Ranald, McLoughlin,Beaver

[Mike Cleven]

George Lang wrote:
>
> Whoops, sorry about the slip: Ranald was in fact a *grand*son of Concomly.
> And sorry to go so long.
>
> Ranald’s trip to Japan was an adventure worthy of his lunatic predecessors,
> Scot and Chinook.  He had himself cast off in a rowboat off the north
> coast, making it look like he had been unjustly thrown out by a harsh
> captain.  The Japanese didn’t buy the story.  Japan was officially closed
> to all contact with the West, which Ranald knew, in fact that was his
> point.  The legend has it that he was inspired in his mission after a
> Japanese boat drifted up on the Washington shore when he was a boy,
> demasted, or whatever, and than caught in the Black Current.  In the months
> he spent in Nagasaki awaiting exchange as a hostage, he taught English to
> Imperial interpreters who later dealt with Commodore Perry.  I think we can
> indeed assume that he was the first speaker of Wawa to visit Japan (but
> does anyone know who was on Perry’s ship?).  It is not true, but often said
> that he was the first English teacher in Japan.
>
> John McLoughlin certainly spoke French.  His mother, Angélique, had him
> baptized (Lhush khakwa, Mike, uk bastEn tsEm) “Jean-Baptiste” on Dec 5,
> 1784, a few months after his birth.  Before the arrival of Fathers Demers
> and Blanchet he was known to give Sunday services in French (in Rich’s
> Intro to the 1941 edition of the McLoughlin Ft Vanc. Letters to the HBC).
> “The only books [he used, per a letter to the Rev. Beaver, who clearly
> rotted his socks] “were a French Bible and a Penser Y Bien
having no French
> sermons my discourses were original compositions or translation from the
> English.”

Which gives me pause as to consider the "religious composition" of the
Scots working for the Company, such as McLoughlin; it makes sense that
Catholic Scots would get along better with Franco-Metis voyageurs et al,
especially out in the far boonies of the world as the Northwest was
(well, still is).  Does anyone know if there were also Protestants in
the employ of the Company; certainly its owners and members and senior
managers might well include Montreal Presbyterians or Church of
Englanders; although I don't know much about this except just enough to
raise the question; is there any pattern or consistency in the
religion(s) of Company staff?  Was Catholicism predominant or...?  I
know the Forts weren't paradigms of religiosity or upright living
(thankfully far from it!); you'd think a British Company would tend
towards Protestantism.  The reason I think this is important is that in
those days there would have been much friction within the confined
quarters of the outposts between rival Catholic and Protestant Scots;
the Orcadians who were the majority of the Company's Scots were not, so
far as I know, Jacobites nor suspected as such; but I don't know if the
Orkneys are Catholic or Protestant Scotland; Protestant - now - I'd
think, but ??

MC