Metlakatla Pass
What was the residence of William Duncan (missionary) in late 1860s?
William Duncan ( missionary ) William Duncan ( 3 April 1832 – 30 August 1918 ) was an English-born Anglican missionary who founded the Tsimshian communities of Metlakatla , British Columbia , in Canada , and Metlakatla , Alaska , in the United States . Although sometimes referred to as Father Duncan in subsequent reports , he was never ordained . Early years . Duncan was born in the hamlet of Bishop Burton , Yorkshire , England , the illegitimate son of Maria Duncan , a teenaged servant . He was raised by his mothers parents , William and Elizabeth Duncan . In the 1841 census he is recorded as living with his father and his sister Mary Duncan on Lairgate in Beverley . In 1851 he was lodging with William Botterill , a tailor , and Mary Botterill in Keldgate , Beverley and his occupation is described as book-keeper . Duncan later worked in his grandfather/adoptive fathers trade as a tanner . Duncan became the only churchgoer in his impoverished family . In 1854 he joined the Church Missionary Society ( CMS ) and attended the Church Missionary Society College , Islington . Arrival in Canada . In 1856 the CMS sent Duncan to the North Pacific coast of Canada , and in 1857 he arrived at the remote Hudsons Bay Company ( HBC ) fort settlement at Lax Kwalaams , British Columbia , then part of HBCs New Caledonia district and known as Fort Simpson or Port Simpson . He proselytized among the Tsimshians and learned to speak Tsimshian from Arthur Wellington Clah , a Tsimshian lineage head and HBC employee . Clah was to later save Duncans life when the villages leading chief , Paul Legaic , threatened Duncan at gunpoint for ringing churchbells on the day of Legaics daughters initiation into a secret society . Legaic eventually became a key convert of Duncans . Founding of Metlakatla in British Columbia . Duncan led initially 60 Tsimshians to found with him a new utopian Christian community , Metlakatla , on Metlakatla Pass near present-day Prince Rupert , at the southern end of the small peninsula on which Lax Kwalaams sits . By the end of the summer in 1862 several hundred more joined the community ; Metlakatla was officially established that year within what was by then the Colony of British Columbia . When the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed 500 in Lax Kwalaams but only five in Metlakatla , Duncan had no qualms in convincing his flock that this was divine providence . In the early 1870s the Rev . William Henry Collison served with Duncan in Metlakatla , and Collisons memoir In the Wake of the War Canoe provides a portrait of the community . The community grew . In Metlakatla , Duncan exerted his own brand of low church Anglicanism , which involved a set of rules for Christian living and , controversially , eschewing the sacrament of communion so as not to whet the cannibalistic appetites of a people who he worried might be beholden to the anthropophagous rites of their secret societies . Duncans Rules at Metlakatla . 1 . To give up their Ahlied or Indian devilry 2 . To cease calling in conjurers when sick 3 . To cease gambling 4 . To cease giving away their property for display ( i.e . the potlatch ) 5 . To cease painting their faces 6 . To cease drinking intoxicating liquor 7 . To rest on the Sabbath 8 . To attend religious instruction 9 . To send their children to school 10 . To be cleanly 11 . To be industrious 12 . To be peaceful 13 . To be liberal and honest in trade 14 . To build neat houses 15 . To pay the village tax New Metlakatla in Alaska . Such doctrinal differences , plus Duncans insistence on total control over his parishioners lives , led to a split with the Church of England . Duncan was expelled from the CMS in 1881 and transformed his mission into a nondenominational Independent Native Church . Eventually , he decided to found a second utopian community on Annette Island , Alaska , on the territory of the Tongass tribe of Tlingit . He obtained permission from the US government—travelling to testify before Congress himself—to establish an Indian reservation there ( still Alaskas sole Indian reservation ) , then led approximately 800 Tsimshians in a canoe voyage from Old Metlakatla to New Metlakatla , Alaska , in 1887 . The new community was successful , especially economically successful , with a sawmill , cannery , and other enterprises . Economic self-sufficiency was a core tenet of Duncans vision for the community . His split with the Church of England was not amicable and involved ( according to one version of events ; see Johnson in bibliography ) sending a canoe-load of Tsimshians , including Peter Simpson , back to Old Metlakatla to destroy the old church there , on the grounds that ownership of it should not revert to the CMS . The religious orientation of New Metlakatla became a nondemoninational form of low-church Anglicanism , quite evangelical , and under the strict doctrinal control of Duncan himself . Rivalries with other local leaders . Later , portions of the community , notably those under the leadership of the Rev . Edward Marsden , defected to Presbyterianism , the dominant faith of the surrounding Tlingit communities . Marsden even assisted in the establishment of a rival , Presbyterian Tsimshian community at nearby Port Gravina ( 1892–1904 ) and , later , campaigned tirelessly and with some success for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to oust Duncan from his position , partly on grounds that Duncan had too much authority in the community and opposed any Native self-betterment through education and individual economic self-sufficiency if it put parishioners out of his personal control . In 1914–1915 , the Interior Department seized many of the Mission buildings and built a modern school at Metlakatla . The Marsden-Duncan feud , as well as the long legal , political , and personal struggle between Duncan and William Ridley , the Anglican bishop in charge of northern British Columbia , intersected , most notoriously , with charges of sexual misconduct against Duncan , charges which have severely tainted his historical reputation , though he was never convicted or punished , and the charge was later concluded to be slander by the Commission of Indian Affairs . He also managed to make an enemy of the medical missionary Robert Tomlinson , an Anglican who had served under him in B.C . and been an ally in his dissent from the CMS . Tomlinson and his son Robert Tomlinson Jr . served in Metlakatla , Alaska , with Duncan from 1908 to 1912 before leaving for B.C . again out of disenchantment with the way Duncan was running the community . Death and legacy . Duncan died at the age of 86 on 30 August 1918 , in New Metlakatla , Alaska after a months-long decline associated with a bronchial infection apparently resulting from a fall . Duncan remains an extraordinarily controversial figure in Tsimshian communities today , with many fierce admirers and many fierce detractors . Bibliography . - Arctander , John W . ( 1909 ) The Apostle of Alaska : The Story of William Duncan of Metlakahtla . New York : Fleming H . Revell Co . - Beynon , William ( 1941 ) The Tsimshians of Metlakatla , Alaska . American Anthropologist ( new series ) , vol . 43 , pp . 83–88 . - Bowman , Phylis ( 1983 ) Metlakahtla—the Holy City ! Chilliwack , B.C. : Sunrise Printing . - Garfield , Viola ( 1939 ) Tsimshian Clan and Society . University of Washington Publications in Anthropology , vol . 7 , no . 3 , pp . 167–340 . - Johnson , Gertrude Mather ( 1994 ) The Life of Peter Simpson . In Haa Kusteeyí , Our Culture : Tlingit Life Stories , ed . by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer , pp . 665–676 . Seattle : University of Washington Press . - Murray , Peter ( 1985 ) The Devil and Mr . Duncan . Victoria , B.C. : Sono Nis Press . - Neylan , Susan ( 2003 ) The Heavens Are Changing : Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity . Montreal : McGill-Queens University Press . - Pierce , William Henry ( 1933 ) From Potlatch to Pulpit , Being the Autobiography of the Rev . William Henry Pierce . Ed . by J . P . Hicks . Vancouver , B.C. : Vancouver Bindery . - Tomlinson , George , and Judith Young ( 1993 ) Challenge the Wilderness : A Family Saga of Robert and Alice Tomlinson , Pioneer Medical Missionaries . Seattle : Northwest Wilderness Books - Usher , Jean ( 1974 ) William Duncan of Metlakatla : A Victorian Missionary in British Columbia . ( National Museums of Canada , Publications in History 5. ) Ottawa : National Museums of Canada . - Wellcome , Henry S . ( 1887 ) The Story of Metlakahtla . London : Saxon . - Wellington Clah , Arthur ( 1997 ) How Tamks Saved William Duncans Life . Recorded by William Beynon , 1950 . In Tsimshian Narratives 2 : Trade and Warfare , ed . by George F . MacDonald and John J . Cove , pp . 210–212 . Ottawa : Directorate , Canadian Museum of Civilization . - Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the United States Part 35 : Metlakahtla Indians , Alaska