When I commenced my labours among these poor Credit Indians (about two hundred in number) they had not entered into the cottages which the Government had built for them on the high ground, but still lived in their bark-covered wigwams on the flats beside the bank of the River Credit. One of them, made larger than the others, was used for a place of worship. In one of these bark-covered and brush-enclosed wigwams, I ate and slept for some weeks; my bed consisting of a plank, a mat, and a blanket, and a blanket also for my covering; yet I was never more comfortable and happy:--God, the Lord, was the strength of my heart, and--
"Jesus, all the day long, was my joy and my song."
[Illustration: Indian Village at the River Credit in 1827--Winter.]
Maintaining my dignity as a minister, I showed the Indians that I could work and live as they worked and lived.
Having learned that it was intended by the advisers of the Lieutenant-Governor, on the completion of the cottages, to erect an Episcopal Church of England for the absorption of the Indian converts from the Methodists into that Church, I resolved to be before them, and called the Indians together on the Monday morning after the first Sunday's worship with them, and using the head of a barrel for a desk, commenced a subscription among them to build a house for the double purpose of the worship of God and the teaching of their children. Never did the Israelites, when assembled and called upon by King David, (as recorded in the 29th chapter of the first book of Chronicles) to subscribe for the erection of the Temple, respond with more cordiality and liberality, in proportion to their means, than did these converted children of the forest come forward and present their humble offerings for the erection of a house in which to worship God, and teach their children. The squaws came forward to subscribe from shillings to dollars, the proceeds of what they might earn and sell in baskets, mats, moccasins, &c., and the men subscribed with corresponding heartiness and liberality of the salmon that they should catch--which were then abundant in the river, and which, I think, sold for about twelve and a half cents each.
On the same day, a plan of the house was prepared, and I engaged on my own individual responsibility, a carpenter-mason, by the name of Priestman (who had been employed by the Government to build the Indian cottages), to build and finish the house for the double purpose of worship and school, and then mounted my horse and visited my old friends in York, on Yonge Street, Hamilton, and Niagara Circuits, and begged money to pay for all, and at the end of six weeks the house was built and paid for, while our "swell" friends of the Government and of the Church of England were consulting and talking about the matter. It was thus that the Church-standing of these Indian converts was maintained, and they were enabled to walk in the Lord Jesus as they had found Him.