Life Among the Indians

One winter when we were first on the prairie, Father came home from some where with the news that he had met a teacher or preacher (I do not know which), from one of the Indian reserves and who was looking for a boy, a white boy to spend a few months with the Indian children at their school to help teach the children there the better to speak English and the manner of white child's living. I remember Father telling Mother about it. The boy would receive tuition, board and room free. Father and Mother thought it would be a good opportunity for my brother Reuben so decided to let him go. Reuben couldn't have been more than nine or ten years old. He was there probably two or three months when our parents brought him home. He probably grew homesick. He did learn quite a bit of their language and some translations into their language of one or two Sunday School hymns; also to count up to one hundred or more. I used to know these translations but have long since forgotten them. About all I remember is the figures from one to ten; viz, payie, neeu, nastu, waywin, nanna, tapego, inuas, katomato, matata. Even these I am forgetting. About all Reuben brought home with him was a bunch of dirty clothes and a good supply of creepers. Mother had to strip him, throw his clothes in the fire and scrub the child thoroughly. Mother said, "They can look elsewhere for a boy when they want one next time."

It seems better care might have been taken of the child, but I suppose being continually with the Indian children, and they always in that condition, it was rather difficult to keep the "vermin" from indulging in a white child's blood.

I so well remember how spotlessly the Indian school, north of the Soo, was kept. There were only girls there, but they were always clean and neat. Just spotless! I believe this school was the Chippewa Indian School. I have told about my visit there one afternoon when I was a child, in the first part of this history, memoirs, or whatever you like to call this jumbled account of my life. Whether one ever could train these western Indians to completely break away from their wild life is hard to say. It seems to me there would always be the call of the wild in their blood. I believe their principal food consisted of pemmican, which was made from dried meat and then pounded and molded into cakes and, I suppose, cooked. When we visited their reserves in the summer time, they always had great lines full of meat strung up to dry; not always very appetizing looking as the weather was hot, and flies very, very plentiful'' But they ate it and to look at them they seemed healthy. However, tuberculosis was very prevalent among all of them. Sanitation was an unknown quality among them. They also dried many berries; how they cooked them, I couldn't say.

There is a very pretty, though sad, legend which tells the meaning of the name Qu'Appelle, which is a river running through Saskatchewan. This is the way it was told me. A young brave was paddling along the river, near sunset, when he heard the voice of his beloved calling his name. Her voice floated to him across, or along the river. He was startled to hear her voice, for he knew she lived a long way from there. Thinking he might be mistaken, he called out, "Qu'Appelle, Qu'Appelle," which means, "Who calls, who calls." Again, her voice called his name. At once he started for her home and, arriving there, found his sweetheart had died just at sunset. Thus, the river afterwards bore the name, "Qu'Appelle." A pretty, but sad, story.

The Indians relished a good fat dog. I have seen them put their hands on a dog, feel his back and exclaim, "Um--good, good soup." They were hungry very often, and cold. They were very poorly clad in the winter months; how they escaped freezing is a mystery. Their life was hard, and their luxuries nil. Of course, they did not miss luxuries because they never had any; simply knew nothing better than the way of life they lived.

Then, too, I often heard people say that gophers were considered a delicacy with them. No doubt that is true, and a gopher is a cleaner animal than many fowl, especially a chicken. Isn't there something in the Bible to the effect, "Call not anything unclean." Their ponies were always so pathetic looking, so thin and dejected. Where they kept their ponies in the winter, I wouldn't know. We never visited their reservation in the winter. Of course, in the summer, they kept them hobbled. I often wondered where they got their water; there was never any sign of a well or cistern on their reserve. Of course, in the winter they could melt snow, but they didn't appear to have anything in their tents except themselves and a few blankets. They were said to be dying off with tuberculosis.

It is so long since I have written anything in or about things in my life that it is best to start a new part in this story, memoirs, or whatever you like to name it.

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