Pioneer Missionaries to the Nishga: The Crosscurrents of Demon Rum and British Gunboats, 1860-1871
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/article38822
- Author
- Gough, Barry M., 1938-
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society
- Date
- 1984 October
- Author
- Gough, Barry M., 1938-
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Date
- 1984 October
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 2
- Page
- 81-95
- Notes
- "On this frontier, as on others, a battle was joined in Professor Asa Briggs' word, 'between gin and Bibles', between traders and missionaries. The former argued for the benefits of free trade and the need to serve the marketplace; the latter reasoned that the traders' activity made a mockery of the concept of trusteeship" (p. 83-83). "As in adjacent and other coastal waters, liquor trafficking at the Nass River entrance was extensive, and the colonial governments of Vancouver Island and British Columbia endeavoured to introduce legislation to control the sale or gift of spiritous liquors to the Indians and called on the Royal Navy, stationed at Esquimalt, to enforce colonial liquor ordinances" (p. 84). In 1864 the Rev. Robert R.A. Doolan arrived as the CMS (Church Missionary Society) missionary to the Nishga of the Nass River. "If Doolan's influence 'was not a coercive force .. but an avenue of voluntary change'. why is it that he found it necessary to call for a gunboat to provide a show of power in support of his war against liquor and recalcitrant chiefs in the Lower Nass Villages ?" (p. 86). "The prevalence of whisky and the resistance of chiefs were the main reasons for removing the mission of the Lower Nass Villages in 1867. .... Metlakatla, the major mission, became the base for missionary tours to surround the tribes and to the Nass. It was also decided to relocate the Nass mission nearer the river entrance, at Kincolith, Nass Bay" (p. 89). "Yet the Nass story is not merely a missionary and native affair: it involve the extension of British law and order; liquor trafficking brought an intensification of violence, and it brought the intervention by authorities in the form of British gunboats. Both represented the paradox of progress of the Victorian age: the one was the enemy of the missionary, and the other the supporter of the missionary. In short order, neither the missionary nor the natives stood apart from the prevailing ethos that surrounded them all and made even more complex the varieties of native response" (p. 91).
- Subjects
- Nisga'a - British Columbia
- Doolan, Robert (Robert Reid Arthur)
- Indigenous peoples - British Columbia
- Indigenous peoples - Canada - Anglican Church of Canada
- British Columbia - History
- Indigenous peoples - Canada - Missions - History
- Location
- General Synod Archives