Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/834

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SHUSHAN


764


SHUSWAP


day by the performance of plays and masques. One form of cruel sport peculiarly prevalent at this seiison was the throwing at cocks, neither does it seem to have been confined to England. The festive observance of Shrovetide had become far too much a part of the hfe of the people to be summarily discarded at the Re- formation. In Dekker's "Seven Deadly Sins of Lon- don", 1606, we read: "they presently, like prentices upon Shrove-Tuesday, take the game into their own hands and do what they hst"; and we learn from contemporan,- writers that the day was almost everj'- where kept as a holiday, while many kinds of horse- play seem to have been tolerated or winked at in the universities and public schools.

The Church repeatedly made efforts to check the excesses of the carnival, especially in Italy. During the sixteenth centmy in particular a special form of the Forty Hours Prayer was instituted in many places on the Monday and Tuesday of Shrovetide, partly to draw the people away from these dangerous occasions of sin, partly to make ex-piation for the ex- cesses committed. By a special constitution ad- dressed by Benedict XIV to the archbishops and bishops of the Papal States, and headed "Super Bac- chanalibus", a plenarj' indulgence was granted in 1747 to those who took part in the Ex-position of the Blessed Sacrament which was to be carried out daily for three days during the carnival season.

NiLLES, CAlendarium Manuale Utriusque Ecctesi(F, II (Inns- bruck, 1897), 5.5-70: Thurston, Lent and Holy Week (London, 1904), 110-48; Idem in The Month (Feb., 1912); Rademacher in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, s. v. Carnival, can only be mentioned to caution the reader against the unsupported assump- tions upon which the whole treatment of the subject is based.

Herbert Thurston. Shushan. See Susa.

Shuswap Indians (properly Su-khapmuh, a name of unknown origin and moaning), a tribe of Salishan hnguistic stock, the most important of that group in British Columbia, formerly holding a large territory- on middle and upper Thompson River, including Shuswap, Adams, and Quesnel Lakes. On the south they bordered upon the Okanagan and Thompson River Indians; on the west, the Lillooct ; on the north, the Chilcotin; and on the east extended to the main divide of the Rocky Mountains. They are now gathered upon a number of small reservations at- tached to the Kamloops-Okanagan and Williams Lake agencies, besides a small detached band of about six-ty domiciliated with the Kutenai farther to tlu; south. From perhaps .5000 souLs a century ago they have been reduced, chiefly by smallpox, to about 2200. The principal bands are those of Kamloops, Adams Lake, Alkali Lake, Canoe Creek, Xeskainlith, Spaliumcheen, and Williams Lake, \\hat liltlc is known of the early histor>' of the Shuswaj) consists chiefly of a record of unimportant tribal wars and deaUngs with the traders of the Hudson Bay Com- pany, which <^tablished Fort Thompson at Kamloops a-s early as 1810. The work of Christianization and civilization began in the winter of 1842-43 with the visit of F'athcr Modestc Derners, who accompanied the annual Hudson Bay caravan from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia to the northern posts, and spent Hf)me time both going and returning among the Shu- swap at Williams Lake, preaching and instructing in a temporary chapel built for the ]nir]xmi by the In- dians. About two years later the noted Jesuit mi.ssionary, Father P. J. de Smet, and his fellow-la- bourers established several mi.ssions in British Co- lumbia, including one among the Shuswap. These wore continued until about 1847, when more prosing nocd in the south compelled a withdrawal, and for some; years t he Indians saw only an oc<;fusionaI visit ing priest .

In 1862 a rush of American miners into the newly (liwovered gold mine^ in the Caribou mountains at the head of Fraser River brought with it a terrible emallpox visitation by which, according to reliable esti-


mate, probably one-half the Indians of British Co- lumbia were wiped out of existence, the Shuswap suf- fering in the same proportion. In the meantime the Oblates had entered the province and in 1867 Father James M. McGuckin of that order established the Saint Joseph Mission on Williams Lake for the Shu- swa]) and adjacent tribes, giving attention also to the neighbouring white miners. A few years later the


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IJKDi'fED Facsimilk ok FiusT Pa(;k of Kamloops Wawa From Filling's Bibliography of the Salishan Languages

mi.ssion had two schools in operation sen-^cd by six Oblate fathers and lay brothers and four Sisters of Saint Anne. Father McGuckin was in charge until 1 >S2 and wius succeeded by Fr. A. (!. Moricf-, noted for his ethnologic and j)hiI()logic eontributions, includ- in-:; the invention of the Dene Indian svllabary. An- oiher distinguished Ohhde worker at "the same mis- sion Wiis Fr. John M. Le Jeune, editor of the " Kam- looi)s Wawa", published simc 1S!I1 at Kamloops, in tlu! Chinook jargon, in a shorthand system of his own invention.

In their primitive condition the Shuswap were with- out agriculture, depending for subsi.stence upon hunt- ing, fishing, and the gathering of wild oats and berries. The deer was the principal game animal and each family group had its own hereditary hunting gntund and fishing place. The salmon wa,s the prineip.al fish and was dried in large quantities as the chief winter provision. Aniong roots the lily and the f^amas ranked first, being usually roasted, by an elaborate pro- cess, in large covered pits. Considerable ceremony at-