William Duncan (missionary)
Encyclopedia
William Duncan 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 and was not described as such in contemporary accounts.
, Yorkshire
, England, the illegitimate son of Maria Duncan, a teenaged servant. He was raised by his mother's 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 father's 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 CMS-run Highbury College
.
(HBC) fort settlement at Lax Kw'alaams, British Columbia, then part of HBC's New Caledonia district
and known as Fort Simpson or Port Simpson. He missionized among the Tsimshians and learned to speak Tsimshian
from Arthur Wellington Clah
, a Tsimshian lineage head and HBC employee. Clah was to later save Duncan's life when the village's leading chief, Paul Legaic
, threatened Duncan at gunpoint for ringing churchbells on the day of Legaic's daughter's initiation into a secret society. Legaic eventually became a key convert of Duncan's.
. When a subsequent smallpox
outbreak killed 500 in Lax Kw'alaams 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 Collison's 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."
. 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 U.S. government—travelling to testify before Congress himself—to establish an Indian reservation there (still Alaska's 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 and other enterprises. Economic self-sufficiency was a core tenet of Duncan's 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.
, 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 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.
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.
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.
Duncan remains an extraordinarily controversial figure in Tsimshian communities today, with many fierce admirers and many fierce detractors.
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
missionary who founded the Tsimshian
Tsimshian
The Tsimshian are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Tsimshian translates to Inside the Skeena River. Their communities are in British Columbia and Alaska, around Terrace and Prince Rupert and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. There are approximately 10,000...
communities of Metlakatla, British Columbia
Metlakatla, British Columbia
Metlakatla, British Columbia, is a small community that is one of the seven Tsimshian village communities in British Columbia, Canada. It is situated at Metlakatla Pass near Prince Rupert, British Columbia...
, in Canada, and Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla is a census-designated place on Annette Island in Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 1,375.- History :...
, in the United States. Although sometimes referred to as "Father Duncan" in subsequent reports, he was never ordained and was not described as such in contemporary accounts.
Early years
Duncan was born in the hamlet of Bishop BurtonBishop Burton
Bishop Burton is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies on the A1079 road approximately to the west of the market town of Beverley.According to the 2001 UK census, Bishop Burton parish had a population of 628....
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, England, the illegitimate son of Maria Duncan, a teenaged servant. He was raised by his mother's 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 father's trade as a tanner. Duncan became the only churchgoer in his impoverished family.
In 1854 he joined the Church Missionary Society
Church Mission Society
The Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
(CMS) and attended the CMS-run Highbury College
Highbury College
Highbury College is a general further education college in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. It provides vocational and academic education and training, from first-step courses to university level foundation degrees, specialised services for business and education in the community. The College is a...
.
Arrival in Canada
In 1856 the CMS sent Duncan to the North Pacific coast of Canada, and in 1857 he arrived at the remote Hudson's Bay CompanyHudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
(HBC) fort settlement at Lax Kw'alaams, British Columbia, then part of HBC's New Caledonia district
New Caledonia (Canada)
New Caledonia was the name given to a district of the Hudson's Bay Company that comprised the territory largely coterminous with the present-day province of British Columbia, Canada. Though not a British colony, New Caledonia was part of the British claim to North America. Its administrative...
and known as Fort Simpson or Port Simpson. He missionized among the Tsimshians and learned to speak Tsimshian
Tsimshianic languages
The Tsimshianic languages are a family of languages spoken in northwestern British Columbia and in southern Alaska on Annette Island and Ketchikan. About 2,170 people of the ethnic Tsimshian population in Canada still speak the Tsimshian languages; about 50 of the 1,300 Tsimshian people living in...
from Arthur Wellington Clah
Arthur Wellington Clah
Arthur Wellington Clah was a Canadian First Nations employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Lax Kw'alaams , B.C., who was also a hereditary chief in the Tsimshian nation, an anthropological informant, and an extensive diarist....
, a Tsimshian lineage head and HBC employee. Clah was to later save Duncan's life when the village's leading chief, Paul Legaic
Ligeex
Ligeex is an hereditary name-title belonging to the Gispaxlo'ots tribe of the Tsimshian First Nation from the village of Lax Kw'alaams , British Columbia, Canada. The name, and the chieftainship it represents, is passed along matrilineally within the royal house called the House of Ligeex...
, threatened Duncan at gunpoint for ringing churchbells on the day of Legaic's daughter's initiation into a secret society. Legaic eventually became a key convert of Duncan's.
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 Kw'alaams 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 ColumbiaColony of British Columbia
The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866. At its creation, it physically constituted approximately half the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, since it did not include the Colony of Vancouver Island, the vast and still largely...
. When a subsequent smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
outbreak killed 500 in Lax Kw'alaams 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
William Henry Collison
William Henry Collison , also known as W. H. Collison, was an Anglican missionary among First Nations people in coastal British Columbia, Canada....
served with Duncan in Metlakatla, and Collison's 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
Low church
Low church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
Anglicanism, which involved a set of rules for Christian living and, controversially, eschewing the sacrament of communion so as not to whet the cannibalistic
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
appetites of a people who he worried might be beholden to the anthropophagous rites of their "secret societies."
"New" Metlakatla in Alaska
Such doctrinal differences, plus Duncan's insistence on total control over his parishioners' lives, led to a split with the Church of EnglandChurch of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
. 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
Annette Island
Annette Island, or Taak'w Aan, is an island in Gravina Islands of the Alexander Archipelago of the Pacific Ocean on the southeastern coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is at . It is about long and about wide. The land area is...
, Alaska, on the territory of the Tongass tribe of Tlingit. He obtained permission from the U.S. government—travelling to testify before Congress himself—to establish an Indian reservation there (still Alaska's sole Indian reservation), then led approximately 800 Tsimshians in a canoe voyage from "Old" Metlakatla to "New" Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla is a census-designated place on Annette Island in Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 1,375.- History :...
, in 1887.
The new community was successful, especially economically successful, with a sawmill and other enterprises. Economic self-sufficiency was a core tenet of Duncan's 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
Peter Simpson (Native rights activist)
Peter Simpson was a Canadian-born Tsimshian activist for Alaska Native rights. He grew up in Metlakatla, Alaska, but his Tsimshian ancestors were from Lax Kw'alaams and Metlakatla, British Columbia....
, 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.
Duncan's Rules at Metlakatla
- To give up their Ahlied or Indian devilry
- To cease calling in conjurers when sick
- To cease gambling
- To cease giving away their property for display (i.e. the potlatchPotlatchA potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...
) - To cease painting their faces
- To cease drinking intoxicating liquor
- To rest on the Sabbath
- To attend religious instruction
- To send their children to school
- To be cleanly
- To be industrious
- To be peaceful
- To be liberal and honest in trade
- To build neat houses
- To pay the village tax
Rivalries with other local leaders
Later, portions of the community, notably those under the leadership of the Rev. Edward MarsdenEdward Marsden
The Rev. Edward Marsden was a Canadian-American missionary and member of the Tsimshian nation who became the first Alaska Native to be ordained in the ministry....
, defected to Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...
, 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 for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...
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.
The Marsden-Duncan feud, as well as the long legal, political, and personal struggle between Duncan and William Ridley
William Ridley (bishop)
William Ridley was an English missionary for the Church of England in Canada and served as Bishop of Caledonia.-Life:Ridley was from Brixham Devonshire, England, and was the son of a stonemason...
, 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.
He also managed to make an enemy of the medical missionary Robert Tomlinson
Robert Tomlinson
Robert Tomlinson was an Irish medical missionary for the Church of England, known for his work with the indigenous peoples of British Columbia....
, 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.