SPROTT
238
SQUIERS
Bxunption, at Worcester; and the Xaverian Brothers,
at Worcester and Millbury.
Statistics. — Official reports for 1911 give the fol- lowing figures: 300 diocesan and 14 regular priests (not including the Jesuits at Holy Cross and the As- sumptionists of the Apostolic School); 160 parishes; 28 missions with churches and 10 stations; 2 colleges attended by 600 students; 4 academies; 61 parochial schools, with 25,600 pupils; 5 orphan asylums; 1 in- fants' home; 27,000 young people under Catholic care; 6 hospitals; 5 homes for the aged; 3 working girls' homes; 1 industrial school; and 1 House of the Good Shepherd.
McCio /// ','/,.'//- (,.'/,,/.. I i:,< I h in New England (Bostoa,
1899); 1 / '.meat of the Catholic Church
in N'^rl 1; ■ i-_ " M \. History of the Catholic
ChurrhinU, /,:^,/s;.,/, i\r.,., \",,,k. 1890); MxtANET, Carto- lic PiUsfithI ami Birkshire (I'ittsfifW, 1S97); The Official Catholic Directory (New York, 1911).
Thomas F. Ctjmmings.
Sprott (Spratt), Thomas, Vener.vble, EngUsh martyr, b.atSkelsmergh, near Kendal, Westmoreland; suffered at Lincoln with Thomas Hunt, 11 July, 1600. Sprott was ordained priest from the English College, Douai, in 1596, was sent on the mission that same year, and signed the letter to the pope, dated 8 November, 1598, in favour of the institution in Eng- land of tlie archpriest. Hunt, a native of Norfolk, was a priest of the English College of Seville, and had been imprisoned at Wisbech, where he had escaped with five others, some months previously. They were arrested at the Saracen's Head, Lincoln, upon the discovery of the holy oils and two Breviaries in their mails. When brought to trial, though their being priests was neither proved nor confessed, nor was any evidence produced, the judge. Sir John Glanville, directed the jury to find them guilty, which was done. The judge died sixteen days afterwards under unusual circumstances, as Dr. Worthington (quoted by Bishop Challoner) records.
Challoner, Missionary Priests, I (Edinburgh, 1877), no3. 118 and 119; Knox, Douay Diaries (London, 1878), 16, 32: Pollen, English Martyrs 1584-1683 in Calh. Rec. Hoc. (London. 1908), 384.
John B. Wainewright.
Squamish Indians. — A considerable tribe of Sali- shan linguistic stuck, speaking a distinct language, holdinf; thi' territory about Squamish River and Howe Sound, above Eraser River in South-western British Columbia. From possibly 2000 souls a century ago they have dwindled, by smallpox visitation in 1862 and from results of earlier dissipation, to 690 in 1S90, and to 396 in 1910, on six small reservations under the Eraser River agency, viz. Mission or Burnird Inlet (219), False Creek, Kapilano Island, Burrard Inlet No. 3, Squamish or Howe Sound, and Seymour Creek. The Squamish are first mentioned by the voyager, Vancouver, who met and traded with them in 1792, but regular contact with the whites dates from the estabhshment of the Hud.son Bay Company trading po.sts in Lower British Columbia (1810^20). The earliest missionary worker was Father (after- wards bishop) Modeste Demers, who made a short missionary visit to the Lower Fraser in 1841. In 1857 the work of civilization and Cliristianization was regularly taken up by the Oblates — among them Fathers Casimir Chirouse, Leon Fouquet, and Pierre Durieu — with such success that the entire tribe is long since civihaed and almost entirely Catholic. The educational work is in charge of the Sisters of 1 he Holy Infant Jesus at the Squamish Mission, Burrard Inlet, by whom, according to the iifficial report (1910), "every attention and care jiossible is being bestowed on the children". The Indians are described as sub- sisting by farming, fi.shing, hunting, lumbering, and labouring, with good dwellings and stock well cared for; very industrious and of good morals, excepting a few intemperates. In this connexion Hill-Tout says: "Many of them have to-day, I am told, snug little
sums judiciously invested by their good friend and
spiritual director, the late Bishop Durieu, in safe
paying concerns. It is only fair to say, however, that
they deserve to be prosperous. They are probably
the most industrious and orderly band of Indians in
the whole province, and reflect great credit upon the
Roman mission estabhshed in their midst."
In their primitive condition the Squamish resem- bled, in their leading characteristics, the Sechelt, Songish, LiUooet, and other Sahshan tribes of Southern British Columbia. They hved chiefly by fishing, their main dependence being the salmon. They also hunted the deer with dogs, driving the deer into the water and there shooting it from canoes. Roots and wild berries completed their commissary. Their or- dinary houses were enormous communal structures from 20 to 40 feet in width and from 200 or 300 even to 600 feet in length, built of cedar planks, each family having its own separate fire and sleeping platform. Back from the coast they had also the communal semi-subterranean round house of the interior tribes. In household furnishing, baskets, of which they had a great variety, predominated. Their greatest skill was displayed in the shaping of their great dug-out cedar canoes, of which they had several types. Like their neighbours the tribe was divided into nobles, commons, and slaves. Chiefship was hereditary', each village being independent of the others. Poh'gamy was common. The dead were buried in boxes or canoes, laid upon the surface of the ground, and there were many pecuhar mourning regulations, particularly as concerned the widow. Abortion was common and female infants were deliberately strangled by whole- sale. A suitor signified his purpose by sitting beside the door of the girl's house for four days and nights without eating or drinking. The "potlatch", or ceremonial gift distribution, was the great intertribal festival; an instance is on record where over 2000 per- sons sat down to the feast and goods to the value of $5000 were given away. The puberty ordeal for girls included a four days' complete abstinence from food or drink, followed by an agonizing scratching over the whole body with thorny brambles. There were hypnotic dance performances and a barbarous dance common also to several other tribes, in which the prin- cipal dancer held in his hands a live dog which he de- voured piecemeal as he danced. According to their cosmogony the human race sprang from a race of animals with semi-human characteristics, the world being afterwards made fit for human occupation by four brother culture heroes. The best summary of their mythology and analysis of the language is that given by Hill-Tout. See also Lillooet Indians, Sechelt Indians, Songish Indians.
Hill-Tout, Notes on the StgomiV in Rept. Brit. .Assn. .Advance- ment Sci. (70th meeting, LonHon, lonoi; (pem, Cosmogony and History of the Skuamish in Trw /' h';,. Canada, 1897-98,
Section II, 2nd series, IV iM l^s.; Bancroft, Hist.
Brit. Columbia (San Franciscn, I -•-. - ,.i Depl. Ind. .\ffairs.
Annual Rept. (Ottawa); Moi..> i., ( ,;,,„.,..• Church in Western Canada (2 vols., Toronto, 1910) ; Va.vlouvkb, Voyage of Dis- covery, etc., 1790-5 (6 vols., London, 1801).
James Mooney.
Squiers, Herbert Goldsmith, army officer and diplomatist; b. at Madoc, Canada, 20 April, 1859; d. at London, 19 Oct., 1911. The son of John I. and Elizabeth Squiers, he was educated :it Canandai- gua Academy, Minnesota Military Academy, Mary- land Agricultural School, and Fordham University (A.M. and LL.D.); in 1877 he became second lieu- tenant, U. S. Army, and from 18S5 to 1890 V. S. military instructor at St. John's College, Fordham; he left to join his regiment, the 7th Cavalry, at the Indian Battle of Wounded Knee, and resigned as first lieutenant, 1S91. In 1894 he became second Secretary at the Legation at Berlin, and in 1898 first Secretary ;it the Legation at Peking, where he and his family were received into the Church by Arch-
