Click on the “play” button to hear the diary episode read aloud, and click on the [anno]green tab{note}Annotations look like this![/anno] to learn more about a word or phrase.
[anno]“Pray”{note}The word “Pray” is the first word in Matthew 9:38 in the King James Bible. The words of this verse are attributed to Jesus, and reads:
“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”
It makes sense that this verse would be embedded in the letterhead of the Canadian Church Missionary Society. They likely understood the “labourers” as missionaries going forth to “harvest souls”, or in other words, convert people to Christianity. Read more.[/anno] [anno]“Lift up your eyes and look on the fields{note}
This quotation comes from John 4:35 in the King James Bible. They are words attributed to Jesus in a short story that compares Jesus to a harvester gathering a crop for “eternal life.”
The use of this quote underscores how missionaries aligned their work with the goals of the Canadian government of turning Indigenous land into agricultural, “settled” plots. Read more.
[/anno] – [anno]“Go”{note}The word “Go” begins one of the last sentences that Jesus speaks to his disciples at the end of the Gospel according to Mark. The verse reads in the King James Version:
“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
This bible reference is also in keeping with the goals of the Canadian Church Missionary Society — to spread the “good news” of Jesus Christ around the world. Read more.[/anno]
Matt. 9:38 for they are which already to harvest.” Mark 16:15
The Canadian Church Missionary Association
IN CONNECTION WITH
THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY
Toronto
[anno]Jeremiah Johnston{note}Jeremiah Johnston was an ordained Anglican missionary of Swampy Cree background, and Du Vernet’s host on the Rainy River. Read more.[/anno] was born November 20th, 1860, at [anno]St. Peter’s{note}St. Peter’s was an agricultural settlement established in the early nineteenth-century by Saulteaux and Cree peoples in the Red River Valley. In the 1830s, Anglican missionary Jock Cockran established an Anglican Church, called St. Peter’s, in cooperation with Chief Peguis, a leader of the Swampy Crees. St. Peter’s was a thriving farming community, and remained so until the government expropriated the land in a “fraudulent surrender” in 1908, not unlike what would later happen to the Ojibwe reserves along the Rainy River in 1914–15. Read more.
[/anno] [on the Red River in Manitoba]. His father was a [anno]Sadler{note}A saddle maker.[/anno] of English descent who died when Mr. Johnston was two years old. His mother was a [anno]half breed{note}An often derogatory term used to describe someone who is of Indigenous and European heritage.[/anno] [anno]Cree{note}The Cree are one of the largest Indigenous nations on Turtle Island (North America). The Cree people traditionally live in what is now northwestern Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest territories. As the fur trade developed in the nineteenth century, Anglican missionaries would often make trading posts their first point of contact with the Cree. These posts were also a place where some Cree women would meet fur-traders or settlers who became their partners, as was the case for Jeremiah Johnston’s mother. Read more.
[/anno] from the [anno]York Factory{note}York Factory was a major Hudson’s Bay Company trading post in northern Manitoba, on the southwestern shore of the Hudson’s Bay. At its peak, the settlement was the administrative headquarters of the Company, and Europeans and Cree both lived there. Today, York Factory is both a National Historic Site and the territory of the York Factory First Nation, not unlike the situation of Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung and the Rainy River First Nations. Read more.
[/anno] region, around Hudson Bay-Oxford Gull Lake. Though his mother was born a [anno]heathen{note}Heathen is a derogatory term, often used by Christians claiming moral and religious superiority over others they regard as lacking morality and religion. The word heathen comes up eleven times throughout Du Vernet’s diary. Casually yet consistently, Du Vernet refers to Ojibwe people whom he meets as heathens. Du Vernet’s diary also provides examples of other missionaries, such as Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, referring to the Ojibwe and their cultural practices as “heathen.” Read more.
[/anno], when her mother, who was left a widow, brought her children to St. Peter’s she became a [anno]Christian{note}When Du Vernet writes “Christian”, he usually means an Anglican, or a person who was baptized in the Church of England. Read more.[/anno], and Jeremiah was brought up Christian. All his siblings — two older brothers and one older sister — died after they were grown up: John at twenty, David at twenty-four, his sister in childbirth. As his brothers were dying, Jeremiah and his mother prayed that God would take him last, and use him.
Jeremiah spoke Cree and English from boyhood. He was educated at the [anno]Church Missionary School{note}A school run by the Church Missionary Society, an Anglican missionary society. Jeremiah Johnston attended the CMS school at St. Peter’s. [/anno] and [anno]St. John’s College{note}Robert Machray, then the Anglican Bishop of Rupert’s Land, established St. John’s College in 1866, building on the foundations of earlier educational institutions in the Red River region. St. John’s College was initially only a theological school, focusing on training ministers and missionaries, but by the 1870s the college expanded to include secular education as well. Jeremiah Johnston first attended St. John’s College in Winnipeg, likely as a teenager, in the 1870s.[/anno] and took a special year-long course for [anno]Indian mission work{note}Jeremiah Johnston likely took this course at St. John’s College. It is not clear what this course’s curriculum consisted of, although it likely differed from the college’s typical theological curriculum of ecclesiastical history, theology and Hebrew, and Greek and Latin.[/anno]. At fourteen, he was confirmed by the [anno]Bishop of Rupert’s Land{note}Robert Machray (1831–1904) was the Bishop of Rupert’s Land at the time. Born in Scotland, he was ordained in 1855, and became Bishop of Rupert’s land, covering much of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, ten years later. He founded St. John’s College and taught there for many years, and during his tenure he also helped to facilitate the Dominion Government’s seizure of Métis and Indigenous land. Machray opposed the Métis resistance to the Canadian government in 1869-70 and advocated for the Canadian military to use force to put it down. Machray remained a bishop until his death in 1904. [/anno] at St. Peter’s (This was [anno]Archdeacon Cowley of McKay{note}Abraham Cowley was an Anglican cleric who established missions Manitoba, and worked was in charge of the Indigenous congregation at St. Peter’s from 1857 to 1866, and later became the Archdeacon of Cumberland. He did not live in Saskatchewan, making Du Vernet’s reference to the province puzzling. He died in 1887. [/anno], now of Saskatchewan). In 1880 he married [anno]Mary Macleod{note}Mary Johnston was married to Jeremiah Johnston, and worked together with him in the mission at Long Sault. In 1898, she was the mother of four children: Florence, Isabel, Beatrice, and Samuel. Read more.
[/anno] of Claudeboie. Her father, a Scotchman, is a farmer, and is still living at Wakefield. Of the Johnston’s ten children, six are dead, four still alive: Florence, Samuel, Beatrice, and Isabel. Since 1880 Johnston has taken part in Church work: after his marriage he was elected a [anno]vestryman{note}A member of the Church vestry, that is, the Church’s managing body.[/anno], though he started long before as a boy in the choir. He was then [anno]People’s Churchwarden{note}The chief lay official in an Anglican Church. They are elected annually by a parish’s congregation and help manage the Church.[/anno] for 4 years before going out as a [anno]Catechist{note}A teacher of the basic tenets of Christianity.[/anno] to [anno]Jack Head{note}The Anglican Church had established a mission at Jackhead, an Indigenous settlement on the Jackhead River in northern Manitoba, now known as the Kinonjeoshtegon First Nation.[/anno].
In September 1884 he left with the Red River contingent of [anno]voyageurs for the Sudan{note}Johnston was one of several hundred “voyageurs” sent to the 1884 British campaign to rescue General Gordon from the siege of Khartoum during the Anglo Sudan war. Read more.
[/anno], under [anno]Col. Kennedy of Winnipeg{note}Lt. Colonel William Nassau Kennedy was the second mayor of Winnipeg, the founder and commander of the west’s only large militia contingent, and later recruited and led the Manitoban voyageurs that joined the Nile Expedition. He died of smallpox in March 1885, on his way home from Egypt. [/anno] (Holy Trinity Church). He returned in March 1885, and received two bronze medals from [anno]Khedive{note}Du Vernet likely meant the governor of Egypt, though it is possible he was unsure of the term’s actual meaning.[/anno], as well as a Silver medal from the British Government inscribed ’91 Boatmen J. Johnston Manitoba (The Nile 1884-85).
While always inclined to be religious his spiritual life deepened while abroad. A native on the Nile asked for a bible and Jeremiah gave him his own. He was one of four in his crew who did not drink, and was chosen foreman during the illness of the regular foreman.
Near [anno]Dongala{note}A city in Northern Sudan, on the banks of the Nile River.[/anno], on the Nile, he was meditating quietly when his eyes rested on a [anno]thorn bush{note} Du Vernet and Johnston would have both understood this as an allusion to the biblical ‘burning bush’ described in Exodus 3:2, in which God appears to Moses. [/anno] of the desert, its sharp points baked in the sun.
After his return, Johnston was reelected a vestryman, and then became a [anno]communicant{note}A member of Church who regularly takes Communion.[/anno] and was eventually chosen people’s warden. He became more and more interested in active Christian work and felt that he ought not to be in the light when many of his native brethren were [anno]in darkness{note}The biblical imagery of transitioning from “darkness” into “light” figured prominently in colonial thought and missionization programs in nineteenth-century Canada. Missionaries believed that by converting Indigenous peoples to Christianity, they “saved” Indigenous people from the supposed darkness of their “heathen” ceremonies. By contrast, many Indigenous people who joined Christian communities did not draw such a sharp line, and often continued to practice their Indigenous traditions alongside Christian ones.[/anno]. He went to [anno]Mr. Anderson{note}John George Anderson was an Anglican deacon, priest, and missionary. Mr. Anderson graduated with a Bachelors of Arts from St. John’s College in Manitoba in 1887. He went on to work as a missionary in Lac Seul for a year in 1889. In 1890, he began missionary work at St. Peter’s. Mr. Anderson married Annie Violetta Kirkland, the daughter of a teacher at Long Sault, in 1889, and together they had six sons and two daughters. When Du Vernet met Mr. Anderson, he was living with his family along the Red River, near the St. Peter’s church. Like Du Vernet, Anderson climbed the episcopal hierarchy of the Anglican Church, becoming the Bishop of Moosonee in 1909, and eventually the Archbishop, and the the first Metropolitan of Ontario in 1940. This means that after 1909, Du Vernet and Anderson would have met regularly at synod meetings, where Indigenous schooling–including residential schools–were often discussed.[/anno] and told him that he would like to go into the work of preaching the gospel. The Lord opened the Way: just at this time there was a vacancy at a mission at Jack Head, on the West Shore of northern Lake Winnipeg. The Committee accepted him, and he went the following spring.
In July 1890, Johnston set out in a sailboat with his wife, three children, and provisions. They were also accompanied by [anno]Archdeacon Phair{note}Robert Phair was archdeacon of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land. He organized the Anglican Church’s operations in the Rainy River area and northwestern Ontario. Read more.
[/anno] and a pilot. On the journey there was a wonderful escape from capsizing when Mrs. Johnston saved the pilot with one finger, on the [anno]Hole River{note}This River has not yet been identified. We welcome any information readers may have pertaining to its location. [/anno]. They travelled to [anno]Loon Island{note}This site has not yet been identified. We welcome any information readers may have pertaining to its location.[/anno] and the [anno]Blood Vein river{note}The Blood Vein river flows west from northwestern Ontario into the east side of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. [/anno]. There, standing on the Rock, Johnston preached to the Indians. Two years afterwards, his labours saw fruit, when a young girl, thought to be dying, was [anno]baptized{note}Baptism is the ritual of entry into the Christian church. Within Anglicanism, a priest sprinkles water over the head of the person being baptized, and says specific prayers. In Anglicanism, infant baptism is widely practiced, but adult converts will also be baptized. Read more.
[/anno] and recovered. However, the [anno]Indian Agent{note}Indian agents were government officials who enforced the Indian Act of 1876, with an emphasis on assimilation and conversion. Read more.
[/anno], a Roman Catholic, said Mr. Johnston of the Church of England [anno]could not legally baptize anyone{note}The Indian Agent likely said this because Jeremiah Johnston was not yet ordained as a church minister with the authority to baptize. As well, as a Roman Catholic, the Indian Agent might not have appreciated an Anglican layman baptizing an Indigenous person whom he considered to be under his own jurisdiction.[/anno], and her parents got her back to the [anno]medicine tent{note}Du Vernet wrote often about the “medicine tent,” both describing it and noting when Ojibwe people, both Christian and non-Christian “go through” it. He may have meant the Midéwiwin lodge, the traditional space of ceremony and healing among the Ojibwe, but it would have been unusual for him to have been allowed into such an important ritual space. Read more.
[/anno].
After being [anno]ordained{note}In the Anglican Church, the ordination service is a rite that transfers spiritual power from a church leader to individuals who are to become bishops, archdeacons, or priests. The Book of Common Prayer provides the directions and materials for the ordination service, with the rite following five main parts: the presentation of the candidates; the litany; the ordination Mass; the ordination of deacons after the epistle; and then the ordination of priests after the gospel. Ojibwe practices for passing along spiritual power looked quite different from Anglican ones, but also involved achieving authority through undergoing levels of learning through ritual, such as in the Midewiwin society. Read more.
[/anno], Johnston returned in 1896 and baptized nine converts.
In summer 1892, Mr. and Mrs. Johnston and their three children returned to the mission with winter supplies. On their trip, waves washed over the deck until it filled the boat “Sunbeam,” which sank in the harbour of [anno]Grouse Island{note}This site has not yet been identified. We welcome any information readers may have pertaining to its location.[/anno]. The wind changed, and drove it into the harbour, where the family went ashore and worked all night to save the boat, but it was so badly damaged they could not go on. They spent 11 snowy, rainy days on this island, with only a tent for shelter.
In 1895 Johnston was called by committee to take a Special Course for ministry, and was ordained [anno]Whitsunday{note}Whitsun is a Christian holiday on the seventh Sunday after Easter, and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.[/anno] 1896. He took a special trip to Jack Head and Blood Vein and then he was appointed to [anno]Long Sault{note}Long Sault was an Ojibwe reserve at the midpoint of the Rainy River. The site’s Indigenous history goes back millennia and is still the location of ancient burial mounds. The Ojibwe occupied the site since the late eighteenth century and in 1873, under Treaty 3, the Canadian government made the site an Indian Reserve. It remains a painful memory for the people of the Rainy River First Nations that the government forced people from their homes at Long Sault and the other Rainy River Reserves 1914 and 1915, amalgamating all five other reserves at Manitou Rapids. Read more.
[/anno] and arrived on July 14th. There, the family camped on the [anno]mission property{note}Contrary to Du Vernet’s use of the phrase “mission property”, when missionaries built churches on reserves, the Church of England did not actually come to own the land. In the case of Rainy River, Jeremiah Johnson was granted the privilege to build a church at Long Sault by Chief Blackbird. As the diary reveals, both cyclones and women Elders opposed to Christianity got in his way. See Episode 5, The Story of the Older Indian Woman.[/anno] while building a house. A cyclone swept everything in different directions.
[anno]Mr. Bagshaw{note}Reginald Bagshaw was an Anglican lay missionary and teacher at Little Forks, between 1893-1907. Read more.[/anno] lived near by. The House and [anno]Church{note}The Anglican Church built at Long Sault by Jeremiah Johnston in 1896 was the first church to be built on Ojibwe land on the Rainy River. Read more.[/anno] were built in 1896, finished in about September, on a lot of about five acres cleared by Mr. Johnston.
