1	          December 1993
     2	
     3	          Setting the Foundation for the Settlement and
     4	          Civilization of the Indians of Western Canada
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     7	
     8	                Extract from 
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    10	
    11	HAVING in the preceding chapter pointed out some of the errors and
    12	defects in the missionary plan for civilizing and evangelizing the
    13	Indians, and its almost universal failure, we proceed now to offer
    14	some practical suggestions, the adoption of which would greatly
    15	improve, as we think, the existing system, and facilitate the work of
    16	salvation.  Without presuming that the plans we propose are suitable,
    17	without change, for universal application, we have long been satisfied
    18	that the course proper to be pursued among heathen tribes generally,
    19	many with some obvious alterations be applicable here, due attention
    20	being paid to the natural state of the people to be evangelized.
    21	     The first point to which we would more particularly call
    22	attention is the union of temporal and spiritual matters, which, as we
    23	have shown by examples sufficiently marked, ought not to be under the
    24	management of the same individual.  This reform makes the preparatory
    25	part of our plan, which places the heathen, while he learns the first
    26	step of civilization, entirely under secular guidance; except, perhaps
    27	occasional visits from the clergy.  In this way the first moral
    28	restraints would be imposed on the savage, who would learn the value
    29	of order and subordination without alarm to his prejudices.  It is the
    30	method which reason dictates, and experience enforces; but it is the
    31	one which, above all others, will excite the spirit of opposition, and
    32	we well know what arguments will be used, and the changes that will be
    33	rung upon them.  Matt. xxviii 19, 20.
    34	     In fact, the writer has vainly urged the consideration of this
    35	plan, both on Protestant and Catholic clergymen, who all condemned it
    36	from the text cited above.  'We must,' said they, 'preach the Gospel
    37	to every creature.'  But how then does it come to pass, we might ask,
    38	as we have asked them in conversation, that you clergymen do not obey
    39	this positive command, and preach the Gospel to every creature?  You
    40	have been located on the spot in question for the last thirty years;
    41	why not have preached the Gospel during all that time to 'every
    42	creature?'  You have not, so far as the heathen is concerned, preached
    43	to a tenth, a hundredth part of those around you!  You have
    44	established missions on your own plans, as we have already noticed,
    45	and what has been the result?  At this hour, the Indians are running
    46	as wild as ever in their native woods and prairies, nay, even in the
    47	settlement, and around your dwellings, and dying on every point,
    48	without the least regard to their lost state.  Our assembling,
    49	locating, and training the, as proposed, cannot entail more guilt on
    50	the dying, or deprive them in any greater degree of the means of grace
    51	than your present system.  If your arguments are worth anything, how
    52	are you justified in waiting till we locate the Indians, according to
    53	the plans you wish to dictate?  Why not, in obedience to the divine
    54	command, go to their camps, their dwellings, and 'preach the Gospel to
    55	every creature' now?  Why wait till  (London: 1856), Chapter XX.
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