://alpha.lib.uwo.ca/record=b1767532&gt;

Wilson, Edward F. “To the Committee of the Church Society”. Letter. Sarnia, 1869. Diocese of Huron Archives.

Wilson, Edward F. “Our Indians in a New Light: A Lecture on the Indians”. Lecture, Wilson’s Lecture Tour, Halifax, 1890.

Wilson, Edward F. Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London: 1886.

Wilson, Edward F. The Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries and Others Among the Ojebway Indians. Printed for the Venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.  Toronto: Rowsell and Hutchinson, 1874.


 

[1] Edward F. Wilson, The Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries and Others Among the Ojebway Indians (Toronto: Rowsell and Hutchinson: Toronto, 1874), III

[2] Carol Lee Higham, The Savage and the Saved: Protestant missionaries, the image of the Indian and native policy in the United States and Canada, 1830-1900. (PhD Diss: Duke University, 1993), 15.

[3] David Nock,  A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy: Cultural Synthisis Vs. Cultural Replacement (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1988), 108

[4] Nock, “A white Man’s Burden: A Portrait of E. F. Wilson, Missionary in Ontario, 1868-1885, (PhD Diss., Carlton University, 1973), 254

[5] Nock,  A Victorian Missionary, 108

[6] Ibid, 11

[7] Ibid, 15, 18

[8] Ibid, 14

[9] Ibid, 16

[10] Ibid, 18

[11] Ibid, 13

[12] Ibid, 26

[13] Ibid, 25

[14] Nock, “E. F. Wilson: Early Years as Missionary in Huron and Algoma” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society, vol. 15 no. 4 (1973), 82

[15] Nock, “A white Man’s Burden,” 252

[16] Wilson, Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1886), 45

[17] Wilson, Reverend Edward F. Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians, 38

[18] Ibid, 42-43

[19] Ibid, 48

[20] Ibid, 45

[21] Ibid, 42

[22] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 39

[23] Ibid, 40

[24] Ibid, 55

[25] Ibid, 52

[26] Wilson, “To the Committee of the Church Society” Sarnia, 1869. Diocese of Huron Archives, 1

[27] Wilson, “To the Committee of the Church Society,” 1

[28] Ibid, 2

[29] Ibid

[30] Ibid

[31] Wilson, Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians, 70

[32] Ibid

[33] Ibid

[34] Ibid, 71

[35] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 57

[36] J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University Toronto Press, 1996), 5

[37] Miller, 5

[38] Wilson,  Missionary Work Among the Ojebway Indians, 51

[39] Ibid, 49

[40] Nock,  A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy,” 102

[41] Ibid, 41

[42] Ibid, 50

[43] Miller, 5

[44] Nock,  A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 56

[45] Nock, “E. F. Wilson: Early Years,” 89

[46] Wilson, The Ojebway Language, III

[47] Wilson, The Ojebway Language

[48] Ibid, 136

[49] Ibid, 138

[50] Ibid

[51] Higham, 15

[52] Nock, “E. F. Wilson: Early Years”: 89 and Wilson, “Our Indians in a New Light: A Lecture on the Indians”. Wilson’s Lecture Tour, Halifax, 1890, 10

[53] Wilson, “Our Indians in a New Light,” 10

[54] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 74

[55] Nock, “E. F. Wilson: Early Years”: 89

[56] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 74

[57] Ibid, 51

[58] Ibid, 78

[59] Ibid, 79

[60] Ibid, 84

[61] Higham, “Saviours and Scientists: North American Protestant Missionaries and the Development of Anthropology” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 72 no. 4 (2003), 537

[62] Higham, 538

[63] Higham, 544

[64] Wilson, “Our Indians in a New Light,” 10

[65] Ibid, 15

[66] Ibid: 15

[67] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 254

[68] Ibid, 108

[69] Higham, 184

[70] Ibid, 189-190

[71] Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 4

[72] Higham, 177

[73] Wilson, “Our Indians in a New Light,” 4

[74] Higham, 215

[75] Nock,  A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy 4

[76] Nock, “A white Man’s Burden,” 258; Nock,  A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy, 5

[77] Wilson, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, (Victoria: Colonist Press, 1895)