A Geography of Blood (19 page)

So it's in a state of bewildered anticipation a few weeks later that I find myself in company with Narcisse again, making the rounds of sacred places in southern Alberta. At Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, he tells me that the “stopping” of the buffalo had caused famine not just for people but also for the land and for all the insects, birds, and mammals that relied on their great snuffling, dusty, shaggy abundance. The wolves, the vultures, the grizzly bears have lost their source of food, he says. The grasslands are no longer grazed as only the buffalo know how to do.

“It's a famine that the newcomers”—he means people like me—“are only beginning to sense, and not enough people are aware of it.”

Then it's on to the Aakii piskaan, the Women's Buffalo Jump, near Cayley, and from there to Okotoks, where we pay a visit to a monumental, wing-shaped slab of quartzite that towers over bales in a hayfield. Every place we go, he tells me stories about Napi, Old Man, and his sacred, comic misadventures. Late afternoon finds us in the farthest reaches of a cow pasture scarified by natural-gas extraction—“These days, we have a very violent type economy,” my companion says—overlooking the dark, sinuous valley of the Bow River. Behind us, the Majorville medicine wheel extends its twenty-eight spidery spokes to an enclosing circle of stones. Around us, a wide world of ochre and tan spirals out in every direction, and for a moment, I'm back home again along the Frenchman River. “How we are in these places,” Narcisse will tell me later, “that's how we would be in the Cypress Hills if the connection hadn't been lost. Sometimes I think—like when you're on a hunger strike, there's a point of no return. But mostly I think the knowledge is still recoverable.”

Whenever we're in the car traveling, Narcisse sits in the passenger seat and talks nonstop, retelling the good old stories that belong to these special places. “This is a storied landscape, a ceremonial landscape,” he explains, as if aware that I'm struggling to keep up, “very alive with its spirits and beings.” Whenever we stop to visit a site, he is quiet and relaxed—“Don't you feel welcome here?” he asks me more than once—and he always takes time to say a few words in Blackfoot. Once I hear my name and, without waiting to be asked, he explains that he has prayed for me and for this book.

“We come to these sites because our ancestors have prayed for us here,” he tells me, “for the people who were not yet born. They prayed for us to survive, to do the things they had always done.”

“Did they pray for people like me?” I voice this question timidly, not sure I want to know. “Do you think they will help me now?” I'm surprised to hear these words tumble out of my mouth.

For a long minute, he doesn't answer. “Yes, I think so,” he says at last. “You made the effort, you came here. There is a lot more to know, but this is a good start.” He flashes me a rueful grin. “Anyway, you newcomers are not going anywhere, and we aren't going anywhere either. I think it's a viewpoint now of we're in this together.”

This is a story that has to be marked: To Be Continued.

Acknowledgments

My encounter with
the Cypress Hills was made possible by the vision and dedication of the members of the Eastend Arts Council, who not only own and operate the Wallace Stegner House but who also, through a variety of other initiatives, help to keep the creative fire burning in southwestern Saskatchewan. Our time in Eastend has also been enriched by the company of Sharon Butala and the late Peter Butala, Betty Davis and the late Bob Davis, Dr. Anne Davis and Kevin Bristow, Susan Howard, Wendy Kabrud, Bryson LaBoissiere, Sue Michalsky and Roland Bear, Jim Saville, Mary Thomson, Seán Virgo, Ethel Wills, Sherry Wright and Bill Caton, and Sherry and Dennis Webster, all of whom have deepened my understanding of what it means to be a prairie person.

If it takes a village to raise a child, it has taken an extended community to nurture this story. Words cannot adequately express my appreciation for the generosity of elder Jean Francis Oakes, Piyêso kâ-pêtowitak, of Nekaneet First Nation. We are all lucky that, as she puts it, she “used to be nosy.” I was also privileged to consult with Dale Mosquito and Linda Oakes, also from Nekaneet, and with elder Harry Francis of Piapot First Nation. Thanks are due, as well, to former Nekaneet chief Alice Pahtayken and her council for permission to visit the reserve and to former school principal Trevor Bearance for helping me to get my bearings. Patrick Wallace, then assistant warden management services at the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, opened many doors for me, and Clare McNab, ex-Kikawinaw at the lodge, made it possible to believe that telling the truth about the past could be a road to healing.

So many other people have helped me over the years that it is impossible to name them all. I owe a particular debt to family historian Nora Hassell of Grande Prairie, researcher Lou Lockhart of Saskatoon, and Royce Pettijohn and Clayton Y. Yarshenko, who are mainstays of the Southwest Saskatchewan Old Timers Museum in Maple Creek and of Fort Walsh (now the Fort Walsh and Cypress Hills Massacre national historic sites). Two First Nations art stars, visual artist Lori Blondeau and playwright Kenneth T. Williams, provided astute advice and encouragement when it was most needed. The book also benefited from the expert counsel of a number of scholars, including Barry Ahenakew, then chief of Ahtahkakoop First Nation, now with the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre; Tim Tokaryk, T.rex Discovery Centre and Royal Saskatchewan Museum; the late John Tobias, Red Deer; Donalee Deck, Parks Canada; Dr. Marie Battiste, Dr. Margaret Kennedy, and Dr. David Meyer, University of Saskatchewan; Dr. David Sauchyn, University of Regina; Dr. Cynthia Chambers, University of Lethbridge; Dr. Alison Landals, Stantec Consulting, Calgary; and Dr. Brian Reeves and Dr. Gerald Oetelaar, University of Calgary. In addition, I was inspired by speakers at “History in the Hills” in 2006 and 2007 (notably Val Ryder of the Carry the Kettle First Nation) and at seminars organized by the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, including Dr. Linea Sundstrom, Joe Medicine Crow, and the late Blackfeet cultural historian Curly Bear Wagner. As for the ebullient, eloquent Narcisse Blood of the Káínai Nation and Red Crow College, my admiration for his insight, mischievous humor, and kindness is unbounded.

It is an honor to acknowledge the endorsement of the David Suzuki Foundation and the financial support of the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Canada Council for the Arts.

The book was reviewed in manuscript by editor Shelley Tanaka, novelist Suzanne North, and historians Dr. Bill Waiser and Dr. Sheena Rolph, each of whom offered valuable advice that was gratefully taken to heart. Keith Bell, my companion in all good things, listened patiently to passages read aloud, hot off the screen, and commented on several early drafts with a remarkable combination of insight and tact. Nancy Flight of Greystone Books provided editorial direction with professional vigor and grace, and publisher Rob Sanders has believed in and supported this project from its vaguest beginnings. The title is drawn from
Wood Mountain Poems
by Andrew Suknaski—“this is my right/to chronicle the meaning of these vast plains/in a geography of blood and failure/making them live”—and is used with his permission.

It only remains to express my gratitude for the beauty of the Cypress Hills, which stops us in our tracks and makes us listen.

Notes

Notes refer to direct quotations only. Additional information on sources is provided in the bibliography.

CHAPTER 1: Getting There

1. G. K. Chesterton,
   On Running After One's Hat and Other Whimsies
   (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1935), 6.
   

CHAPTER 2: The Stegner House

1. Wallace Stegner,
   Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier
   (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 5, 7.
   
2. Ibid., 277.
   
3. Ibid., 15–16.
   
4. Eastend History Society,
   Range Riders and Sodbusters
   (Eastend, SK: Eastend History Society, 1984), x.
   
5. Ibid., 662.
   
6. Ibid., 765.
   
7. Ibid., 771.
   

CHAPTER 3: Digging In

1. Wallace Stegner,
   Wolf Willow,
   19.
   
2. Ibid., 18.
   
3. Chahiksichahiks (Pawnee) song, as quoted by Candace Savage,
   Prairie: A Natural History
   (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2004), 16.
   

CHAPTER 4: Ravenscrag Road

1. Wallace Stegner,
   Wolf Willow,
   283.
   
2. Ibid., 255.
   
3. Ibid., 297.
   
4. Ibid., 281.
   
5. Ibid., 300.
   
6. Ibid., 29–30.
   
7. Ibid., 73–74.
   
8. Ibid., 66.
   
9. Ibid., 56.
   
10. Ibid., 65.
    
11. Ibid., 61.
    
12. Ibid., 118.
    
13. Henry David Thoreau,
    Walden Or, A Life in the Woods
    (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1897), 122.
    
14. Wallace Stegner,
    Wolf Willow,
    24.
    
15. Ibid., 49–50.
    
16. Ibid., 53.
    
17. Ibid., 66.
    

CHAPTER 5: Stone Circles

1. Johannes Brahms,
   Ein Deutsches Requiem,
   1868.
   
2. George Bird Grinnell,
   The Punishment of the Stingy and Other Indian Stories
   (New York: Harper and Brother, 1901), ix, x, 219–32. Accessed at
   http://www.sacred-texts.com
   .
   

CHAPTER 6: Chimney Coulee

1. Isaac Cowie,
   The Company of Adventurers: A Narrative of Seven Years in the Service of the Hudson's Bay Company During 1867–1874, On the Great Buffalo Plains
   (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 436–37.
   
2. William Shakespeare,
   The Tempest,
   Act 1, Scene 2.
   
3. Unnamed speaker, quoted by Capt. W.F. Butler,
   The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America.
   (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1872), 362.
   
4. Isaac Cowie,
   The Company of Adventurers,
   434.
   
5. Unnamed speaker, quoted by Capt. W.F. Butler,
   The Great Lone Land,
   271.
   
6. Isaac Cowie,
   The Company of Adventurers,
   435.
   
7. Wallace Stegner,
   Wolf Willow,
   65.
   
8. Norbert Welsh, accessed on Nov. 10, 2010, at
   http://dev-louisrielinstitute.com/index.php/culture/buffalo-hunt
   .
   

CHAPTER 7: Modern Times

1. Tour guide's commentary, re Cypress Hills massacre, based on remarks from our expert guide, Clayton Y. Yarshenko, and from his “Agenda Paper” and “Historical Context Address” on the same subject.
   
2. Montana press, as quoted by Beth LaDow,
   The Medicine Line: Life and Death on a North American Borderland
   (New York: Routledge, 2001), 31.
   
3. Richard Irving Dodge,
   Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years Personal Experience Among the Red Men
   (Hartford: A.D. Worthington, 1882), 295.
   
4. Dodge, as quoted by Capt. W.F. Butler,
   The Great Lone Land,
   241.
   
5. Unnamed “high-ranking officer,” as quoted by David D. Smits, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo,”
   Western Historical Quarterly
   25 (1994): 331.
   
6. Dan Kennedy (Ochankugahe),
   Recollections of an Assiniboine Chief
   (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 49–50.
   

CHAPTER 8: Fort Walsh

1. Sweet Bird (Misacongae), Report of the Commissioner, North-West Mounted Police, 1876, in Commissioners of the Royal North-West Mounted Police,
   Opening Up the West: Being the Official Reports to Parliament of the Activities of the Royal North-West Mounted Police Force from 1874–1881
   (Toronto: Coles, 1973), 38.
   
2. Report of the Sioux Commission, December 18, 1876, as quoted by Garrett Wilson,
   Frontier Farewell: the 1870s and the End of the Old West
   (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2007), 287.
   
3. Sitting Bull, Report of the Commissioner, North-West Mounted Police, 1876, in
   Opening Up the West,
   38.
   
4. General Terry, Report of the Sitting Bull Indian Commission (Washington, D.C., 1877), 7.
   
5. Sitting Bull, Report of the Sitting Bull Indian Commission, 8.
   
6. Commissioner James F. Macleod, Report of the Commissioner, North-West Mounted Police, 1877, 49, and Report of the Sitting Bull Indian Commission, 10.
   
7. Unnamed Aboriginal man, quoted in a letter from George McDougall to Alexander Morris, October 23, 1875, as cited by Hugh A. Dempsey, “The Fearsome Fire Wagon,” in Hugh Dempsey, ed.
   The CPR West: The Iron Road and the Making of a Nation
   (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984), 56.
   
8. Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris,
   The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories
   (Toronto: Willing and Williamson, 1880), 92, 95, 98, 211.
   
9. Indian Affairs bureaucrat Colonel J.S. Dennis, in a letter to Edgar Dewdney, June 23, 1879, as quoted by Garrett Wilson,
   Frontier Farewell,
   358.
   
10. Sir John A. Macdonald, from Edgar Dewdney papers, “Memo of My Appointment as Indian Commissioner, 1879,” as quoted by Garrett Wilson,
    Frontier Farewell,
    357.
    
11. Edgar Dewdney, from his journal, 1879, Glenbow Archives M-320-p.1039.
    
12. Colonel Macleod, as quoted by Edgar Dewdney, in Report of the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1879, 77. Accessed online at
    http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/indianaffairs/
    .
    
13. Edgar Dewdney, from his journal, 1879, Glenbow Archives M-320-p.1039.
    
14. Ibid.
    
15. Mistahi-maskwa (Big Bear), from a letter from George McDougall to A. Morris, Oct. 23, 1875, as quoted by Hugh A. Dempsey,
    Big Bear: The End of Freedom
    (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984), 63.
    
16. Edgar Dewdney, in Report of the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1879, 77.
    
17. Ibid.
    

CHAPTER 9: The Hunger Camp

1. Sir John A. Macdonald, Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December 1881, 7. Accessed online at
   http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/indianaffairs/
   .
   
2. Thunder Child, as recorded by Rev. Edward Ahenakew and quoted by Hugh A. Dempsey,
   Big Bear: The End of Freedom,
   101–102.
   
3. Official correspondence, June 13, 1881, RG10 C-10131 volume 3745 file 29506-1.
   
4. Edgar Dewdney to head office, July 16, 1881, RG10 C-10131 volume 3745 file 29506-1.
   
5. Edgar Dewdney, Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December 1883. Accessed online at
   http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/indianaffairs/
   .
   
6. Edgar Dewdney, letter to Lt. Col. Irvine, Fort Walsh, Oct. 27, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 29506-2.
   
7. Indian Agent Denny to head office, Dec. 1881, RG10 C-10131 volume 3745 file 29506-1.
   
8. Indian Agent McIlree (successor to Denny) to his superiors, Dec. 2, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 29506-3.
   
9. Ibid.
   
10. Fred R. White to Edgar Dewdney, Oct. 17, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 19506-2.
    
11. Augustus Jukes to Edgar Dewdney, Oct. 21, 1882, RG10 C-10134 volume 3744 file 19506-2.
    
12. Edgar Dewdney to Sir John A. Macdonald, Oct. 21, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 29506-2.
    
13. Edgar Dewdney to Lt. Col. French, Oct. 27, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 19506-2.
    
14. Indian Agent A. Macdonald to Edgar Dewdney, Nov. 11, 1882, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 29506-3.
    

CHAPTER 10: Creation Stories

1. Gordon Oakes,
   Statement of Treaty Issues: Treaties as a Bridge to the Future
   (n.p.: Office of the Treaty Commissioner, 1998), 68.
   
2. Letter from Front Man to the Minister of Indians, summer 1897, RG10 C-12061 volume 7779 file 27140.
   
3. Correspondence, July 3, 1881, RG10 C-10131 volume 3745 file 29506-1.
   
4. Nekaneet as quoted by W.W.F., Special Correspondent, “Indian Grievances. An Interesting Talk With One of Pie-a-Pot's Head Men.”
   Daily Mail,
   Toronto, April 24, 1885, p. 1 ff.
   
5. Maureen K. Lux,
   Medicine That Walks: Disease, Medicine, and Canadian Plains Native People, 1880–1940
   (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
   
6. Petition signed by Stoney Indian, Oct. 24, 1914, RG10 C-10131 volume 3744 file 29506-3.
   
7. Wallace Stegner,
   Wolf Willow,
   49–50.
   

CHAPTER 11: Home Truth

1. Sir John A. Macdonald to Edgar Dewdney, Nov. 20, 1885, as quoted by Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser,
   Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion
   (Calgary: Fifth House, 1997), 221.
   
2. W.W.F., Special Correspondent, “Indian Grievances. An Interesting Talk With One of Pie-a-Pot's Head Men.”
   Daily Mail,
   Toronto, April 24, 1885, p. 1 ff.