Several years ago I was requested by a young Indian to treat his sister for consumption in an advanced stage. Two weeks afterwards I again visited the town of Walhalla, at the foot of the Pembina Mountains, and in these mountains the Indians lived. An Indian boy was in town with horse and buggy in the hope of taking me out to the settlement to see some others who were ill with various diseases. I told him I was going on to Winnipeg the next morning and would have to make the visit that night if I went. He assured me they would all be awaiting me at his father's cabin.
We started across the mountains after ten o'clock at night. After a five mile drive we arrived at his home,—a log structure about twenty feet square daubed with clay and roofed with sod. When I went into the dimly-lighted but cleanly apartment, I found nineteen dusky patients squatted in a circle against the walls waiting to be healed. They said Rosalie had recovered so rapidly that they knew it was the work of the Great Spirit, and so they all wanted to be healed.
I said, "And do you believe God will surely heal you?" They laughed, as at a jest, replying, "Oh, yes, yes; we know He will." Only a few could talk plainly. Nearly all understood conversation carried on in simple words. One interpreted for those who wanted treatment, bringing them up to me one by one, and giving me their names. I talked in a simple manner of God's goodness and love, and how that love destroyed evil, and of the obligations of the patients to correct their lives and obey God and love each other and be honest, etc. All this was listened to with intense interest and noddings of approval and assent.
