The biblical interpretation of missionary and residential school founder Edward F Wilson

Abstract

Edward F Wilson (1844–1915) was a British settler missionary who founded Shingwauk Indian Residential School (Sault Ste Marie, Ontario) and Elkhorn Indian Residential School (Elkhorn, Manitoba). Despite the growing body of literature that addresses the residential schools, little attention has been paid to the biblical interpretation of those who envisioned and founded the schools. This article demonstrates the influence of Wilson’s biblical interpretation on his missionary work and residential school operations, and identifies the cultural and philosophical framework that informed his interpretations. The article draws on decolonial thinkers to identify and critique the colonial ideas that informed Wilson’s biblical interpretation.

Content warning

The subject matter of this article is the residential school system in Canada, an act of cultural genocide against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Former students and those affected can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national Indian Residential School Crisis Line on 1-866-925-4419.

Introduction

This article endeavours to make a contribution toward Call 60 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which calls for theological education

on the need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right, the history and legacy of residential schools and the roles of the church parties in that system, the history and legacy of religious conflict in Aboriginal families and communities, and the responsibility that churches have to mitigate such conflicts and prevent spiritual violence. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015: 7)

In recent decades, Canadians have begun to wrestle with this atrocious component of our history. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) collected and publicized the testimonies of survivors of the residential school system, critiqued the system and its colonial foundations, and offered 94 calls to action for the Canadian government, churches, and general population. JR Miller (2009) presented a detailed history of residential schools by examining the experiences and agendas of government officials, missionaries, and the students who attended the schools. Numerous Indigenous authors have published their experiences, memories, and stories of others who experienced the residential schools, such as Theodore Fontaine (2010), Agness Jack (2006), and Richard Wagamese (2012). Most recently, Tanya Talaga (2024) published The Knowing, in which she narrates her search for clues about the life of her great-great grandmother Annie, the details of which had been mostly lost to the family’s memory. Through her storytelling, she depicts the founding, operation, and legacy of the residential schools as she retraces the lives of her family members who attended them. She identifies several missionaries who imagined, founded, and operated the residential schools, including a British missionary named Edward F Wilson, who orchestrated one of the schools attended by her relatives.

Despite this rise in publications on the residential schools, scholarship is lacking in the ways in which the biblical texts were used to motivate and justify the residential school project. This article responds to this need by examining the biblical interpretation of Edward F Wilson, whose interpretation of the Bible was influential to his thinking in initiating and maintaining multiple residential schools for decades. Scholarship on Wilson has focused on his assimilationist ideas (Nock, 1988) or his role in establishing the schools (Lemay, 2021; Manore, 1993–1994; Shingwauk Project, 1992; Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, 2019; Talaga, 2024), and not his biblical interpretation. In this article, I will examine three main themes of Wilson’s biblical interpretation. First, along with a brief introduction to Wilson’s life and missionary work in Canada, I will demonstrate how Wilson applied themes of divine guidance from the Exodus and Settlement narratives to his missionary work and residential school operations. Second, Wilson’s exegesis of the Great Commission in Matthew reveals a systematic coloniality in his thinking and demonstrates his conviction that the aims of evangelizing and civilizing the Indigenous “heathen” were inextricably interconnected. Third, I will demonstrate how Wilson’s speculations about the lost tribes of ancient Israel, a theory known as British-Israelism, informed his philosophy and rationale for his missionary work.

The following sources most clearly evidence Wilson’s use of, sustained engagement with, and interpretation of biblical texts in ways that informed his missionary and residential school work: The Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries and Others Employed among the Ojebway Indians (1874), Missionary Work among the Ojebway Indians (1886), Our Indians in a New Light: A Lecture on the Indians (1890), and The Object of the Bible (1914). The first three sources were published during his tenure as principal of what is now known as Shingwauk Indian Residential School, and the fourth book was written in retirement, in the year before his death. Wilson was a prolific writer and editor, and many of his other writings have survived, including an assortment of published lectures, some stories and anthropological descriptions of Indigenous people, an illustrated autobiographical journal (Wilson, 2019), a variety of administrative documents and letter books from his time at Shingwauk, and contributions he made to the two journals he edited, Our Forest Children, And What We Want to Do with Them (1887–1890) and The Canadian Indian (1890–1891). Other than a hymn book, which he translated into Anishinaabemowin (Wilson, 1877), the primary audience for Wilson’s writing was public English readers in North America and England, among whom he sought to “diffuse information with a view to creating more general interest in both their [i.e. the Indians’] temporal and spiritual progress” (Wilson, 1890: 7–8) and to solicit funds to support his missionary and residential school operations. While many of his surviving writings were reviewed in the research for this article, the four primary sources identified above represent Wilson’s most sustained engagement with biblical texts and their application to his missionary work and residential school operations.

Wilson’s writings include many descriptions of Indigenous people, including their physiology, speech, housing conditions, activities, cultural traditions, and interactions with Wilson. I take his recollections and descriptions as representative of his lived experiences and view of the world, with his portrayal of Indigenous people betraying convictions of racism, European superiority, and the need for other peoples to “progress” toward “civilization.” Although Wilson believed in the merits of his evangelistic and educational work, his efforts violated the inherent rights of Indigenous people to dignity, respect, and self-determination. I identify instances in which I deem Wilson to have misunderstood and misrepresented in his writings the cultural practices of Indigenous people. To analyze Wilson’s presuppositions and prejudices, I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Tomoko Masuzawa (2005), Néstor Medina (2018), Walter Mignolo (2011), and Anibal Quijano (2000) to identify and critique Wilson’s Eurocentrism, conception of modernity, and notions of progress and civilization, as well as cultural and racial superiority. I demonstrate how Wilson’s internalization of these colonial ideas informed his use and interpretation of biblical texts.

David Nock (1988) has argued that Wilson authored four articles under the pseudonym “Fair Play,” which appeared in The Canadian Indian (which Wilson edited) in 1891 (see Fair Play, 1891a, 1891b, 1891c, 1891d). Nock argues that Wilson as “Fair Play” advocated for a policy of cultural synthesis as opposed to cultural assimilation and for political autonomy for Indigenous people. Nock attributes these changes in Wilson’s thinking to his sustained engagement with Indigenous people, especially a trip that took him to visit the Cherokee nation in Oklahoma in 1888, and reading anthropologist Horatio Hale. While I agree with Nock’s argument that Wilson likely authored the Fair Play articles, that the views expressed in them diverged significantly from the general attitude of Canadians toward Indigenous people at the time, and that Wilson was impacted by his relationships with Indigenous people, I am hesitant to recognize that Wilson experienced a significant evolution in his thinking. Between his resignation as principal of Shingwauk in 1893 and the publication of The Object of the Bible in 1914, there is little surviving writing of his, especially not enough to reconstruct a significant change in his political views. During this time, his son Archie was the principal of what is now known as Elkhorn Indian Residential School in Manitoba and, according to Wilson’s (2019) journal, he appears to have remained informed on the operations of Elkhorn via his son. There is no surviving indication that Wilson regretted or reconsidered his role in founding his residential schools. As this article will demonstrate, his convictions of white supremacy and cultural superiority remained with him until at least the year before his death (1915), when he published The Object of the Bible—a source that Nock does not treat. Thus, the evidence does not support a significant evolution in Wilson’s thinking toward the end of or following his tenure at Shingwauk.

In undertaking this research, I recognize my positionality as a Canadian citizen who was born on the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabek, on land that was “ceded” to the British Crown via a series of treaties. With my training as a biblical scholar, I am interested in researching the role of the Bible and the Christian religion in the colonization of Turtle Island.

Wilson’s missionary work, divine guidance, and the Exodus and Settlement narratives

Wilson was born in London, England, in 1844 and came to Canada with intentions of farming in 1865. However, Wilson (1886: 13) wrote that after being in Canada for three days, God took him in hand and put it in his heart to be a missionary. He studied for two years at the theological school Huron College (London, Ontario). During this time, Wilson (1886: 13–14) became “infatuated with the Indians” after spending a portion of the summer on a reserve, and began taking any opportunity he could to visit reserves. ¹ After his two years at Huron College, he returned to England to be ordained as a deacon in the Church of England (22 December 1867) and to marry Frances “Fanny” Spooner (3 June 1868). Together they would have 11 children. As a missionary for the Church Missionary Society, Wilson travelled with his new bride and arrived in London, Ontario, on 22 July 1868, the see city for the Diocese of Huron. Immediately, he began touring various reserves, searching for the right place to establish a Church of England mission. After “earnest prayer for Divine guidance,” Wilson (1886: 19–20) settled on Sarnia and informed the Indigenous people there that he planned to live among them. In a prayer time after his first council with the people, Wilson (1886: 21) asked God to “guide and direct us, and to incline the hearts of the Indians to favour our undertaking.” Throughout his writings, Wilson regularly referenced the divine will, divine guidance, and providence as a decisive influence on his actions and decisions.

Wilson’s zeal for evangelism also led him to disrespect the customs and traditions of the people to whom he ministered, and to blatantly ignore their expressed concerns and requests. Later in his missionary career, Wilson travelled on a missionary trip to visit people with whom he had had no previous contact. When the travellers arrived, Wilson’s (1886: 177–180) recollections indicate that a ceremony was taking place. Wilson quickly declared his intentions to speak about the Christian religion, and he was met with many objections and requests by the people not to preach to them, especially during their ceremony. One of the men pointed out that it was their custom for a visitor to offer tobacco if they wished to speak to the people. Wilson wrote that this roused him, and he replied:

I am not a trader to carry tobacco about. I am working for my Master, the Great Spirit: the Great Spirit has told His followers that when they go out to preach they are not to carry money or anything else with them, they are simply to tell His message; if they are received, it is well, if not, they are to go away from that place and take the message to others. (Wilson, 1886: 181)

Wilson used Jesus’ instructions to the disciples not to carry money on their mission (Matt. 10:9–14; Mark 6:8–11; Luke 9:3–5, 10:4–11) as justification for ignoring a custom of respect for dialogue with Indigenous peoples. Wilson refused to learn their customs and remained stubbornly committed to preaching his message, despite their expressed wishes and the sacred ceremony that was taking place.

During his time in the vicinity of Sarnia, he built churches, established missions, began to learn the language, and appointed Indigenous converts as missionaries after their training at Huron College. To build a church on the St Clair Indian Reserve, he took possession of an acre of the communally held reserve land and negotiated to acquire free labour from the Indigenous people who supported his cause. Wilson wrote:

I want the white people to see that the Indians are really in earnest: I should like to point to our church and say, The Indians built this church without pay, because it was their wish to build a house to God. (Wilson, 1886: 22)

To fulfill his vision of establishing a church on the reserve, Wilson benefited from free labour framed by a narrative that the “heathen pagans” were in earnest need of and desired Christianity. During his first missionary work in the Sarnia area, Wilson (1886: 69–70, 73) engaged in what would be a consistent practice of taking Indigenous children from their families. The children he took in Sarnia he trained to be catechists, schoolteachers, or his servants. While operating the residential schools, Wilson genuinely believed that keeping Indigenous children at his school away from their families and communities was the will of God:

I knew that it was a great responsibility for me to undertake the charge of their children; if it were not that I was persuaded that our whole undertaking had been from first to last ordered by God, I should consider it too heavy a burden, but I was sure God would be with us and bless us—it was His work, and not mine. (Wilson, 1886: 124)

After Sarnia, Wilson moved to Garden River near Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, where he founded and managed for 20 years what has become known as the Shingwauk Indian Residential School. The school was named after Chief Shingwaukonse and his son Augustin “Little Pine” Shingwauk; Shingwaukonse had a vision of building a teaching wigwam to educate and equip his people for the changes coming to their lives via the industrial economy of the Europeans. ² Ultimately, the trust and optimism that both father and son demonstrated toward the school project was repeatedly and convincingly betrayed when the residential schools refused to respect the dignity and humanity of Indigenous peoples, oppressing and attempting to assimilate them. ³ Jean L Manore (1993–1994: 7–9) identifies several factors that contributed to the breakdown of the trust relationship, including Wilson’s lack of consultation when building the school, the location of the school eight miles from the reserve, and the assimilative goal of civilizing and Christianizing the Indigenous pupils.

The first Shingwauk Home was opened in September 1873 but burned down six days after its opening. At Sunday service on the morning after the fire, Wilson (1886: 134) compared their situation to the Israelites in the Exodus and Settlement narratives, who, “on setting forth, full of hope and joy, on their road to the Promised Land, found their way suddenly barred before them by the Red Sea.” Wilson continued that although the events seemed sad and depressing, they must believe that it was all for the best, that God would make the way clear, the ruins would be rebuilt, and they would rejoice once more. Wilson understood his mission to build the residential school to be divinely guided in the same way as the Israelites’ God guided them through obstacles to rejoicing in the promised land. Wilson expected his workers and Indigenous pupils to patiently endure whatever hardships accompanied their divinely ordained path to the joy and hope they would experience in a newly built residential school. The fire helped Wilson (1886: 142) to see how “deeply . . . insecure are all earthly investments, and that as His servants,—‘labourers together with God’ [1 Cor. 3:9], our work not of earth, but of heaven”—the truest happiness was to depend on God for all earthly needs. ⁴ Stressing dependence on divine provision, Wilson invoked a Christian dichotomy between heaven and earth, emphasizing the spiritual nature of his mission to the neglect of the physical conditions of the people to whom he ministered. When rebuilding funds were provided by Canadian and English churches, individual donations, and the Canadian government, Wilson (1886: 142) took it as a fulfillment of Exodus 14:14 from the crossing of the Red Sea narrative he referenced previously: “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” Wilson claimed that the same warrior God who defeated the Egyptians at the Red Sea was fighting for him by providing the funds to rebuild the divinely ordained residential school. Osage scholar Robert Warrior (1989) problematizes the Exodus narrative as involving both deliverance and conquest, although Christian reflection rarely addresses the injustice of the conquest. By neglecting this element of the narrative, Wilson succumbs to a “blindness” that Warrior (1989: 264) identifies among interpreters: “The leading into the land becomes just one more redemptive movement rather than a violation of innocent people’s rights to land and self-determination.” Wilson interpreted the deliverance narrative as divine guidance in his missionary work, while he was actively engaged in a conquest program informed by the same Exodus narrative.

After the fire, the new Shingwauk Home for boys only was opened in 1875; the Wawanosh Home for girls opened in 1879; and the two homes were amalgamated a few years later, in 1893. Shingwauk Indian Residential School remained in operation until 1970. In building the Wawanosh Home, Wilson again used the biblical text to argue that his residential school operations were divinely ordained. While the Wawanosh building was being constructed, Wilson kept 10 Indigenous girls on-site in anticipation of the opening of the school. Due to a lack of funds, the construction efforts ceased, and the children were sent home. Six weeks later, a sailboat arrived carrying an Indigenous man and five girls, whom he was bringing to attend the school. Wilson (1890: 11) described the man as “exceedingly disappointed” to discover that the institution was not operating. Wilson described his response to the visitors:

WE KNELT UPON OUR KNEES IN PRAYER and asked Almighty God’s direction, and then it seemed to us that it would not be right to send the little girls away, so we would open the Wawanosh Home again. When the Children of Israel arrived on the shores of the Red Sea, there was the sea spread out before them, mountains on either side, their enemies behind them; they seemed to be completely hemmed in and knew not which way to turn. But the word came to them from God, “Go forward!” and they went forward simply trusting the Divine command, and not one of those Israelites wetted the sole of his foot, for God made a dry path for them through the midst of the sea. So, I believe, if we will only trust in God and look above for direction when placed in any dilemma, that surely God will direct us, and that when the word comes from Him to “go forward,” then we should go forward, nothing doubting, and He surely will open the way for us. (Wilson, 1890: 11)

As in the previous examples, the Exodus 14–15 narrative of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea featured prominently in Wilson’s ideology for building residential schools. Wilson described the Israelites on the shores of the Red Sea with their enemies, the Egyptians, behind them (Exod. 14:10) and the sea spread out before them with mountains on either side. This appears to refer to YHWH’s division of the waters to form walls on either side of dry land running through the sea (Exod. 14:21–22). Wilson portrayed the people as “completely hemmed in” and not knowing “which way to turn.” Then, Wilson said they received the word from God to go forward (Exod. 14:15), and they proceeded with “simple” reliance on the divine instruction. For Wilson, the moral of the Red Sea narrative was to trust God when facing a dilemma, because God would direct him. Going forward without doubting, God would open the way for him. When Wilson (1890: 11) faced the dilemma of lacking the funds to complete the Wawanosh Home, the way was opened in the “providence of God” by funds from a private donor and the Canadian Indian Department. The Exodus narrative functioned for Wilson as an assurance of divine guidance and providence for the building of his residential schools.

Additionally, Wilson was the superintendent for the institution in Elkhorn, Manitoba, which originated in 1889 and consisted of an industrial school building, the Washakada Home for girls, and the Kasota Home for boys. In the “providence of God,” Wilson (1890: 12–13) constructed the school buildings with funds from a donation by a local merchant and a grant from the Indian Department. Just as in Garden River, the original home burned down in 1895 and was reopened in 1899 as the Elkhorn Industrial School. Wilson’s son, Archie, after assisting at Shingwauk, became the principal of Elkhorn from 1891 to 1918. In his journal, Wilson (2019: 65) records the “sore grief” experienced by Archie and his wife when their three-year-old son died. Ironically, Archie was not present when his son passed away because he was travelling—stealing Indigenous children to populate the Elkhorn institution. Wilson (1890: 8) oversaw the four homes in Elkhorn and Sault Ste Marie with “one general plan,” to the extent that the same uniform was worn by the children across the institutions. Wilson had a grandiose vision for residential schools: he established two institutions himself, visited numerous other institutions across North America, and was influential in their widespread operations through his network of other principals and government officials in both Canada and the USA. ⁵

The funding for Wilson’s residential schools is a fascinating subject. Wilson was sent to Canada as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society (Church of England). When he determined to establish a residential school, he travelled to England to raise funds for the building. The Church Missionary Society refused to support Wilson’s (1886: 103–104) project because it was not “strictly in accordance with the main object of the Society, which is to carry the Gospel to the heathen.” ⁶ This posed a “great trial of faith” for Wilson (1886: 110). The Church Missionary Society gave him the option of continuing with missionary work in Rupert’s Land or ceasing to be employed by the society. After praying about the matter, Wilson (1886: 110) received a letter guaranteeing £100 and a yearly grant from the Colonial and Continental Church Society. Wilson (1886: 110) was thrilled and “sure that we were being led by God, and that all would be right.” Through all these examples, the divine guidance that Wilson regularly referenced seamlessly lined up with his own visions and plans. When the Church Missionary Society declined to support his work because it believed that it strayed from its religious mission, the Colonial and Continental Church Society stepped up with financial support. Thus, Wilson’s residential school operation was an explicit marriage of colonization and Christian mission. Documents such as synodal proceedings (United Church of England and Ireland, 1877: 94–95) highlight the intentions of the Colonial and Continental Church Society to support missions to “the Indians,” which involved “gradually instilling those religious truths and principles of civilized Christian life, which will, it is to be hoped, after a time, exercise a wholesome influence over them, and gradually affect their whole manner of living.” Wilson was financially supported to carry out a dual aim of evangelization and civilization, a vision that he supported through his reading of the Bible.

The Matthean Great Commission as support for Wilson’s evangelizing and “civilizing” mission

In this section, Wilson’s interpretation and use of the Matthean Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20) will be examined and critiqued. Numerous instances of coloniality in Wilson’s thinking will be identified, including the explicit interconnectedness of evangelizing and “civilizing” missions in his interpretation of the Great Commission. I argue that Wilson’s colonial thinking parallels what decolonial thinker Quijano (2000) identifies as the “coloniality of power.” I will demonstrate how Wilson’s plain reading of the Great Commission text was foundational to his mission of establishing residential schools.

As a typical missionary, Wilson travelled and spoke on his work among Indigenous peoples, often in conjunction with fundraising efforts to support his residential schools. In a lecture he published, entitled Our Indians in a New Light: A Lecture on the Indians, he demonstrated how he viewed his work as a missionary and residential school principal to be supported by the Bible. Wilson (1890: 3) commenced his lecture by rehearsing a brief history of “the Indians in British North America,” in which he gave statistics about their populations, observations about their languages, and theories about their origins. His lecture was full of racist, colonial, egotistic, patronizing, Orientalist, Eurocentric, and derogatory remarks. As an example, Wilson wrote:

I think in our dealings with the Indians we ought to take into consideration, not only that we owe them a debt for having deprived them of their ancient domains, but also that they are A GREAT PEOPLE OF A PAST AGE, they are a people of noble mien, of a proud, defiant nature and splendid physical development, of great capability, I believe also, as regards mental culture, if only their brains, which have so long lain dormant, be cultivated and brought into action. (Wilson, 1890: 5)

Wilson fully acknowledged that Europeans deprived Indigenous peoples of their “ancient domains,” a theft not only of their land but also of their sovereignty and their ways of life. Kate Flint (2009: 5) notes that the idea that “Indians” belonged to the past was dominant in the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilson adopted this idea, wondering whether the

Indian would have been far more at home in the days of Abram, Isaac and Jacob, when the people dwelt in tents and had their flocks and their herds, and lived in a quiet contented manner, than he is amid the bustle and rush of this l9th century. (Wilson, 1890: 5)

Wilson distinguished between the “quiet,” nomadic, and pastoral lifestyle of the biblical patriarchs and the bustling, modern world of civilization—a distinction resembling Orientalism. By placing “the Indian” in the ancient “Eastern” world of the biblical patriarchs, Wilson viewed Indigenous people in the same way as Orientalist Europe depicted “the East”: uncivilized, historical, and past. In identifying them as a people of the past, Wilson excluded them from the present and future. Such a relegation of non-European peoples to the past is criticized by decolonial thinker Mignolo as an essential feature of western conceptions of modernity. Mignolo (2011: 181) describes the western, modern perspective of history as “a single, linear, and ascending history in time and a single center in space.” Thus, when the Spanish arrived and “discovered” America, “a New History began a New World and previous history stopped” (Mignolo, 2011: 182). Mignolo’s delineation of modernity explains how Wilson was comfortable relegating the Indigenous peoples he encountered to the past. For Wilson, they could even be a great people of the past, but they had no future. Their history ended when the New World began. In complimenting their physiology (their “noble mien,” “splendid physical development,” and “great capability”), Wilson invoked the idea of the “dying Indian” that was prevalent at the time, further relegating them to the past. Describing the “dying Indian” idea, Flint (2009: 29) observes that the extinction of a race was readily invested with positive connotations, such as bravery, loyalty, and dignity. Wilson’s positive description of their physical characteristics invoked the “dying Indian” idea and, possibly, the “noble savage” motif as well, confining them to the past. With regard to their “defiant nature,” no doubt Wilson witnessed this “defiance” numerous times as his attempts to steal children from their parents and communities were resisted. Although Wilson described them as having “great capability,” their brains had “lain dormant” for so long that they needed the cultivation of the Europeans to become activated. The cultivation metaphor reveals the colonizers’ plans for both the wild land and the dormant minds of Indigenous peoples. Only the superior, civilized, modern, rational, Christian, western society could tame the uncultivated minds of the “wild Indians.” Wilson thought that he could solve this problem through educating their children.

Training the children in Christianity was a core aim of the institutions. Wilson (1890: 13) wrote: “Our total number of pupils at all our Homes at the present time is 126—126 Indian children to care for, clothe, feed, educate and train for a useful Christian life.” In his lecture, Wilson (1890: 14) defended against an objection that his work was merely of an “educational and philanthropic nature and not evangelistic in its character” by clearly aligning his residential school program with evangelism and Christian mission: “I claim that my work is evangelistic, distinctly evangelistic in its aim and object. If it were not evangelistic I would not wish to continue it.” Then, to justify and elucidate his claim, he cited and interpreted a recurring text in Christian mission—the Great Commission:

Did not our Saviour say to His disciples, “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”? Is not the very essence of evangelization the teaching of all nations, the taking of young, ignorant children and teaching them and bringing them up in the nurture and fear of the Lord? (Wilson, 1890: 14; original emphasis)

Wilson cited Matthew 28:19 not only to connect evangelism and teaching but also to demonstrate his vision that teaching was an evangelistic exercise. In other words, his work was first evangelistic, and the teaching was a result of his evangelistic mission. Pragmatically, this involved taking children away from their families and communities to civilize and Christianize them. According to Larry Prochner et al. (2009), the philosophy that educating children was best practiced away from their families and the intertwined goals of Christianizing and civilizing pupils were also foundational to the infant schools of the early 19th century, a project that Wilson’s grandfather, Bishop Daniel Wilson, supervised in Calcutta in the 1830s. In 19th-century British missionary work, education was an endeavour to civilize and Christianize the “heathen.” Wilson described how this education was a necessary extension of the evangelism prescribed in the biblical text:

Are we merely to baptize these native Indians and then leave them to themselves in dirt, ignorance and squalor? True, a large proportion of the Indian children we receive into our Homes are nominal Christians and the offspring of nominal Christians; but are we, on that account to refuse them admission? Let the missionary go first in among the heathen, preach the Gospel to them and baptize them, and then let the children of these newly baptized converts come to such Institutions as our Shingwauk and Washakada Homes. It is almost in vain to attempt to induce the wild heathen Indians, while still in heathenism, to give up their children to us. (Wilson, 1890: 14)

Here, Wilson explained how he applied the specifics of the Great Commission in his missionary work. For Wilson, converting these people to Christianity was not the only objective, because it left them in “dirt, ignorance and squalor.” They were wild and uncivilized, and they needed welfare, education, and training in addition to conversion to Christianity. Wilson realized that many of the children in his schools had already converted to Christianity, although they were still “nominal Christians” in his estimation. They may have converted, but they needed further training. Thus, Wilson’s application of the Great Commission to his missionary work resulted in three consecutive steps: evangelizing the “heathen”; baptizing them; and then taking them away to teach them in his institutions. This progression proved more effective than attempting to take the children before they identified as Christian. Wilson explained:

If only we could get them we should be most glad to receive them. I have frequently visited the camps of these wild Indians and tried to get their children, but almost always without success. Directly the Chief of the Band becomes aware of our purpose he sends round his crier who shouts into every teepee: “Hide your children, man come to steal them”! “Hide your children, man come to steal them”! and as often as not a whole camp will in a few hours have folded their tepees and moved away simply owing to the dread they feel of having their children taken away to school. (Wilson, 1890: 14)

Throughout his writings, he portrayed himself as a recruiter, persuading chiefs and parents to send their children to his school, and it appears he was quite successful in his recruitment efforts. Wilson (1886: 127) reported that the travel costs of the 16 children who arrived for the first year of Shingwauk (six from Sarnia, two from Walpole Island, two from Manitoulin Island, and six from Garden River) were paid by the respective bands. However, in a few instances, Wilson simply and ambiguously stated that he “took” children, without providing much detail regarding how he did so, or planned to do so. As an example, after describing his experience as an observer at the Red River Resistance led by Louis Riel, Wilson stated that he hoped to return to the North West to bring back 30 to 40 children to attend Shingwauk (Lemay, 2021: 80). The intentional distance placed between the schools and the Indigenous communities was exaggerated by the fact that many students did not return home during the summer. ⁷ Despite the resistance, Wilson showed no remorse; his evangelistic convictions derived from his plain reading of the Great Commission committed him to forging ahead with his efforts to remove children from their families and communities to attend his distant schools:

No! the only way is to do as we have done; take the children of those who have already, through the result of missionary effort, accepted Christianity and have begun to feel some confidence in the white teacher. And in doing this we believe we are doing a Christ-like work, an evangelistic work, quite as evangelistic a work as are those doing who pick up the waifs and strays from the streets of London and other great cities and try to train them up to a noble, useful, Christian life. (Wilson, 1890: 14)

Wilson doubled down on his strategy of evangelizing before attempting to take the children. His hope was that he could build enough rapport and “confidence in the white teacher” that the people would not object to their children being transported great distances to attend school. The need for Indigenous children to have additional training in the residential schools, especially after their adoption of Christianity, betrays the racism of European Christian educators like Wilson. For him, even Indigenous people who adopted Christian beliefs needed further improvement. In the minds of Wilson and others, Indigenous people had not only a religious but also a racial deficiency. For Wilson, stealing children was “a Christ-like work, an evangelistic work,” exemplifying Standing Rock Lakota scholar Vine Deloria’s (2023: 155) observation that “many of the genocidal acts the Westerners committed against the Indians can be laid directly on the doorstep of religious fanatics who saw conversion and death as the only viable solution to the Indian problem.” Wilson was committed to civilizing the “wild Indians” into “noble, useful, Christian” lives and was convinced that this was an acceptable and obedient application of Jesus’ words. Felicity Jensz (2012: 307) highlights the conflation of race and class in 19th-century missionary work, in which missionaries like Wilson “engaged in schooling Indigenous peoples with the belief that education would help ‘raise’ them to the level of working-class whites.” The racism that pervaded Indigenous education by missionaries is exhibited in both the racial component (white) of the goal set for Indigenous pupils and in capping Indigenous potential in Canada’s economy so they would not advance higher than “working-class whites.” Wilson’s reference to picking up the “waifs and strays” in London demonstrates the influence of the British industrial school model on his schools, both of which required long hours of domestic and manual labour by the students to form them into “useful” workers for the growing industrial economies.

Cherokee scholar Laura E Donaldson (2002: 107) has described the Matthean Great Commission as “unreadable for American Indians.” Dakota scholar Waziyatawin (2013: 179) argues that the Great Commission is one of the most destructive Christian teachings because it is “rooted in the particularity of Christ’s exclusive saving power” and renounces all other traditions as false and in need of correction. ⁸ Deloria (2023: 96) argues that in every generation of Christians, there has been a “militant missionary force seeking to convert non-Christian peoples,” and this impetus to convert has been used to justify national imperialistic movements and the bitter competition between nations for newly discovered lands. Motivated by the Great Commission, Wilson was a member of this zealous missionary force pursuing the conversion of Indigenous people to Christianity, and his mission was fundamentally intertwined with the broader settler-colonial objectives of confiscating land to establish a European nation, civilization, and culture. In her analysis of the transatlantic slave trade, Katie Cannon identifies in the relationship between imperialism and Christian mission a “theologic of racialized normativity,” defined as

the constellation of structured white supremacy ideology, wherein Caucasian people of European descent proclaim themselves ordained by God as the superior, natural masters, hereditarily pure, glorious, free citizens, while crafting subordinate status justifications for people of African descent as natural slaves, inherently defective, depraved, and inferior. (Cannon, 2008: 130–131; original emphasis)

Wilson’s reading of the Great Commission exhibits notions of European superiority and the racialization and purported inferiority of Indigenous peoples to support and justify his evangelizing and “civilizing” mission. Building on Cannon (2008), Jayachitra Lalitha and Mitzi Smith (2014: 2–5) conceptualize a “theologic of normalized othering and missiologic pedagogy of perpetual submission” operative in applications of the Great Commission. By commanding the conversion of “the nations” (ta ethnē), the Great Commission engenders a paradigm of othering for those who follow its imperatives. In his reading and application of the Great Commission, Wilson othered Indigenous peoples, identifying them as “pagan” and “heathen,” in direct opposition to the European cultural Christianity to which he was attempting to convert them. Medina (2018: 100) demonstrates that the European colonial project was fundamentally cultural in nature, and that Christianity played a “constitutive role” in the establishment of European cultures as superior over other cultures, which were deemed to be inferior and primitive. For Wilson and many other Christian missionaries, the Great Commission played a foundational role in racializing and othering people to justify missions to convert them to Christianity.

Regarding the command to teach in Matthew 28:20, Mitzi Smith (2014) problematizes the elevation of teaching and the subordination of works of social justice in interpretations of the Great Commission. In addition to his clear religious agenda, Wilson’s teaching was profoundly influenced by the epistemology, pedagogy, culture, economics, and industries of European civilization. Wilson’s schools prioritized religious education over the physical and emotional well-being of his students—a widespread problem across Canada’s residential schools. In Wilson’s (1886) own recollections, the Shingwauk Home evidenced several of the universal injustices of the residential schools, including deliberate attempts to destroy Indigenous languages (166), abusive labour conditions (244), the treatment of runaway pupils as “prisoners” (169–170), and the deaths of pupils while attending the school away from their families and communities (225–228). ⁹

After pitching his plan to establish and supervise two new homes and appealing for funds to continue his work, Wilson concluded his lecture by reiterating his evangelistic focus for the residential schools:

We do not want to leave these poor ignorant Indians to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and, of all Protestant bodies, surely our own church, the Church of England, should come to the front in this great work of evangelizing, caring for and training up to a useful civilized life these children of the forest and prairie, whose lands we have taken and whose former hunting grounds we now occupy. (Wilson, 1890: 17)

This concluding remark crystalizes several points. Wilson acknowledged the occupation of the lands of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. He did not show any remorse for this occupation; it was beneficial for them to be raised out of their wild lives. Central to this objective was the “great work of evangelizing.” For Wilson, Christian mission was not a secondary goal or outcome of the residential school project; it was the primary and foundational motivation for the project. Wilson’s bitter competition with Roman Catholics and Methodists, and his commitment to winning Indigenous converts to his version of Christianity, contributed to “religious conflict in Aboriginal families and communities,” as identified by Call 60 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015: 7). ¹⁰

This section has identified and critiqued several instances of coloniality in Wilson’s thinking as manifested in his use of the Matthean Great Commission to support his missionary work and residential school operations. These instances of coloniality comprise what decolonial thinker Quijano (2000) calls the “coloniality of power.” For Quijano (2000: 533–534), the coloniality of power is manifested in a system of global capitalism based on the rationality of Eurocentrism and supported by two main axes: “the social classification of the world’s population around the idea of race” and the control of labour, resources, and products. Wilson was profoundly Eurocentric in his thinking, demonstrated racism in his education practices and interactions with Indigenous people, and designed his schools to supply workers for the labour force of industrial capitalism. Additionally, Quijano identifies several theoretical foundations for Eurocentrism, including a dualism that distinguishes Europeans from all others; the age of modernity as the culmination of development, civilization, and knowledge in Europe; and the linear progression of history culminating in modern Europe. Wilson relegated the Indigenous “other” to the past, outside of and prior to modernity, and he saw his schools as the means by which they would “progress” toward “civilization.” As his use of the Great Commission demonstrates, his “civilizing” mission was inextricably linked with his religious mission of evangelizing the Indigenous “heathen.”

British-Israelite fantasies and Wilson’s white supremacy

A recurring theme in Wilson’s biblical interpretation is speculation about Israel. Wilson’s first published book was entitled The Ojebway Language: A Manual for Missionaries and Others Employed among the Ojebway Indians (1874). In the introduction, he wondered whether the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island might have Hebrew origins. After observing that their language is oral not written, Wilson wrote:

There are a few points in the character of the Grammar which might seem to indicate a relationship between this language and the Hebrew. Thus, it is undoubtedly a language of verbs, of roots, and stems, to which particles are affixed or prefixed to modify the meaning of the word. As in the Hebrew, there is a causative (hiphil) form of the verb. As in the Hebrew, the termination of the third person singular of the present, indicative, determines the paradigm of a verb. And a rather singular coincidence also is, that the verb to be is uhyah, pronounced very much as the Hebrew הָיָה. (Wilson, 1874: iv)

Fresh out of his theological training at Huron College and armed with a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, Wilson conjectured obscure connections between the Anishinaabemowin he was learning and the Hebrew of his sacred texts. The connection drawn by Masuzawa (2005) between the classification of languages and the classification of religions suggests that, in associating the Indigenous languages with the Hebrew language and religion, Wilson adopted the racist and Oriental classification systems of the 19th century. In wondering whether their language was Semitic, Wilson classified Indigenous peoples as Oriental, the exotic, historical East in contrast to the modern, civilized West.

However, Wilson’s most refined thinking on Israel came in a book he wrote after his retirement from missionary work among Indigenous peoples, while he was ministering to a predominantly white settler congregation in British Columbia. The 1914 book is entitled The Object of the Bible. For Wilson (1914: 57), “the object of the Bible throughout is to render to mankind the message that JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD, IS THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD.” He then immediately quoted John 3:16. Wilson (1914: 1–2, 56–57) viewed the Bible as a divinely inspired whole with a single message and purpose related to Jesus and his crucifixion. Wilson was fascinated with prophecy, especially the book of Isaiah, which he claimed accurately predicted Jesus as the messiah 750 years prior to his birth. Wilson (1914: 133–134) argued that the words of the prophets should be interpreted literally and not spiritualized, and he was greatly interested in interpreting the prophetic future of the nation of Israel. However, he repeatedly berated “the Jews” for rejecting Jesus as their messiah. To support his arguments, he selectively quoted from the biblical text, often skipping or omitting phrases or verses that would challenge his argument. He conflated ancient Israel with the Jewish people living at his time, a feature of the Zionism that was ready to burst onto the global scene. Finally, Wilson (1914: 13) believed that the Bible had not yet been completed, arguing that just as there was a 400-year pause between the prophets and Jesus, so there was a lapse between the death of the apostles and the present state of the Jews, whose future remained to be written.

A large portion (7 of the 12 chapters) of The Object of the Bible was devoted to Wilson’s interpretations of Isaiah. Two main themes emerge from Wilson’s work on Isaiah. First, Wilson repeatedly berated the Jewish people for their rejection of Jesus as the messiah. After positing that Jesus is the messiah, as described in Isaiah 40:1–3, 9–11, Wilson (1914: 50) wrote: “O blind Jews, that could read and re-read such words as these, and yet refuse to receive and welcome and proclaim to the wide world your Messiah, the Saviour.” Wilson firmly held that Jesus was the teleological fulfillment of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and condemned the Jewish people until they would recognize Jesus as their messiah. For Wilson, an acceptance of Jesus as the messiah would accompany the second theme of his Isaiah interpretation: a Zionist hope for the restoration and return of the Jewish people to Palestine. Regarding the final chapter of Isaiah, Wilson (1914: 25) stated that “permanent deliverance from all their enemies is emphatically promised to the Jewish nation, and the final security of their city, Jerusalem, is also promised.” After quoting Isaiah 35:10—“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads”—Wilson (1914: 47) stated: “These times for the Jewish nation have not arrived yet, but I think we have every reason to believe that they speedily will arrive.” Wilson (1914: 115) was aware of the Zionist efforts that were taking place: “Eleven great Colonization Societies are now in operation, and a Capital Fund, amounting to several million pounds, has been formed by the Jews for the purpose of re-purchasing their land from the Turks.” Thus, Wilson interpreted the Bible with Zionist expectation and kept himself informed regarding the preparations of the rising Zionist movement in the British world.

Wilson was interested in the whereabouts of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. He distinguished between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and the priestly tribe of Levi, who in his view constituted the contemporary 11 million Jews who were scattered across Russia, Austria, England, the USA, and other parts of the world, and making a concerted effort to return to the land of Palestine (Wilson, 1914: 79). The other 10 tribes had been lost since the destruction of Samaria by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria (2 Kings 17; Wilson, 1914: 124). Wilson (1914: 124–125) wrote: “There is no record of their even having returned to settle in Palestine; and they have ever since been generally known as THE TEN LOST TRIBES.” To begin his search for the 10 lost tribes, Wilson examined the promises God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:2–3 and 15:5, 18. Of these promises, he wrote:

This is the original promise to Abraham. Before there were any such people as “the children of Israel,” or “the tribes of Israel,” or “the Jews,” it was promised that His seed should be as the stars of heaven; that they would become a great nation; that they should become the chief of all the nations; that all the families of the earth should be blessed through them; that their future possessions should extend from the Nile to the Euphrates. (Wilson, 1914: 128–129)

In the Genesis texts Wilson referenced, there is no promise from God that Abraham’s descendants would be chief of all the nations. This was the product of an egotistic and superiority framework through which Wilson interpreted the Bible. In outlining Abraham’s journey to Palestine, Wilson (1914: 129) described the promised land as “flowing with milk and honey, but at that time occupied by enemies and heathen, who would have to be driven out before the face of his descendants.” Wilson raised no objections to the need for Abraham’s descendants to wipe out the inhabitants of Palestine in order to occupy the promised land. Wilson’s interpretation of this passage demonstrates his belief in manifest destiny for the conquest of both Palestine and Turtle Island. After suggesting that the Jewish people never fully possessed Palestine due to their sin, idolatry, and rejection of the messiah (Wilson, 1914: 129–130), Wilson wondered who might fulfill God’s promises to Abraham:

Is it not a fact—a fact visible to and known to the whole world—that a great nation, a nation acknowledged to be the greatest that the world has seen, has risen to life, risen conspicuously within the last 100 years or so—a nation eclipsing all the other great nations that have been in the past; and is not that nation our own Anglo-Saxon nation, Great Britain, with its many immense colonies and landed possessions, and embracing also the United States of America?

Is there any other race upon earth to be compared with the great English-speaking race? And would it not be an extraordinary and most marked fulfilment of prophecy, could it be proved, and proved conclusively, that we, the English-speaking people, are the actual descendants of the ten lost tribes? (Wilson, 1914: 130–131; original emphasis)

Wilson interpreted the promises to Abraham to include a promise to be chief of all nations. Because the Jews failed to receive these promises, the promises had to be realized by the 10 lost tribes so that God’s promises would not fail. Who appeared to be fulfilling God’s promise of being the chief of the nations? The great English-speaking race.

Wilson’s views on the 10 lost tribes were representative of a widespread theory called British-Israelism. The publication of John Wilson’s (no relation to Edward Wilson) Our Israelitish Origin in 1840 is regarded as the main catalyst for British-Israel thought. The movement rose in popularity in the late 19th century, became a large mass movement with the founding of the British-Israel World Federation in 1919, and remained mainstream in British society until the 1970s. ¹¹ Aidan Cottrell-Boyce (2021) demonstrates that British-Israelism was not a fringe movement: it remained in the British mainstream through popular support from predominantly white, conservative, nationalist British Protestants (13) and many prominent figures, including politicians, military leadership, aristocrats (including royalty), television personalities, and writers (5). British-Israelism is the belief that the British people descended from the 10 lost tribes and that the royal family descended from the line of David of the tribe of Judah. Wilson (1914: 137) believed that the first British monarch, James I, had Hebrew origins. A tract by the Reverand AB Grimaldi (1885) traced Queen Victoria’s ancestry to King David, claiming not only Hebrew origins but also the divinely appointed right to an eternal throne. Thus, Wilson’s views about the 10 lost tribes situate him in early British-Israelism.

Wilson drew support for his argument from other biblical texts. Wilson (1914: 125) saw in Ezekiel 37:22 a promise that God would return and reunite the 10 lost tribes with the Jews. Ignoring the context of Ezekiel’s prophecy, he contended that the 10 lost tribes would reemerge and had the potential to be discovered in his own time. Next, he wondered if there was any evidence that the Anglo-Saxon forefathers originated near the Holy Land. Wilson (1914: 135–136) suggested that in 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 13:40–46, when the lost tribes travelled a year and a half to a region called Arzareth, they settled in Europe and became the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race. Wilson (1914: 136) suggested that these tribes became the Scythians and cited Herodotus to confirm their existence. These claims are consistent with the conventional British-Israelist lore of how the 10 lost tribes migrated to Europe (Cottrell-Boyce, 2021: 60–61).

Although Wilson (1914: 136) admitted that “Anglo-Saxon certainly is a new name for the descendants of Israel to bear,” he believed that this was plainly prophesied in Isaiah 62:2 and 65:1 and Zephaniah 3:20, each of which describes a new name for God’s chosen people. In addition to the new name, Wilson (1914: 137) believed that a change in language was prophesied in Zephaniah 3:9, which he identified as the English language, which was “gradually becoming the language of the world.” Next, Wilson (1914: 137) cited “our Saviour’s words to the Jews”: “The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). Wilson did not offer an interpretation of this verse. However, given the context and his supersessionism throughout The Object of the Bible, the verse for Wilson apparently signals the transfer of the kingdom of God from the Jews to the British. Throughout The Object of the Bible, Wilson evidences what Cottrell-Boyce (2021: 19) identifies as seemingly contradictory attitudes of anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism, both berating “the Jews” and hoping for their national and spiritual restoration. This can be seen most clearly when Wilson (1914: 144–145), describing the Zionist efforts to purchase Palestinian land from “the Turks” to settle Jews in the “land of Canaan” with a rebuilt temple, hopes for their conversion to Christianity—for the Jews “to believe in and to accept Jesus Christ, Whom their forefathers slew and hanged on a tree.”

For Wilson (1914: 133), this realization that the Anglo-Saxon race just might be the 10 lost tribes came with incredible benefits: the English-speaking race became the covenant people, the chosen people of God. In fact, Wilson (1914: 137) claimed that “[t]he very word ‘Britain’ is of Hebrew derivation, and means ‘the Covenant people.’” This idea appears to originate with John Wilson (1876: 159–160n1), who argued that “Brit” is derived from the Hebrew word for covenant, brit (תירב). Thus, for Edward Wilson, the church is Israel not in a figural or spiritualized sense; the English church is actually Israel, descended from the 10 lost tribes. For Wilson (1914: 140), another benefit of becoming the 10 lost tribes was that “The Bible is our book. The prophecies are our prophecies.” His claim to the prophecies was not merely a hermeneutical practice. For Wilson to adopt the Bible and its prophecies, he must have viewed them as available to be taken. This parallels the concept of terra nullius, which is a foundational doctrine of the settler-colonial project, whereby the occupying people view a territory as uninhabited and available to be claimed. For Wilson, since the Jews were not fulfilling God’s promises, their religious heritage, their scriptures, and their status as God’s chosen people were available to be claimed by a worthy nation.

Wilson demonstrated other instances of terra nullius thinking in his biblical interpretations. In his writing on Isaiah, Wilson (1914: 36) observed that after 11 chapters of judgments against “the heathen nations that have afflicted the chosen people: Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tyre and Sidon,” Isaiah 24 begins by stating: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.” Wilson (1914: 37) noted that the words resemble Genesis 1:2, which suggests that there would be “a new spiritual creation, to be brought about in the same manner as was the first, viz., by the bringing of light into the midst of a dark world, a world darkened by the prevalence of sin.” Then, he argued that this new spiritual creation implies that the Jews can no longer be God’s chosen people (Wilson, 1914: 37). The concept of terra nullius appears to have informed Wilson’s thinking in that he used a verse about YHWH emptying the earth to prepare for a new creation to argue that the Jews could no longer be God’s chosen people in anticipation of a new spiritual creation—that is, a new chosen people, the great English-speaking race.

In addition to the concept of terra nullius, Wilson’s British-Israelism indicates that he adopted many of the philosophies of the settler-colonial project. Colin Kidd (2006: 212) identifies British-Israelism as a “religious justification for white superiority,” and its exegesis of the Bible served “to sanctify the British imperialist enterprise.” Wilson’s biblical interpretation in The Object of the Bible demonstrates that he remained committed to white supremacy up to the end of his life (he died the year after it was published). As was demonstrated in his lecture Our Indians in a New Light, white supremacy informed his biblical interpretation, which directly influenced his missionary work, his disrespect for the customs and expressed wishes of Indigenous peoples, his creation and supervision of multiple residential schools, and his expeditions to evangelize and steal children from Indigenous peoples. Wilson remained committed to white supremacy, racism, and the cultural superiority of Europeans throughout his missionary work among Indigenous people and into his retirement.

Conclusion

This article has examined Edward Wilson’s use of the Bible and highlighted three main themes of his interpretation. First, Wilson read the Exodus and Settlement narratives alongside his missionary work, interpreting themes of divine guidance in those narratives as divine support for the founding of his residential schools. Second, Wilson’s use of the Matthean Great Commission justified him in his belief that he was doing a Christ-like work by removing children from their families and communities to Christianize and civilize them. By reading Wilson’s biblical interpretation alongside decolonial thinkers, several elements of coloniality were identified in Wilson’s thinking, including the cultural and racial superiority of Europeans, the supremacy of European cultural Christianity, and the notion of modernity. His thinking and actions reflected the elements of the coloniality of power identified by Quijano, and his biblical interpretation sanctified his cooperation in the settler-colonial project. Third, Wilson’s British-Israel views, published the year before he died, reveal that he retained these colonial and supremacist views throughout his life. His speculations about the lost tribes reveal an irony in that, at different points in his life, he suggested both that Indigenous people and English-speaking colonizers might have descended from the lost tribes of ancient Israel. Wilson was certainly not unique in his adoption of British-Israelism as a missionary, for many British-Israelists were actively involved in mission. Achsah Guibbory (2018: 111–112) highlights the strong missionary zeal that accompanied British-Israel thinking. Zealous is a fitting description for Wilson’s missionary activity and residential school operations, which this article has demonstrated were informed by his interpretations of the Bible.