PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT.
THE FINNS. {con't}
and character. The one kind were Catholics, pacific and lacking energy.
The others were Lutherans, he said; "fierce, fight, drink, but honest"-and
he added "These my people." He might have added most hard working
and industrious but I will add it for him. The preacher's description, al-
though not flattering holds good according to the writer's experience. I
did not know one of them who was a total abstainer; if they had drink
aboard they did not need much incitement to fight; in appearance they
were strong; most of them wore full beards, and they had a resolute and
somewhat truculent aspect; but their honesty was as proverbial as that
of some of their neighbors was to the contrary. They paid their debts
without being dunned. There were two men in the colony who had the
reputation of not being very good pay; that was all.
A Whitewood merchant told me that there was only one nationality
of the many he did business with, that he would give credit to because of
the nationality. He would not trust an Englishman because he was Eng-
lish or a Canadian because he was a Canadian, or a Methodist because he
was a Methodist, but he would trust a Finn because he was a Finn. Surely
very high and practical praise. Many people when a note come due, say
nothing, but let it run. Mr. Frank Terry, now of Wapella, and son of
the once well known Thomas Thompson Terry, was farming north of
Whitewood in the nineties and sold a yoke of oxen to a Finn, taking his
note with the name of another Finn upon it. The harvest that year was
poor. When the note fell due Mr. Terry knew the honest Finn would not be
able to meet it, and had forgotten the date it fell due. This Finn lived
nearly twenty miles off. On the day the note was due, before breakfast,
the two Finns turned up at Mr. Terry's place with the oxen to express
their regret they couldn't meet the note, and to offer the oxen back. Hon-
esty in excelsis! The reader will not need to be told that Mr. Terry gave
them a good breakfast, told them not to worry, and sent them with the
oxen away rejoicing.
In the winters of 1894-5 and 1895-6 I was boring for water with an
old Government man-killing auger of a very primitive type. It was in
boring for the Finns in the dead of the latter winter that I became so well-
acquainted with him at close quarters. For several weeks I lived with him,
ate with him, worked with him and sometimes slept with him.
I have said something about the natural intelligence of foreign children.
Let me illustrate this by a reference to two little girls in the first Finn
house I stayed at. The parents were farming of course. They had home-
steaded entirely "on their own," and occupied a long low log building, and
the big family bed was in the living room. I remember nothing about
my own sleeping accommodation. These Finns had come from the States.
They spoke English with fair fluency, but quite brokenly. The little girls
were respectively five and four years old. The parents were getting along
very nicely. They were out in the open some miles from the rougher
lands of the colony. I found that the children did not know a solitary
word of English, and asked the woman the reason. She said that her
husband and herself never spoke a word of English before the children.
Bibliography follows:
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