Performance in the Pacific Northwest

This article by J. Gordon Smith was published in the Victoria Daily Colonist on 16 June 1901. It is a two-page feature, including six photographs, and provides a detailed account of a religious drama that was performed in Chilliwack, BC, on 8 June 1901. 

Scan of full page article from 1901 newspaper. Five black and white images of scenes from the performance form the shape of a Christian cross.

Chilliwack Passion Play

Introduction

History

Reactivations

Media

Discussion

Bibliography

Introduction

Passion plays depicting the final days and death of Jesus were a popular form of theatre in medieval Europe, and enjoyed a renaissance in the nineteenth century, when the Oberammergau in Bavaria, Germany, performed since the seventeenth century, became internationally renowned. In the 1880s, Oblate missionaries in British Columbia introduced a version of this performance practice to Indigenous peoples.

I first came across primary sources documenting this performance practice while retracing the steps theatre historian Chad Evans took while researching his 1983 book Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska. The Evans fonds are held at the University of Victoria Archives and consist of four file boxes including Evans’ research notes, prints of photographs, manuscript drafts, and newspaper clippings. A file titled “Indian Theatre – Passion Play,” caught my attention; in particular, I was drawn to a copy of a clipping from the 16 June 1901 issue of the Victoria Daily Colonist, which provided a detailed description and photographs of a performance that took place in Chilliwack, where I lived at the time.

I was surprised to come across the file in the Evans fonds, as I had no recollection of Evans discussing passion plays in the published book. As Matthew Tomkinson and I learned more about these performances, Evans’ omission became even more noticeable: we have found evidence of fifteen distinct performances, in locations ranging from Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast to the Kootenays, occurring between 1887 and 1913. From the late 1880s until the outbreak of World War I, passion plays were staged across British Columbia, performed primarily by Indigenous performers, for audiences of hundreds or even thousands of mainly Indigenous spectators.

History

The Daily Colonist article is a two-page feature, including six photographs, and provides a detailed account of a passion play that took place in Chilliwack on 8 June 1901. The article is much longer than a typical play review from the time, suggesting that something about this particular performance was considered remarkable.

The photos are captioned as follows: “And for his garments they cast lots,” “And they crucified him,” “Weep not for me, but for your children,” At the foot of Calvary, “Father, forgive them,” and Head of the Procession Behind the Village. The captions largely draw readers’ attention to the specific moments in the Bible being theatrically represented and, in the case of the final caption, contextualize how the photo fit into the performance. The first five images are laid out in the shape of a cross on the first page of the article. The captions and the shape of the images on the printed page suggest that the religious aspect of the performance, rather than its theatrical content, might have been one element notable enough to justify the ample space on the page afforded to the event.

J. Gordon Smith, the article’s author, not only provides details about the play itself, but also the events surrounding it. Indigenous attendees and Oblate representatives gathered by 5 June, when opening ceremonies were held to commemorate the late Bishop Durieu. The gathering also included a celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi, a performance by children, processions, musical performances, and fireworks. Smith explains all the components of the gathering in his article, clearly situating the performance as part of a larger cultural and social gathering.

Prints of two of the photographs from the Daily Colonist (captioned in the paper as “And they crucified him” and “Father, forgive them”) are in Library Archives Canada’s collection. The performance and the gathering that accompanied it was documented by photographers A.H. Barnes (A.H. Barnes Collection at the University of Washington) and the Edwards Brothers (Edgar Herbert and George William) and accounts of it were published in newspapers across the province.

The Performance: Procession Through Moving Tableaux

The performance began with Father Eugene Casimir Chirouse overseeing the organization of the tableau, while photographers set up nearby. When Chirouse saw that everyone was ready, he raised his hand, and “then began a chant in many tongues.” According to the Nelson Daily Miner, this chanting began at around three pm, when the church bell was rung.  The Indigenous attendees assembled, singing “O Cross, Our Only Hope,” and forming a procession, first of the children of the Missions “in two tines,” followed by “maidens,” then older women (“klootchmen”) and their families, then men. Smith recounts: “On the worshippers marched, until their long lines, reaching out for nearly a mile, had surrounded the village, and the Chief with the large cross, who was leading, was nearing the first scene of the Passion.”[1]

At around 4 pm, according to Smith, the procession reached the first tableau, which represented Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It then proceeded from tableau to tableau, with spectators witnessing around twelve scenes depicting events of Christ’s passion: the treason of Judas, Christ before Pilate, the scourging of Jesus, Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, Jesus returning to Pilate, Jesus falling under the weight of his cross, Jesus and his mother, Veronica wiping his face, Christ exhorting the daughters of Jerusalem to weep for their children and not for him, Christ being nailed to cross, then finally, Jesus’s crucifixion.

 Smith describes these tableaux as moving pictures, at least some of which included dialogue or narration. The primary language of the performance was Chinook (a trade language used across in the Pacific Northwest), which both Indigenous and European participants and spectators likely would have understood.

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[1] The Catholic Telegraph’s account has the procession forming earlier, at noon, and includes a different order of participants: “The chiefs of the thirty tribes represented marched first, with the priests, their banners inscribed with various Christian mottoes, coming after them. Then the members of the tribes fell in order, followed by the women and the little children down to those who had to be carried on the shoulders of their mothers.” It also indicates that the procession included accompaniment from a band playing marching music, which concluded as soon as the initial procession concluded. This account has the line marching around the “spot where the cross was to be erected” three times, with the marchers singing hymns in Latin.

Participation

As they proceeded from tableau to tableau, Smith notes that the Indigenous participants in the procession were actively involved, “chanting hymns, reciting prayers, and telling beads.” They were, according to Smith, appropriately moved by the spectacle, for example they were “silent for a moment in their chant” when they “gaz[ed] at the spectacle of Christ with the soldiers… pressing down” his crown of thorns. Smith describes the aural juxtaposition of the “weird melody” of the chants with the “recitative of the Latin prayers, now soft as a moan and again like the cry of a wounded animal,” as generating an “effect [that] was thrilling” for (presumably non-Indigenous) observers.

Although the performance took place in Stó:lō territory, most of the performers featured in the tableaux were Shíshálh (Sechelt) and had travelled to perform. Different actors played Jesus in each scene, with Chief George (of Skwa) likely playing him in the Garden of Gethsemane and Shíshálh actors mentioned as portraying him in most other scenes. Christ thus had a number of different bodies, with Smith describing the range: Chief George was “passive as a wax figure… his brown face [shining] with religious fervour”; then “a tall fine looking Indian” portrayed Jesus in the scene before Pilate; in the scourging, the actor was “an older Indian”; then in the crown of thorns tableau, he was a “well built and strong boned brave.” When Christ falls beneath the cross, he was played by a “dusky Indian, round limbed and strong looking”; then when the character is nailed to the cross, he was played by “a sub-chief of the Sechelts… a fine brawny looking Indian buck, whose thick set muscles stood out as he lay outstretched on the leaning cross.” Costuming unified the representations: Christ is described as wearing red and blue robes in most scenes.

Props As Material Remains

In the final scene, of the crucifixion, Jesus was represented by an effigy rather than an actor. This allowed for a piece of stagecraft that seems to have been a centrepiece of this variety of Passion Play. Smith tells readers: “Suddenly from the wounds of his hands, feet and side, blood began to flow for to such ends the true pictorial production had been carried.” The account of the performance in the Catholic Telegraph indicates that “The interior of the cross contained a mechanism by which the flow of a small reservoir of red fluid, resembling blood, was regulated at the proper times. Even the impressive view of the wounds was thus shown. When the nails were driven into the hands the blood trickled down the wood and the same occurred in the fastening of the feet.”

Learning about the cross prop that allowed for the appearance of actual blood flow was surprising for me: this seems like quite a sophisticated piece of stage technology for the context. The machinery that allowed for the effect of blood flowing on cue would have required some trial and error, and the crucifix and effigy of Christ were described by the Kamloops Wawa as being life-sized (34). I would hypothesize that because of the effort involved in perfecting the effect and the size of the prop, the crucifix prop was likely not a one-off for just the Chilliwack performance, but would have travelled with the priests and perhaps the Shíshálh performers, and been used in more than one performance.

The reference to the crucifix prop raises a number of material and practical questions: Who was involved in building the crucifix? When was it built and how long was it used for? Where did the props builders get the idea for how to make it work? Did they have familiarity with stagecraft practices used in Europe or in parts of BC with more theatrical activity? Where did the prop end up once it was no longer used in theatrical performances? The use of the crucifix prop alerts us that these passion play performances went beyond what we might assume about grassroots religious performance, signalling the preparation and artistic sophistication at work, and gesturing toward connections with not only other religious activity but with other theatrical activity and traditions. 

The Passion Play in Religious Context

The Passion Play was nested into a longer duration performance context. Smith provides a chronology of the events leading up to and following the performance of the Passion Play. On 5 June, opening ceremonies commemorating the late Bishop Durieu were held, then Indigenous attendees marched to the cemetery where masses were held. That evening “a great gathering was held in a big pavilion at the side of the square – a meeting for the renewal of the pledges of temperance;” this was followed by a service delivered by Father Rohr of Port Douglas.

On 6 June, the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated in the community’s church; the Kamloops Wawa estimates that 1300 people were in attendance (34). This was followed by the “children of the mission” performing that evening; they “delighted the elder people by their programme of dialogues, songs, recitations and fancy drills” (Smith). The Passion Play was supposed to be performed on 7 June but was postponed due to weather. On 8 June, after the play ended, Father Rohr told the full story of Jesus’s life, from birth to death. After that, everyone went to pray in the church, then had dinner. Finally, after the sun went down, “a grand torchlight procession was held by the Indians in honour of the visit of their Bishop” with “each man and woman carrying a Chinese lantern, lamp, or flare” in a “slow march around their village, the windows of whose houses were illuminated with candles.” This went on until around 11 pm, when cannons went off, a short concert by the “massed bands” was held, and after “rockets exploded in the centre of the square[,] the Indians retired for the night.” The next day, after celebrating Corpus Christi with another mass, everyone took down their tents and went home.

The Social Gathering at Skwa

Estimates of the audience size ranged from 2,500 to 5,000, including around 3,000 Indigenous participants (Catholic Telegraph). Smith indicates there were very few “tourists” in attendance, suggesting that the remainder of spectators at the passion play were locals from the Chilliwack area. The Indigenous participants gathered for a week, and Smith attempts to take account of the Nations represented: “There were Shuswaps from the mountains, with their klootchmen and papooses. Thompsons from the canyons of that far away tributary of the Frasers. Sechelts from the [illegible] beaches where the tides of the Pacific ebb and flow. Lilloets, Tlaiamens, Port Douglas and many other peoples from the upper country: Squamish, from Burrard Inlet; Lumnis, from the islands of the Gulf of Georgia; Cowichans, from the valleys of Vancouver Island, and representatives from many corners of British Columbia.” Throughout his account, Smith remarks upon the presence and the actions of approximately thirty chiefs, both in the performance and the related events.

The other group of notable attendees were members of the Roman Catholic leadership of British Columbia. The gathering was held, in part, to commemorate the late Bishop Durieu, one of the Oblates who apparently generated the idea of Passion plays being performed by Indigenous people. Smith notes that Augustin Dontenwill, the Archbishop of Vancouver was an honoured guest and that Eugene Casimir Chirouse, the director of the mission at St. Mary’s, oversaw the play performance. The group of Oblate priests who were present at Skwa were regular organizers of these performances, part of a small group of Roman Catholic priests who were heavily involved in these practices.

Relationship to Medieval Performances and the Oberammergau

Passion plays in BC were often performed around the Corpus Christi feast, celebrated 60 days after Easter Sunday. Corpus Christi, in the Catholic church a “commemoration of the doctrine of transubstantiation and a signal reminder to the faithful that Jesus Christ died for the sins of humankind” (Watson and McKernie 72), traditionally combined religious and secular practices. Beginning in the early fourteenth century with processions leading into church yards, by 1400 the Corpus Christi was a major festival in many western European towns, with plays representing old and new testament stories performed by clergy and laymen in vernacular language. Christ’s passion was a central feature, often “frighteningly and pitiably realistic” (Wickham 76).

Not only did the passion plays imitate elements of Corpus Christi plays from the late medieval period, it also compares specifically to the Oberammergau Passion Play, performed in Bavaria, Germany almost every ten years since 1634. Smith noted:

While this presentation of the Passion Play by the British Columbia Indians does not compare with that of Oberammergau in its elaborateness, it greatly outdoes it in the beautiful simplicity of these children of nature, who are the actors, and in their earnest conviction and piety, which their religious faith alone inspired. Two or three decades ago, could it have been the privilege of the sightseer to have visited Oberammergau, the Passion Play could have been viewed in all its grandeur of innocence, but time and the influx of tourists in their thousands has changed all this, and now simplicity has vanished before the greed of gain, and the actors in the great drama in the Bavarian Alps are professionals rather than devotees. What was done formerly in the observance of a vow is now performed at Oberammergau for money, and the enchantment has disappeared. Not so with the simple minded Siwash of British Columbia. These forest children are now at the stage where the European peasant was one hundred years ago, and their work, alone for the love of the Master, comes from their hearts.

 Maibelle Justice, the author of a pamphlet entitled “The Passion Play in America,” similarly compared passion plays in BC to the Oberammergau, noting that the origin of “this wonderful drama” is in “the little village of its historic origin, Ober-Ammergau” but that “This drama is now conceded as the sublimest spectacle of civilization, and when the desire of the modern age to see and hear the drama at Ober-Ammergau is taken into consideration, what must be the impressions of this once savage race when it has accepted a Christian religion and looks for the first time upon the living pictures of Christ’s crucifixion?” (980, 981).

 These links to other performance traditions, like the use of the bleeding crucifix, suggests that the priests who introduced these performances had knowledge of historical uses of theatre and performance within Christian traditions.

Religious Pedagogy

Passion plays were introduced, according to an article that appeared in the Evening Star in 1899, by Father Chirouse to the Shíshálh. After having a “comparatively easy” time teaching “the verbal word of God,” Chirouse found that he could not manage to have the Shíshálh understand the “real meaning of Christianity”: Christ’s Passion. After a conversation with “an old Siwash somewhat renowned as a medicine man,” Chirouse apparently came to understand that the problem was that the man had not seen Jesus suffer and die for human sins with his own eyes. According to the Evening Star “Within three days a perfected plan rested in the brain of Father Chirouse. It was the plan of a play to be enacted by Indians for Indians, a play with living actors, and with scenes typifying the Passion of Christ.”

The relationship between medieval Corpus Christi traditions, their revitalization in the pastoral setting of Oberammergau, and the displacement of these practices to British Columbia as a pedagogical tool isn’t likely a historical accident. Oblates viewed Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest as an “even more ‘childlike’ and simple population than French peasants” and believed that they “would be corrupted and destroyed by modern liberal society.” They therefore “needed the sacred and ancient customs of the Catholic Church not merely to save their souls but to save them from modernity” (Stewart 82). One area for further research concerns the larger motivations and tactics of the Oblates, in relation to modernity/tradition and their use of older practices to introduce or maintain what they imagined as traditional practices among Indigenous peoples.

Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Resistance

Settler observers and Oblate missionaries provide an account of Passion Plays that represents Indigenous participation as voluntary, enthusiastic, and devout. However, we also know that by 1901, relationships between settlers and Indigenous people in British Columbia were often problematic. While I haven’t found any Indigenous accounts of passion play performances that counter the idea that Indigenous participants were enthusiastic and devout, I find myself skeptical as I read Smith’s, and other, accounts.

One way into articulating this skepticism comes if we look at a brief article that appeared in the Victoria Daily Colonist on 8 June 1901, the same day that the performance at Skwa took place.

Newspaper clipping, text read, in part: Will Not Accept Canners Offer—Passion Play Postponed. Vancouver, June 7--(Special.)--A large gathering of Indians at Chilliwack today decided unanimously against accepting the canners offer of twelve cents per fish for July, and ten for August. Thirty-three chiefs signed petitions to the grand lodge of fishermen to fix price at 15 cents.

The article, in full, reads:

A larger gathering of Indians at Chilliwack today decided unanimously against accepting the canners offer of twelve cents per fish for July, and ten for August. Thirty-three chiefs signed petitions to the grand lodge of fishermen to fix price at 15 cents…If the present feeling continues this will undoubtedly be fifteen cents for the season. The Indians declare they will not start to fish unless fifteen cents is guaranteed.[i]

We can assume that the thirty or so chiefs who were gathered at Skwa were the same thirty-three chiefs who signed the petition. While the chiefs were apparently participating in religious services, commemorating a dead Bishop, and performing in a religious play, they were also using the time together at Skwa to discuss labour conditions for Indigenous workers in the canning industry, and were coming to a consensus around demands for higher pay.[ii]

 Although Indigenous demands around fair pay within the fishing industry were ultimately not met in 1901, Indigenous fishers and cannery workers continued to fight against an industry that hoped to exploit their labour, and Indigenous participants in the fishing industry were one of the most important labour groups in the early twentieth century (see Mickleburgh).

The Daily Colonist article about fishery negotiations opens the door for a consideration of what other political and social roles passion plays and the large gatherings that accompanied them played in Indigenous life under the Indian Act. In 1884, the Potlatch ban came into effect, criminalizing many forms of ceremonial performance and traditional social exchange, and in 1886, the pass system was implemented. The pass system, which was never technically enacted into law, restricted Indigenous peoples’ mobility by requiring them to get a signed pass from an Indian agent in order to leave their reserve. Within five years of the Potlatch ban, in either 1887 or 1889, Indigenous people from the Pacific Northwest began to participate in passion plays, which allowed them to legally travel off reserve and gather with members of neighbouring nations for an extended period of time.

It seems plausible that the thirty-year practice of passion plays was not only about Indigenous participation in Catholicism but was also about preserving social and political spaces whose existence was prohibited by the Indian Act and the pass system.

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[i] The 15 June 1901 issue of the weekly Lillooet-based Prospector also covered the gathering, with a segment that read:

         A large gathering of Indians at Chilliwack last week decided unanimously against accepting the canners’ offer of 12 cents per fish for July and 10 for August. Thirty-three chiefs signed a petition to fix the price at 15 cents. A meeting of the grand lodge will be held this week in Vancouver, at which a final decision will be come to.

[ii] Following the meeting at Skwa, Nikkei fishers settled with canners, for twelve and a half cents per fish and with a daily limit. In late June 1901, Indigenous and White fishers called for labour action, which was short-lived but intense. The strike, which pitted Japanese-Canadian against White and Indigenous fishermen, resulted in the “canners ruling the Fraser” and uniting to form the BC Packers Association (Mickleburgh, chapter 3, paragraph 23)

Reactivations

The resources below offer examples of scholarly and/or artistic engagements with the artifact and/or its associated histories. These materials are also valuable to consult for classroom discussion and further research.

Media

Discussion

Question 1

Reporters for the Victoria Daily Colonist, the Catholic Telegraph, and the Nelson Daily Miner differ in their accounts of what happened, particularly in their descriptions of the procession that preceded the performance.

Why might this be?

Are these differences significant?

What might a performance historian do to navigate these differing accounts?

Question 2

Passion plays originated, in medieval Europe, as a way to educate a largely illiterate population about Christian theology. The Evening Star article suggests that a similar motivation was at work when passion plays were introduced in British Columbia, but that theatre was specifically used in order to induce beliefs, to encourage Indigenous audiences to believe in something they hadn’t seen for themselves, by providing events to actually witness.

Does Smith’s account suggest that audience members/participants “believed” in what they were seeing?

Question 3

Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor (1994) uses the term survivance to blend survival and resistance, to mark “an active sense of [Indigenous] presence” and resistance surviving over time (vii).

If we assume that Indigenous leaders regularly used the gatherings that accompanied passion plays to discuss political strategies in the era of the Potlatch ban, and that some of these same Indigenous leaders were also actors in passion plays, how does this change how one might interpret the cultural meaning of passion plays?

Bibliography

“A large gathering…” The Prospector, 15 June 1901, p. 1. https://open.library.ubc.ca/viewer/proslill/1.0212497#p0z-5r0f:. Accessed 17 October 2023.

Clapperton, Jonathan. “Naturalizing Race Relations: Conservatism, Colonialism, and Spectacle at the Banff Indian Days.” Canadian Historical Review, vol. 94, issue 3 (Sept. 2013), pp. 349-79.

 Evans, Chad. Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska. 

Gordon Smith, J. “Passion Play—Impressive Religious Spectacle.” Victoria Daily Colonist, 16 June 1901, pp. 9-10. https://britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1901. Accessed 10 May 2023.

“Indian Celebration at Chilliwack.” Kamloops Wawa, September 1901, pp. 33-35.

“Indians at Chilliwack.” Victoria Daily Colonist, 8 June 1901, p. 1. https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist19010608uvic/mode/2up?view=theater. Accessed 10 May 2023.

Justice, Maibelle. “The Passion Play in America.” https://chinookjargon.com/2020/03/25/the-passion-play-in-america/. Accessed 10 May 2023.

Mickleburgh, Rod. On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement. Harbour, 2018. https://www.knowbc.com/limited/Books/On-the-Line. Accessed 17 October 2023.

“Passion Play: Impressively Produced by Indians of British Columbia.” The Catholic Telegraph, 13 June 1901, p. 1. Vol 70, no. 24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.32158897. Accessed 10 May 2023.

“Passion Play’s Weird Scenes.” Nelson Daily Miner, 13 June 1901, p. 1. https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/ndaymine/items/1.0083820. Accessed 10 May 2023.

 Simpson, Leanne. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Arbeiter Ring, 2011.

Stewart, Haeden. “The Arrival of Tradition: The Influence of the Tradition Concept on Missionary-Indigenous Interactions in the Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest Coast.” Critical Historical Studies Spring 2018, pp. 75-101. 

“Told in Pantomime: The Passion Play as Presented by the Siwash Indians.” The Evening Star, 16 December 1899, p. 26. https://chinookjargon.com/2020/05/13/1899-passion-play-of-the-siwash-indians/. Accessed 10 May 2023.

Vizenor, Gerald. Fugitive Poses: Native American Scenes of Absence and Presence. University of Nebraska Press, 1998. 

—. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Wesleyan UP, 1994.

Watson, Jack and Grant McKernie. A Cultural History of Theatre. Pearson, 1993. 

Wickham, Glynne. A History of the Theatre. Cambridge UP, 1985.