Company fool or God's tool: Robert Terrill Rundle, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Plains Indians.

"One squeeze of the trigger and I can rid us of this pest before it bites a single soul." (1)

The line quoted above demonstrates how novelist Fred Stenson imagined John Rowand, chief factor at Fort Edmonton, reacted in October 1840 to the arrival of Robert Terrill Rundle, Wesleyan missionary. In his novel, The Trade, Stenson stays close to the truth and Rowand (referred to as One Pound One) does not actually attempt to exterminate Rundle. However, in a book that treats all other characters with respect, Rundle is viewed with contempt. In Stenson's story, the missionary departs from the pages of the novel as a broken man, viewed as a failure by everyone, and more importantly, a failure in his own eyes. (2)

This fictionalized version of Rundle would appear to support the claim of Gerald M. Hutchinson that the missionary has had "poor press" in comparison with later missionaries. (3) Admittedly, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBCo) did not view Rundle as favourably as later more robust Canadian missionaries such as George McDougall, but was he such a failure? It is this "poor press" that the present paper examines to discover if Rundle really was such a pariah on the western plains.

Available evidence confirms that he was tolerated, at best, by the HBCo, but that is not the whole story. While Rundle did not rebel against the constrictions the Company wished to impose on him as overtly as his Wesleyan superior, James Evans, Rundle still managed to independently chart his own path through Rupert's Land. (4) He saw himself as a missionary to the Indians, not as a servant to Governor Simpson, and he had the courage to take his mission into the field and the personal qualities to attract an audience. In spite of what commentators have written since, there is every reason to believe Rundle succeeded in his mission.

Rundle apparently did not enjoy the admiration or respect of HBCo. Some of the factors that generated these feelings may have been circumstantial, rather than related directly to the missionary's actions. Attempts to civilize native people were viewed sceptically by many people who had an economic interest in the fur trade. (5) Missionaries were imposed on the HBCo in part by Christians sitting on the London Board. In addition to the evangelical fervour of the Board members, the HBCo had been forced to react to the public sentiment which believed Christianizing indigenous people all over the world was in the best interests of these people.

The Company also was subject to Parliamentary inquiries when renewing its monopoly and understood it had to respond to the evangelical tenor of the times. HBCo Governor George Simpson was careful not to reveal his inner thoughts on having his company serve missionary goals, but it is likely he accepted missionaries only as a political necessity. Once it was clear that men would be sent to Rupert's Land, Simpson saw their role as working within the trade structure which he hoped would bring economic benefits to the business. (6) In fact, Simpson brought Wesleyan missionaries to Rupert's Land in part in reaction to his failure to control Anglican missionaries already there, and as a way to regain control and treat missionaries as employees of the HBCo. (7)

He may have considered it natural to control men like Rundle who, in class-conscious England, would have been seen as his inferior. Rundle, as were most missionaries, was of "low-birth" and mediocre education. (8)