Coppermine Martyrdom

Two Oblate Fathers were killed in October 1913 on the Coppermine River while trying to establish a mission to the Coronation Gulf Eskimo.  The events leading to their death over a period of more than two years are reconstructed from a series of letters written by Fr Rouvière to his superiors and from other documentary records.

An Oblate Father already old and mortally ill but gay, graciously and in defiance of medical command transcribed at Fort Smith a little while ago a series of ten letters because they were written by a member of his Order, and he remembered passing a summer holiday with him before they left France, and because I had asked him to.  And now Father Michel has been dead these several months; and Father Rouvière (who wrote the letters) has been dead these several years being one of the first to be killed by the Eskimo.[1]

There were two of them (not counting Father Michel, of course).  One was felled with a snow-knife, the other with a rifle.  Both had to be finished off: one with a knife, the other with an axe – the dismemberment being improvised rather than intended.  And then if you kill somebody and don’t want to be haunted by his spirit it is well to eat a little of his liver: so there was evisceration as well, though (as I say) out of panic terror rather than malice.  And this all happened in the late autumn of 1913 no distance from the place (approx. 67° 45’ N and 115° 20’ 15” W) where Samuel Hearne in 1771 watched in impotent fascination and horror while the Indians who with suspicious eagerness had led him all those hundreds of miles from Hudson Bay methodically butchered a village of Eskimo; so that that place on the Coppermine River where the two Oblate Fathers were killed, long before the knifing and chopping and other things, was well-known as the Bloody Falls.

Even though Fr Petitot, years before, had become obsessed with a fear that the Eskimo would kill him, it does not appear that Fr Rouvière thought of his mission to the Eskimo as dangerous.  George Douglas thought it might be when he first met him at Fort Norman in the spring of 1911.  In the photograph Douglas took of Rouvière a few months later at the little cabin on Lake Imaerinik now named for the priest himself, Jean-Baptiste Rouvière looks, despite the black beard, not a day older than his 30 years; and the eyes are guileless, the mouth sensitive, as though his home had been in some slow soil, stubborn to yield.  He came from Mende (Lozère); he worked methodically, with simply enthusiasm, his attention undistracted.  He died in a matter-of-fact way: running away as any prudent man would when he heard his companion cry out and saw him lying wounded and the threat of the levelled rifle, himself unarmed; and when the bullet caught him in the back he dropped into a sitting position and waited patiently for Uluksuk with his knife and Sinnisiak approaching after a brief interval through the snow carrying the axe he had just picked up from the sleigh.  Knowing the outcome, we watch fascinated the path of quotidian trifles and simple but unfathomable occurrence along which Fr Rouvière came to that end; knowing that if LeRoux had been more even-tempered or less weary or less hungry, if he had been also a better linguist, a more sensitive observer, it might have been Fr Rouvière himself who could have typed for me the copies of his letters in the archives of the Bishop’s House at Fort Smith NWT instead of Fr Michel who once shared a summer holiday with him and is now dead.

All three – the two who were killed and the one who died – were priests of the Order of Mary the Immaculate, which Order had first encountered Eskimo in the Mackenzie Delta in 1860.  Intermittent missions thereafter – by Fr Petitot in 1865, by Fr Lefebvre in 1871 – made some headway.  But in 1898, when the Klondike made heavier demands on the Order than their numbers could stand, even Fr Lefebvre was withdrawn from the Eskimo to go to the Yukon.  When in April 1902 Fr Gabriel Breynat at 32 was consecrated Bishop of Adrumetum, Vicar Apostolic of Mackenzie and Yukon (nearly a million square miles of inhospitable country), even that redoubtable zealot was at first persuaded that there was no hope of converting the corrupted Eskimo of the Mackenzie Delta.  But as he thought of the country north-east of Great Bear Lake and the probability that there were Eskimo there though no certain word, he wrote in the Oblate Chapter General of 1904: “No one knows how many they are, or what they are like; but we should like to send a few specimens to Paradise.”  At that time he had “No men – no resources”; and not until early 1911 was he any way encouraged to reach out his apostolic hand to cover those unknown people.

Word came from a source improbable enough – in a letter from John Hornby, written on 28 December 1910 from Dease Bay (a long inlet at the North-eastern end of Great Bear Lake), and addressed to Fr Ducot, the 63-year old founder and Vicar of the Mission of Ste Therèse, in Fort Norman.

We have met a party of Eskimos who come every year.  This summer there were eight men, six women and some children.  Mr Stevenson, who came here with three Eskimos from Herschell Island, told me there was another band of them quite near.  The Eskimos come at the end of August and leave when the first snow falls.  They seem very intelligent.... The Eskimos and Indians are frightened of each other and it would be dangerous for Indians to try and meet Eskimos without having a white man with them, because the Eskimos have a bad opinion of the Indians.  If you intend sending someone to meet the Eskimos, we shall be pleased to give you all the help we can.

The text of this letter as given by Bishop Breynat is clearly not an accurate transcript.  “Mr Stevenson” (as Hornby well knew) was Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, who in 1908 had, with his one companion Dr R. M. Anderson, travelled from Fort Smith down the Mackenzie to Fort Norman sharing transport with a party financed by Cosmo Melvill a wealthy young English big-game hunter.  Melvill had with him James Mackinlay, a most experienced northern traveller and as an old Hudson’s Bay Company factor a man well informed about trade; he had perhaps persuaded Melvill to try trading him from Bear Lake.  There was also with Melvill one Pete McCallum, a carpenter, traveller, trapper; and John Hornby, a little lithe man, 27-year old son of “Monkey” Hornby, the Lancashire and all-England cricketer.  Melvill’s object (as far as he had one) was to institute trade by attracting the Bear Lake Indians back to their own country from Fort Norman and the Fishery; and Melvill would travel about and hunt for musk-ox (already rare).  They were the first white men to winter on Great Bear Lake since 1848.  Since the early summer of 1908 Stefánsson and Anderson had made some astonishing journeys singly along the Arctic coast and inland; they had learned to live and travel like natives.  Stefánsson’s My Life with the Eskimo tells the story in copious detail; and in Chapter 14 he tells how, after living for a summer with the Coronation Gulf Eskimo, he had learned their language, understood their mentality, and was trusted by them.  In the summer of 1910 he came inland with the Eskimo when they came for wood to make sleigh runners; and since starvation was threatening and he was not confident of the rapport between himself and the Eskimo, he decided to winter inland.  His two Eskimo companions built a winter house for him on the East branch of the Dease River while he travelled the 30 odd miles south-west to Dease Bay to make rendezvous with Melvill and Hornby as arranged two years before.  With such dainty precision are Arctic meetings sometimes ordained.

By that time Jim Mackinlay was at Fort Franklin looking after the trade, and Pete McCallum had gone off somewhere on his own.  But Melvill and Hornby had previously established north of the Arctic Circle on the edge of the barren ground at the north-east corner of Great Bear Lake in what is now called Hornby Bay; they had a permanent base at the head of the Great Bear River 90 miles from Norman near the site of old Fort Franklin; they had travelled at large over the barrens, and had descended the Coppermine River halfway to the Coronation Gulf, making their way from Hornby Bay into Big Tree River.  Now, in meeting Stefánsson, they had come to establish at the mouth of the Dease River near the site of Fort Confidence, the winter quarters of Simpson and Dease in 1837-9.  And already by then a retired Hudson’s Bay Company officer Joe Hodgson had built a house about six miles up the Dease River and had brought his wife, son, daughter, and nephew there to spend a season, so that he might realize an old dream of getting away for a little from the main stream of the fur trade.  Dease Bay, then, and Dease River – one of the classic routes into the Coppermine and to the Coronation Gulf – were not unknown, not unpopulated.  And Hornby, in sending word to Fr Ducot and adding his warning about that primordial and murderous suspicion between Indian and Eskimo, was only repeating at large what Stefánsson could confirm at first hand.  Anyway Hornby would be no stranger to Fr Ducot; and Bishop Breynat who happened to be at Norman when the letter arrived thought it “had every appearance of an invitation from heaven.”  He acted at once and in the spring sent to Fort Norman Fr Rouvière who had been at Fort Good Hope since 1907.  To establish single-handed a mission to the Coronation Gulf Eskimo, an unsophisticated stone-age people, in country largely unexplored and unmapped was perhaps a difficult and hazardous task.  But Rouvière, 30 years old and proud to be chosen, set off from Fort Good Hope “joyeusement” in the Mission boat Sainte-Marie on 5 July, 1911, to steam up river the 100 miles to Fort Norman.

Rouvière had at least the vague assurance of help from Hornby, though he did not yet know how ambiguous that assurance could be.  But Hornby had already gone to Fort Norman to see Melvill and Mackinlay off on the Mackenzie River, and so was there when Rouvière arrived.  And others who are taking part in this story also came in that steamer: the Douglas party – George Douglas, an engineer; his brother Lionel, a sea captain; and Dr August Sandberg, geologist and metallurgist – on the first stage of a carefully planned trip to explore the mineral resources of the Coppermine River.

Rouvière, Hornby, the Douglas party – all met in Fort Norman: a little cluster of log shacks, two stores, the Roman Catholic Church and Mission, and the Protestant church (out of commission), all on the point where the Mackenzie and Bear Rivers join, and Bear Rock to the north, and away to the west the Carcajou Mountains, the northern outriders of the Rockies.  And the destinies of these people were for a time threaded together.  So I have translated some parts of the ten letters Fr Rouvière wrote[2], and Fr Michel transcribed, to complete the account of this bleak and groping martyrdome.

*          *          *

Fort Norman to Dease Bay would have to fall into two stages: a strenuous journey (if the boats were at all heavily laden) of 90 miles up the Bear River, tracking through shoal water and rapids; then once arrived at Bear Lake, a 350-mile crossing, exposed on the open water to winds with a long fetch.  The Douglases left Norman on 8 July with six Indians to help them and reached the lake on the 14th.  Rouvière and Hornby, with other Indians racing those with Douglas, arrived next day with their outfit in a barge: “magnificent weather; not a breath of wind; but thousands of mosquitos.”  The Douglases with their York boat set sail (literally) on the 16th: that Sunday being the date of Fr Rouvière’s first letter describing the journey so far and discussing plans.

Yesterday evening, Saturday, I saw the brothers MacDougal [actually Douglas] preparing to set off as soon as the wind was favourable; but they couldn’t find many people to help them across the lake.  This morning, Sunday, the wind being favourable, they have set off.  Yesterday in the evening I saw Hornby and Stankr [Bill Store], Mr Hornby is a bit anxious.  Hod[g]son has not arrived yet.  Until he does he [Hornby] has no boat; he thinks to put part of his supplies in Yanisse’s barge and cross in a little canoe; nothing is really settled.  The Indians think of leaving on Tuesday if the wind is fair.  I shall probably continue my voyage with them as far as the other end of the Lake.  After that, I don’t know how I shall make out.  So far the good God has kept me well and I ask him every day to preserve me to the end, until I can fulfill the difficult mission which has been entrusted to me.  I rely much also upon your good prayers.

I saw Mr Hornby to-day Sunday.  Nothing has been decided about where to winter.  His idea is to get as close as possible to the Eskimo, perhaps going right to the sea-coast to winter.  His scheme seems all right to me; but if we adopt this plan, our winter supplies are no use; almost impossible to take them so far without enormous expense.  A second obstacle is the return journey.  We should have to have an Indian to go with us all the time, so that he could lead us back and I doubt whether we could find a family to do that.  I am determined to do all I can to get an Eskimo family to stay with us.  This way we could learn their language fairly quickly – an indispensable step towards ministering among them.  That can’t be finally decided until after the first meeting [with the Eskimo]....

On 21 July (Friday) he added a postscript.  He was wind-bound near Point Etacho; Hodgson had arrived and must have taken this letter back to Norman.  Rouvière reached Dease Bay on 29 July.  The Douglases had arrived on 25 July; and while Lionel started to build their winter house at Hodgson’s Point, George Douglas and Sandberg had set off up the Dease River to explore the route to the Coppermine.  On August 10, long after he had been reasonably expected, Hornby arrived at Fort Confidence; and two days later he and Rouvière started up Dease River by canoe to find the Eskimo.

The Dismal Lakes (so named by Hanbury) was their destination; a long narrow lake east of the treeline, lying in the rolling eroded area of the Barrens.  They had no accurate map and the headwaters of the Dease River can lead even a careful traveller to other places than the Dismal Lakes.  On 15 August, after struggling for two days up against the strong cold current, through shoal water that forced them to push and carry the canoe, through 30 or 40 rapids, they were “past all the worst places”.  An Indian told them there were Eskimo nearby; so on the third day they went another four or five miles up steam, made camp, and set out to look for the Eskimo.  “At last I’ve seen the Eskimo,” Rouvière told Fr Ducot in a letter of 18 August.  He wrote another letter that same day to Bishop Breynat; and since that letter had been published, the following version is based primarily on the unpublished letter to Ducot with interpolations from the letter to Breynat.

.... For two days, in company with Mr Hornby, we had been travelling over the barrens hoping we could meet them [the Eskimo] not far from the Dease River.  When we reached the place where we thought we’d find them, we didn’t see them anywhere.  We met several Indians who told us that the Eskimo weren’t hereabout.  The weather was wet and foggy, we couldn’t see any distance and could hardly keep our direction, without Mr Hornby’s compass and he had left it in camp that day; so we went back on our tracks.

The next day on we go again determined to meet them.  It was the 15th August … All day we walked south-westerly, hoping to meet them.  Nobody in sight.  About six in the evening, we met an Indian from Fort Rae who told us that they were probably in a north-easterly direction, and pointed out a hill where they ought to be camped but still at a great distance.  Nevertheless we set off and walked for about an hour and a half in that direction; but nothing drew me in that direction – actually something was repelling me.  Suddenly I decided to go no farther.  Mr Hornby didn’t altogether share my idea: he decided to go on farther.  So I went back on my tracks.

After three-quarter of an hour’s walk I see something at the top of a hill.  I go in that direction to see what it is, and then I see several people in a cleft of the hill.  Are they caribou?  I can’t tell at that distance.  To make sure I go towards the hill.  After walking about ten minutes, I see a crowd of people in the fold of the hill.  There’s no doubt about it: these are Eskimo.  Thanks, O mother Mary.  One of the first points of my mission is about to be fulfilled.  Be pleased to bless this first encounter.  As soon as they see me they come towards me.   One of them is walking in front, holding his arms to the sky and bowing at the same time.  I reply by raising my arms aloft, and immediately they increase their pace.  When they get close to me, the man who was walking in front turned to the others and calls to them the single word “Krablunar” [i.e. Kabluna] [which means] – “It’s a white man.”  He comes towards me, gives me his hand and takes me by the arm to present me to the whole group.  I shake hands with all of them and give out some medals which I place around their necks.  All are overcome with admiration.  They bring me to their camp and invite me to eat with them.  Refuse?  Not likely, because I had been walking since eight in the morning, it was nine in the evening, and myself nearly starved.  Anyway I enjoyed my food.  Then I struggled to make them understand that I had come on their account and to stay among them.  At once they all wanted to come with me to bring back our gear.  I couldn’t take them all.  Nevertheless one of them followed me.  Two days later I paid them a second visit with several Indians.  All of them showed great enthusiasm.... They are clearly very pleased that one should be interested in them.  Unfortunately we can’t understand each other; but their language seems quite easy and very little different from the language of the Mackenzie Eskimo, if I can judge from the few words I’ve been able to pick out.  The Indians will give us lots of information about them.

I am resting today.  Tomorrow... I am going back to Janisse’s camp, to spend the day with them and then on to the head of Bear Lake, collect my communion vessels and some other things; then make my way back to Dismal Lake, and finally build a shelter for the winter and – between times – visit what other Eskimo happen to be about.

Among the Bear Lake natives I have made four baptisms... Lots of details later.  In the meantime, I commend myself to your kind prayers....

Hornby and Rouvière returned separately to Dease Bay on 19 August.  By the 29th they were up the river again beyond their old camp and only four miles (they reckoned) from the source of the Dease.  And fogbound.  But they still couldn’t find the Dismal Lakes and at last established where there was wood at the north-east and end of Lake Imaerinik, called Dease Lake by Rouvière, and Lac Rouvier by Douglas.  But the log house they were building against the winter was far from finished when Hornby (to Rouvière’s annoyance) returned to Dease Bay in the middle of September to get his house ready for the winter.  On 20 October Hornby and the two Douglases came with dogs to bring Rouvière down; and by the first of November all were settled in their winter houses: Hornby and Rouvière in Hornby’s house near the ruins of Fort Confidence, the Douglases in their near house on Hodgson’s Point six miles upstream.

In his letter of December to Fr Ducot Rouvière summarised these activities and discussed his plans.

.... Mr Hornby intends to pay a visit to the Eskimo in March and wants me to go with him.  The distance isn’t very great, the journey easy enough judging from what I saw in the summer.  I should like to make the trip, with the idea – if I could – of attracting the Eskimo as near as possible to Bear Lake.  That way it would be easier to make contact with them.  I seek your advice.  What do you think?  If you think it’s useless to make the trip, I’ll refrain and take the road for Fort Norman so that I can take up the community life again as soon as possible.  But if I make the journey to the Gulf I need to make my way to Fort Norman immediately after my return, towards the end of March or at the beginning of April....

... Now, a word about the Eskimo.  It was September the feast of the Nativity of the BVM, that a group of ten or twelve families came and pitched their camp around our tent; but they stayed only two days.  From that time, throughout the rest of September and the first fortnight of October, almost every day I was visited by some Eskimo, sometimes a family or two, sometimes four or five families.  The same ones came to see me several times.  I estimate the number of Eskimo I have seen at about 150 to 200.  All of them seem fairly well disposed and if I could manage to learn their language a little, I’d have plenty of hope in them.  There will be some tough nuts among them, I think, but I don’t think these will be in the majority.  They are too goodhearted to put up much of a fight against grace.  But the language, - that’s the trouble.  I have collected some words, but not as many as I would have liked, and that – I must say frankly – is Mr Hornby’s fault for leaving me alone for almost a month.  Having to finish the house – or practically to build the thing – I have had only a little time to devote to them [the Eskimo].  For all that I am quite satisfied, for I now know the country a little and the ordinary places where they are to be found.  If next year the Bishop is pleased to send me among them again I shall be able to follow them for at least two whole months before they move off towards the sea.  Actually, to say truth, I am enjoying myself....

The Douglas Brothers and Co. live about six miles from our house.  They are extremely kind to me.  They were the first to kill caribou... As for ourselves, we are living in abundance.... If Fort Norman were a little closer, we could arrange for you to share the abundance of our supplies; but alas we have no aeroplane...

An aeroplane?  Fantastic dream; they hadn’t even enough dogs.  On 13 January Hornby was restless to go out to Norman to meet the express; and Rouvière wrote a short letter to Ducot.  But Hornby couldn’t get away then because of weather; and on the 25th when he set off with Dr Sandberg and only two dogs, the journey was too much for them; they returned from Gros Cap on the 27th.  A month later Hornby managed to travel out with a group of Indians.  The main reason for his journey was to get more dogs; and Rouvière’s letter of 26 February (which probably travelled out with the January letter) besought Fr Ducot to use whatever influence or resource he could muster to provide dogs.  Hornby was becoming increasingly interested in a trip to the coast, with an eye perhaps on trade with the Eskimo; and the fact that the Douglases were travelling down the Coppermine as soon as the season allowed gave him the opportunity to transport, equipment, and company.  Rouvière tried to correlate his plans with Hornby’s but was nervous about going ahead without the approval of his superior; and his letters did not go out.  And when on 24 March Indians arrived from Norman with a dog-team to take Rouvière to Norman, Hornby was vague and evasive and hadn’t come back from Franklin, so Rouvière saw no reason to wait.

He met Hornby at Fort Franklin and sent back with him a note for George Douglas.  Hornby reached Dease Bay on 17 April to find the Douglas party almost ready to leave for the Coppermine, and presented to him this specimen of Rouvière’s English prose style.

Old Fort Franklin,

April the 7, 1912

Dear Sir

Excuse my poor english but I feel like obliged to write one word and tell you many thanks.  We got a fine trip on the first part, we start with the big sleigh runner but not far it was too hevy pulling so we lised [anglicised form of laisse: left] that at the big island.  After that we start with the toboggan and camped at the big rocky island and the next day at the caribou point.  We were obliged to stop one day on account of a strong wind but we got a very fine day for the crossing.  After that the very strongest winds every day but the fine wind for us.... back wind but after that very stormy weather with a havy (sic) travelling we took for (sic) days to cover the distance we intend to do in one day and the half.  At Old Fort Franklin we met Mr Hornby but my dogs were so tired that I was obliged to rest two days.  Thanks very much for your good compass but by a very bad luck I do not now have it.  I lost it but hope to be able to find again but never mind I will try to compence for that.

Fr Rouvière stayed at Fort Norman all spring and the early summer.  The Douglas party, with Hornby and some Indians, made their journey down the Coppermine to the sea, and were back at Hodgson`s Point on 20 June.  The Douglases, who had met a single Eskimo man at the end of the Dismal Lakes in the fall of 1912, saw a good many more on the summer journey.  At the Bloody Falls a group of 25 or 30, mostly women and children, were sighted at a distance and three men crossed the river to speak to them, bringing a musk-ox hide.  At the coast they met and spoke to a migrating family of seven: “Decidedly the most pleasant of the Eskimo we saw,” George Douglas said.  And at their Teshierpi campsite on the way back they met at first two men “not up to the standard of the other Eskimos we had seen in their looks or intelligence”; and when the other three members of the family showed up Douglas did not feel inclined to alter his assessment.  One of these men wore the characteristic ornamental long-tailed coat, and Douglas photographed him shooting ptarmigan with an Eskimo bow of the primordial pattern with its threefold extravagant curve.  Altogether these Eskimo, though they varied in intelligence and in cleanliness, impressed the Douglas party as well-mannered, friendly, not unduly rapacious in begging, and anything but menacing.[3]  The Douglases were in a hurry to catch the last steamer up the Mackenzie to civilization that season; set out on 26 June (leaving Hornby standing melancholy upon the shore) and reached the entrance to Great Bear River on the evening of 19 July.  Later that night they came up with a camp of Indians and there – after rousing the whole camp – found Fr Rouvière on his way upstream again for Dease Bay and the Eskimo.  But now he had a companion: Fr Guillaume LeRoux, born in 1885 in the diocese of Quimper.  A linguist of some accomplishment, LeRoux had been at Fort Good Hope since 1907; now Bishop Breynat had ordered him to join Rouvière.  He was taller than Rouvière.  They had set out from Norman on 15 July 1912.  When the Douglases met the two priests on Bear River they were struck by the fact that Fr LeRoux, though two years younger, less experienced, and junior to Rouvière, behaved as though he were in command of the gentle young, strong-minded, simple-hearted priest whom they had come to respect and admire through a winter and two seasons.  LeRoux (they thought) had a domineering way with him, unattractive, overbearing, almost insolent.

Windbound for a week at Franklin, the two priests reached Dease River about 11 August and found Hornby waiting for them.  They set up in the Douglas cabin at Hodgson’s Point (about which George Douglas had given them written instructions), and by 27 August had gone on to establish in the little cabin at Lake Rouvière.  One 1st September they met the Eskimo again.  On the 13th Rouvière was back at their Dease Bay base, leaving LeRoux with the Eskimo; and on that day he wrote to Bishop Breynat.

Our trip from Fort Norman to old Fort Confidence on Dease Bay was accomplished with excessive slowness.... The crossing lasted a good four weeks: one week at Bear Lake, one week to get up Bear River; six precious weeks passed between Fort Norman and Fort Confidence.  Most of that time was spent sailing on the lake, while the Eskimo were waiting impatiently for us at Dease Lake 80 miles north-east of Bear Lake.  Seeing that we didn’t come, they scattered and some have pulled out from there to go back again to the sea.  Thanks to this long delay on the lake, we only just met the Eskimo at the beginning of September.  At this moment Father Leroux is with them and, if I hadn’t had to come down to Bear Lake to see the natives, I should have been keeping him company.  The Eskimo always seem very good-natured to us and very well disposed.  Last year I had shown some of them how to make the sign of the cross, and I was delighted to see that they hadn’t forgotten it and even that several others to whom I had not been able to teach it already knew it.  I’ve asked a young man to be good enough to spend the winter with us at Bear Lake; he hasn’t raised a shadow of difficulty about accepting.  Many would have liked to come with him.  He isn’t yet with us; but I like to think that he’ll stick to it and that perhaps next spring I shall be able to bring him to Fort Norman to help me cross the lake.  To induce him to stay with us I have promised him a 40-44 rifle.  Since I have only one [rifle] I should then find myself without a firearm – a very useful thing, even indispensable at this point; for we still have to count on ourselves, and not much on the others, for food....

Last spring, at the beginning of June, Douglas and Co. met the Eskimo at Dismal Lake and from all appearance they are going to come back again next spring.  So I keep wondering whether it wouldn’t be better for one of us to stay and go to meet them, so as to spend the whole summer with them and not merely one or two months.  If you could give us an answer by the express, I’m not afraid to undertake the journey myself and go even to Bloody Falls where they spend the spring.

If the trip isn’t possible this spring coming, I think we could easily undertake it the following spring; for I have a hunch we shall succeed.

Mr Hornby has been very good to us; he has even made me a present of a fine rifle, but with precious few cartridges.  I have accepted the present, hoping that you would approve.

The rifle – did Rouvière know? – was an ambiguous gift; it was an 8 mm Mauser, the property of George Douglas.  Rouvière’s next letter was not written until 29 January 1913 at Fort Norman: it is addressed to Bishop Breynat and contains almost the only information there is of their doings and Hornby’s for the interval of four months.            

My Lord:

In my previous letter dated last September, I told you that the best way to see our Eskimo was to spend the spring at the head of the lake.  At the same time I asked you for a reply by the second express; but, after considering everything carefully with Fr Leroux, we had decided that one of us should stay at the head of the lake while the other went out to Norman in the spring to meet the steamer.  With this in mind, I have undertaken the trip to Fort Norman so as to warn Fr Ducot and at the same time to acquaint you of our proposal.  What was my joy when, on reading your letter, I saw that you had not only approved our decision, but had anticipated it by instructing one of us to stay while the other came out to Fort Norman.  It is the only way to succeed in doing anything with those people.  I had already decided to stay at Bear Lake all summer, until the spring of 1914, so as to make some progress in the study of the Eskimo language.  I also told you that we had met the Eskimo in the month of September; but after our first meeting the devil took a hand in the game, I suppose, and our visit has probably not produced the result we hoped for.

First, I had to come in October to Bear Lake to do the fishing, Fr Leroux staying alone at Dease Lake with Mr Hornby; but four or five days after I left Mr Hornby fell seriously ill and Fr Leroux had to watch him night and day for a month, and throughout this time he wasn’t able to get into touch with the Eskimo who were not far from there, so that the whole month of October slipped away with nothing done.  The time lost we thought to make good in the winter with the Eskimo family who had promised to stay with us; but here too we were disappointed.  The Bear Lake natives also wanted to have the Eskimo with them.  They asked two Eskimo families.  And among them – what a choice – was my young man.  They came to Bear Lake at the end of October; but the Hare Indians didn’t feed them very well, and these Eskimo wanted to go away – as they said – to hunt muskox, promising to come back when the sun was a certain height above the horizon.  At that point, I should have liked to keep them; but I was alone and couldn’t attend to them.  On top of all that, I had to go and collect Fr Leroux who was still at Dismal Lake, so to my great regret I had to let them go.  It was after that that I decided to spend the spring at the head of the lake, so as to make good the lost time and to some extent too so that I could build a house for us; for so far we have been living in the Douglases’ house.  In spite of these little difficulties we are not discouraged.  With the good God’s grace and with perseverance we’ll get some results.  In this I have a firm confidence.  Fr Leroux has set himself with his whole heart to the study of the Eskimo language and has made a lot of progress.  We haven’t had a single difficulty.  The Father is aware of his own quick temper and is striving to subdue it.  He has never tried to hurt my feelings.  I like to think that our good relations will not be soon disturbed.  After all the reports I was given last year, I was afraid there would be some difficulties; but the good God had taken everything in hand and nothing has come about to disturb our good understanding....

Now I ought to tell you that the Bear Lake people didn’t turn out to be particularly obliging about helping us last summer.  They saw that they were rather necessary [to us] and made difficulties about helping us.  I promised them that in future we would try to do without them.  For that our canoe is a little small.  We should need a craft rather larger that could carry at least 1800 to 2000 lbs.  If that were so we should be happier; for it’s probable that the Eskimo won’t make any objection to coming to help us.  If we could get from the Sainte Marie three or four gallons of coal oil we should spare our eyes and our candles.

I’m probably going to leave Fort Norman again to return to Dease River next week.  Mr Hornby has come with me; but I don’t know whether he is going to return to the head of the lake or stay at the Fort....

Below the surface of this letter some darker undercurrents run.  Compared with the previous winter when Hornby and Rouvière were sharing a cabin and the Douglas party was only a few miles away and they could share talk or a game of chess from time to time and eat their Christmas dinner together, the winter of 1912-13 was being an unhappy one.  The Eskimo had been elusive, the Indians evasive and unhelpful.  Some time there was a brisk quarrel between LeRoux and Hornby from LeRoux’s refusal to give Hornby stores left for him in the Douglas storehouse.  There were other troubles more personal which need not now be specified.  With Rouvière there was no trouble; but Rouvière had to side with LeRoux.  And while Hornby kept to his own cabin at the mouth of Dease River, the fathers dispiritedly set up winter quarters at Hodgson’s Point in the Douglas house.  Also, according to Rouvière’s letter LeRoux had nursed Hornby in his illness at the Lake Rouvière cabin.  But in May 1916 Inspector LaNauze heard the Eskimo Koglugouga testify through an interpreter that

Two summers before this happened [i.e. before the fall of 1914] I saw a white man named Hornybeena [Hornby] very sick at Imerinik [Lake Rouvière].  I tried to help him and he got better and went south.  After that an Indian woman told me two white men with long beards [the priests] were going to look for huskies but did not see them.

By January 1913 Hornby was very glad of the opportunity to travel out to Norman over the ice with his old friend Rouvière.  He was ill and disenchanted; he was becoming increasingly restless; he was less content with Dease Bay than he had ever been since first coming there with Melvill in 1908; he was not likely to return as long as LeRoux was there.  He returned to Dease Bay in March, but towards the end of April went back to Franklin again.

On 25 March Fr Rouvière wrote again to Bishop Breynat.  His return journey “with one little youth” to Dease Bay had nearly ended in disaster.

.... We had to make the big traverse of 45 or 50 miles.  In the morning the temperature was very mild and no wind at all.  So we set off very promptly, happy about the fine weather.  About ten o’clock a little breeze very cold springs up from the East and so we had it on the side.  The wind went on increasing hour by hour.  At noon you could see nothing over the lake.  It was a real powder-box.  At times, the dogs couldn’t go ahead, having no grip on the glare ice.  Night came but the wind held on.  At every moment we hoped to touch land, but it was a vain hope.  We travelled several hours in the dark, terrified of straying into the open, for I had no compass.  We finally decide to camp on the ice.  We drag out our sleeping-bags, release the dogs and set ourselves up in the shelter of our sleigh, wrapped up in our sleeping-bags.  In less than ten minutes we’re covered in a snow drift.  And so we’re able to sleep quietly without feeling any wind.  When we wake up we see the land about fifteen miles from us.  We get up then, sort out our team and without breakfast resume the march.  Our dogs were numb with cold and exhausted from the day before.  So they went very slowly.  Also the sleigh was heavy and weighed at least 500 lbs.  We had to walk all day to reach the place where we usually have tea.  We had gone through two days and one night without having anything hot.  At last we were in the woods.  We could make ourselves a good fire and rest in a good camp.

But now Rouvière remained at Dease Bay while LeRoux went out to Norman.  Hornby had stayed at his base at Fort Franklin when Rouvière came north but now had returned to Dease Bay and was evidently discussing plans for travelling to the coast – though one suspects that LeRoux was not included in these plans.  The priests had built themselves a new cabin on Ritch Island off the mouth of the river and had nearly finished the storehouse.  These were Rouvière’s plans:

.... After Fr LeRoux has left for Fort Norman I intend to make a trip to the Coppermine River, and perhaps even right to the sea, weather permitting.  It’s a good opportunity has turned up.  I could see the country and become familiar with it; and that would be very useful later on.  Mr Hornby is going to make this trip this spring and has offered to let me go with him.  In this way I can meet the Eskimo very early, and so spend the major part of the summer with them.  We should also be able to see in a fairly positive way the results that can be expected from all our efforts.

Also – since Dease Bay was now to be a substantial base – he asked for books and a few stores and comforts – some lamp oil to save their eyes, a boat.  And at the end he adds with simple pathos: “Last winter was very cold at the head of the lake; but we have no way of telling how low the temperature went.  Wouldn’t it be possible to [let us] have a little thermometer?”

LeRoux evidently did not get away for Norman until early April and there are no signs that Hornby and Rouvière ever made a spring trip to the Coppermine.  But in a manuscript summary made in 1923 Hornby recorded for this year “10-20 July Saw plenty of Caribou along the Coppermine River”; and by 1 August he was “close to Lake Rouvier.”  Perhaps it was on the Coppermine that Hornby had an unpleasant brush with the Eskimo Sinnisiak who, caught in the theft of a sealskin line, threatened to kill Hornby.  The Eskimo Hupo later testified that in the summer Hornby was with Rouvière and LeRoux at the Lake Rouvière house, and that Hornby went back to Bear Lake in the fall.  And Uluksuk alias Mayuk testified that “Hornybeena [Hornby] had told me once that if the Eskimos killed one white man the white man would come and kill every one of the Eskimos.”  Even Hornby seems to have realised that there’s no getting on with an Eskimo except on his own terms.  There would seem to be some truth in the tradition that before leaving for Dease Bay Hornby warned the priests that the Eskimo were “getting ugly”.  On 16 August Hornby was about ten miles south-west of Lake Rouvière; on the 18th he moved down to Dease Bay.  On 1 September, after the Dease Bay Indians had helped him launch the Douglases’ York boat Jupiter, he loaded up his gear and set off for Franklin.  Crossing the first big traverse he was caught in a storm and was driven ashore on a beach near Gros Cap. Hornby, almost destitute, managed to make his way onward to Fort Franklin.  Jupiter in August 1915 was still substantially intact though unseaworthy when Inspector LaNauze took the rudder off her; by 1928 there was no trace of her unless a few small pieces of timber in the sand may have been her bones.

*          *          *

In the early spring of 1915 D’Arcy Arden sent word from Bear Lake to Fr Duchaussois at Fort Norman to say that Eskimo had been seen at the coast wearing cassocks and surplices, and were in possession of sacramental gear that they can scarcely have come by in the normal way of trade.  Inspector C. D. LaNauze RNWMP left Norman on 22 July 1915 to investigate; went to the cabin at Lake Rouvière and found it burned out, plundered, and desolate; and, too late to travel to the Coppermine that season, wintered in the priests’ new house on Ritch Island.  By the middle of May 1916 he had reached the Coronation Gulf coast, learned among the islands the story of the murder, and traced and arrested the two murderers Sinnisiak and Uluksuk.  It was another year before the prisoners reached Edmonton for trial.  But one of the police travelled back up the Coppermine the 15 miles to the scene of the murder and there found part of a lower jawbone and some teeth, some pieces of cloth, a few fragments of bone that scavenging animals had not entirely consumed; and enough of the priests’ sleigh to make two rough crosses (because the bodies lay where they fell and had not been brought to one place); and a brief but legible diary.  In August 1913 Captain Joe Bernard had written from the coast to encourage them to set up their mission there.  “It has made up our minds at once,” Rouvière wrote to Breynat; “We are going to go.  Give us your blessing.”  The two priests had left Lake Rouvière on October 1913: both were more or less ill – LeRoux with a cold, Rouvière with an injury he had suffered in building their Dease Bay house.  The trip seems to have been a reconnaissance to see whether they could establish at the coast: certainly it was ill-planned and ill-provided; and late in the season.  The journey took two weeks; they were poorly clothed; the diary speaks over and over of “dreadful weather”, “difficult routes”, “adverse winds”, “intense cold”, “the dogs starving and worn out”.  At the end of the journey they came to an island off the mouth of the Coppermine; and here, on 20 or 22 October 1913 Rouvière made his last entry:

We have arrived at the mouth of the Coppermine.  Some families have already gone.  Disenchantment about the Eskimo.  We are threatened with hunger; also, we don’t know what to do.

They were threatened by other things too as later testimony showed.  There was an ugly episode in which an Eskimo tried to steal a rifle; LeRoux reprimanded him threateningly.  A friendly Eskimo warned them that they were in danger.  So they set off northerly for Dease River, still in white man’s clothes, without skins, with only a few half-starved dogs, with no tent or shelter, without a guide; and made poor time.  So that, when Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, following them for no clear reason, came up with them three days later they had travelled only ten miles.  “I hardly think the Esquimaux would kill them,” Hornby wrote to George Douglas from France in September 1915 “– unless they had done something to make them afraid.  Father Rouvièr[e] was not of the kind to do so, but Father LeRoux was a little too quick-tempered and not accustomed to handle savages.”  Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, in that curious trial in which all the main evidence was supplied by themselves in their unabashed and exquisitely detailed confessions, agreed.  “On the first day the priests were not angry with us .... We made a small snow-house for them.”  But the next day “the priests were angry with us” – LeRoux particularly who (ill no doubt, half-starving, cold, desperate, fatigued beyond patience) shouted at them, put his hand over Uluksuk’s mouth, threatened to strike them, menaced them with his rifle.  The two Eskimo (according to their own guileless statements) were terrified, trembling and in tears, and acted they thought in self-defense, certainly in some confusion.  Sinnisiak took the lead; combined cunning with speed to distract LeRoux, “the tall man with the pinched-in nose”; then stabbed him.  Rouvière was shot first by Sinnisiak, then stabbed by Uluksuk; and when Sinnisiak came up with him (he said) “The priest was breathing a little and I struck him with an axe across the face.  I cut his legs with the axe.  I killed him dead.”  In a few minutes it was all done and the two Eskimo headed back for the coast, with a little plunder, leaving the dogs howling over the corpses.

And when Sinnisiak, indicted for the murder of Fr Rouvière, was found not guilty in Edmonton the trial was moved to Calgary where a verdict of guilty was found against both men “with the strongest possible recommendation to mercy.”  The death sentence, passed of necessity, was immediately commuted to life imprisonment.  After two years of light detention at Fort Smith Sinnisiak and Uluksuk were returned to their own tribe off the Coppermine.