Taissumani: May 3

The Hudson’s Bay Co. post at Churchill from the west, October 12, 1894, photographed by J. B. Tyrrell, from Hudson’s Bay Archives, Archives of Manitoba.

Hudson Bay Co. “trading store” at Churchill, no date, from the Hudson’s Bay Archives, Archives of Manitoba

On July 9th in the year 1835, Reverend William Cockran of the Church Missionary Society station at Red River, in what is now Manitoba, attended a funeral.

On returning home, he went directly to his room to write down the name and age of the deceased.

Immediately he was interrupted by a servant-girl who came in to tell him that Colon, his servant-boy, was calling for him. The minister perceived no sense of urgency, and continued his writing. When he was finished, he headed out to visit Colon, but in the yard he met the same girl, who told him, “Colon is dead.”

“Impossible,” he responded, and quickened his pace.

But on reaching Colon’s room, he found the young man dead.

The servant-boy’s name was Colon Leslie. He was an “Esquimaux” who had earlier lived for some time at or near the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Churchill.

On occasion, the company asked Inuit farther north to leave a few young men with them at the post for a year or two, to learn English and the ways of the white men, so as to subsequently facilitate better trade. This practice had begun over a hundred years earlier when the trader, Henry Kelsey, had taken two boys, Jerry and Sharper, to live at the post.

Inuit boys learned English through these prolonged visits, and a few of the company’s men learned Inuktitut. The Inuit also learned about British attitudes and customs, and practical matters such as the construction of traps and ways to prepare skins that met the merchants’ requirements for trade.

When the young men returned to their families, they were usually well supplied with clothing as well as articles for their families, who acquired “preferred customer status” with the company.

Colon Leslie may have been one of these boys who lived at the post for a time. Or he may have lived with his parents nearby. We simply don’t know.

In fact, we know very little at all about him. I have referred to him as a young man, although the meagre sources on his life sometimes call him a boy. We don’t know his age, but he was probably in his teens.

He may have taken his surname from Hugh Leslie, a manager at the Churchill post. Although a non-Inuit surname could indicate a parental relationship, it was in those times more likely to indicate a feeling of respect or obligation to the white man whose name was appropriated.

Young Colon showed promise as a student, and was sent south from Churchill, to a school run by the Reverend Cockran’s mission in the Red River Settlement, where he learned reading, writing and arithmetic. Cockran had an agricultural background and taught his young charge “the art of husbandry.” And when the mission got a carpenter, young Colon was apprenticed to him.

Colon Leslie would never see his parents again. Of them, we know nothing, other than that they were Inuit and not Christian.

We know this because one day, the young man said to the missionary, “I am thinking about my poor parents. They have never heard that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. What will become of them, if they never hear of Jesus Christ? No one will ever go to them, to preach the Gospel.”

He asked Cockran to write to his parents and “tell them that Christ came to save sinners; and that He will save them from everlasting punishment, if they believe on Him.” The missionary replied, “Write yourself: they know you better than me: if I write, they will say that it is I that speak to them, and not you.”

The winter before his death, Colon Leslie was sent to a place known as The Indian Settlement, where Cockran was introducing farming to the Saulteaux and Cree Indians. There Colon learned to grind corn and repaired a grist-mill. Cockran’s hope was that Colon would remain there, that the Indian Settlement would be successful in growing grain, and that Colon could have employment there both as a miller and a millwright.

“But God’s ways are not our own,” wrote the missionary. Colon’s health was not robust and took a turn for the worse in the spring of 1835. Cockran brought the young man back to his own station, where his condition improved.

But then influenza struck the community and Colon was one of the first to contract it “and in a few days was brought so low as to be unable to rally.” But, unexpectedly, he did rally. On the sixth day of his improvement, the missionary “began to have the most sanguine hopes of his recovery.”

But by that very evening he was dead. “In the morning, and at noon, he has the prospect of a speedy recovery, and of entering again on the business of life,” wrote Cockran wryly. “In the evening he is wrapped in his winding-sheet.”

Thus ended the short life of Colon Leslie, a fragment of northern and Inuit history. Were it not for brief references to his unique experience in the missionary record, we would now nothing of him at all.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.