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The primary purpose of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society is to gather, preserve and make available the history and folklore of Saskatchewan. In this its first publication the Society is pleased to make available the story of the Cree Indian Chief, Payepot, as recorded by his kinsman and compatriot, Mr. Abel Watetch, and edited by Miss Blodwen Davies, who while Acting Secretary of the Saskatchewan Arts Board in 1957 was largely responsible for the formation of this Society.

The Society believes Mr. Watetch’s story of Payepot to be an important contribution to the recording of Indian lore. The Indian attitude toward the institutions and events of the period is apparent throughout. It must be remembered that other points of view, for example, that of the Department of Indian Affairs, the North West Mounted Police, and the missionaries, must be examined in order fully to understand and assess Payepot’s career. Much of the story of Payepot, going back as it does to the early nineteenth century, is dependent on the memories and traditions of the Payepot band. In the period after 1870, official reports of government agencies, as well as contemporary newspapers, provide some documentation of his activities. The Editorial Committee of the Society has appended excerpts from these sources where they suggest modifications or elaborations of the text.

Payepot and His People was first published serially by The Western Producer to which the Society is also indebted for use of the illustrations by Bill Perehudoff, Saskatoon artist.

Cradled in the deep, sculptured valley of the Qu’Appelle river, there is a reserve of Cree Indians named for the last great war chief and medicine man of the band, Payepot. The corrupted spelling of “Piapot” has been attached to the reserve, but the preferred spelling with the band is still “Payepot.”

Abel Watetch

The valley was modelled by the glacial waters of the last Ice Age. The alternating spurs and coulees were long ago eroded by the retreating and diminishing waters of the river. The walls of the valley and the flatlands in the floor of the valley were covered with buffalo grass. In the folds of the coulees were the sheltering bluffs of wolf willow and dwarf-alders in which the buffalo grazed in winter. Here, too, the low sage brush spread and the prairie crocus bloomed in great abundance when the first warm days of spring came to the valley. Later on the dwarf prairie rose, with its large pink blossom, grew freely in the grass.

The site of the reserve is a beautiful stretch of country with magnificent views up and down the curving river and all this land was part of the country of the Crees in and around the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle river. Some of the little homes of the Crees lie at the entrances to the wooded coulees and others stand along the crest of the hills on the prairie level. From house to house run the winding footpaths of neighbors, linking home with home, for these people are a closely knit group; something of the life of the great round teepees still survives among them and the gatherings of neighbors are a characteristic of the Crees of Payepot’s band.

In these neighborly gatherings they discuss the problems of trying to adjust to the white man’s world while at the same time attempting to preserve the best of their own folk culture and tradition. They still have reserves of tribal knowledge and custom, spiritual insights and functional skills that have come down to them from far stretches of nomadic ancestry.

They may have big red tractors in their fields but on a lovely stretch of lowlands beside the little river they have their Rain Dance. As soon as spring arrives they set up their teepees close by the little frame cottages and move out nearer to nature and tribal tradition.

At the time of a Rain Dance or a powwow, the teepee is dismantled, loaded onto a cart or a car top and the Cree family sets off to the great gatherings of their kin, set up the teepees again, part of a great circle, wearing once more the tribal costume and renewing their relationships by dipping into their personal and group stores of folk culture.

In winter they gather in the little homes to hear their story tellers as they have done from time immemorial, recounting the sagas of folk heroes, laughing over the experiences of this one or that who has reminiscences or dreams or visions, or encounters with people “outside” to tell, or they sing the ancient songs to the drums that beat out the rhythms by which they live.

Some may have cars but nearly all have horses. The church bell rings out through the valley and the white man’s liturgies are sounded in the church over the bride and groom or over the casket of another Cree who takes with him some precious part of Cree history. But the drums sound, too, in this valley, their penetrating, heart throb beat bringing together the old and the young, the men and the women, those who move slowly and stiffly, because of great age, and the very little ones, hanging on to their grandmother’s fingers, absorbing into their young nerves and muscles, the rhythmic movements that so obviously bring great satisfaction to the dancers. These are ageless activities that through good times and bad, through danger and success, through hunger and abundance, have held the Crees together in goodwill towards one another and even in goodwill towards the hostile white man’s encroaching world.

Midway through the reserve on the winding road there stands a stone cairn with a bronze plate. It bears an inscription to the man who brought this band of Crees to this spot, (in spite of the unwillingness of the Indian department to have them settle here), back in the 1880s. High on the tip of a spur at the edge of the prairie directly above, is the grave of Chief Payepot. It overlooks the valley and a deep and beautiful ravine. There is a circle of field stones near the edge of the ravine and within it a tumbled mass of similar stones that have sunk into the earth. Under these stones is the dust of a great man. Within the circle grows the thorny prairie rose and the pungent sage. This is a bit of unbroken prairie where Payepot lived and died.

His spirit is still alive here and in the valley below and even the white visitor is aware of his undying love for this last corner of the great land that he knew so well before the coming of the white settlers. In the written records of the archivist and historian are the available facts of his history but no white man or woman has ever been able to evaluate the powerful, wise protector of his people as he still lives in the hearts and minds of the Crees of Payepot’s band.

It was here that I learned to know some of Payepot’s people. I discovered that a nephew of Chief Payepot, Abel Watetch, a veteran of the First World War, had spent years accumulating the unwritten history, the folklore of the Chief, and had set all this down in his fine, clear handwriting. He has assembled many of the recollections of his kin to “set the record right.”

In his terse Cree fashion he made a record but between the lines there rose to the imagination much more than he had set down in words. His lifetime friend and companion, Chief Sitting Eagle Changing Position, (or Harry Ball, as he is called by the white man,) could contribute to this pool of information or could prod the memory of his brother Cree into elaborating the story with significant detail. So, a stranger from the east, I was given a welcome and offered the friendship of the band. When help was offered to make this story, this labor of love and devotion, known to non-Indian Canadians, it was accepted in the spirit in which it was offered. So these tales told by Abel Watetch, by tape recording and by a long correspondence in which he patiently answered questions and searched out pertinent facts, went into the making of this story. Although the tale is as yet only half told, it contains a legacy to us all from Payepot and his people.

Blodwen Davies

In the days of the buffalo it was the custom of the Plains Indians to follow the herds of the great animals wherever they roamed, in hunting parties. Men and women alike were concerned with the hunt because when the hunters killed the buffalo, the women took over the preparation of the meat and skins for the use of the band, wherever the animals fell.

A hunting party would select a camp site close to a supply of water, setting up the teepees in a great circle. The chief’s teepee would be in the centre. Camp guards were placed on sentry duty a mile or so outside the camp in various directions and were replaced daily. Some men were appointed by the chief as a council to keep the peace within the camp and to punish any who trespassed on the customs of the band and the unwritten laws of the prairie Indian. Camp criers were also appointed whose duty it was to move about announcing decrees by the chief.

Way back in 1816 a party of Plains Crees were encamped near what is now the border between Canada and the United States. One very sultry day, when storm clouds had gathered low overhead, rumbling with the breath of the Thunder Bird a son was born to a young Cree couple.

It was the custom of the Crees to name a child for whatever object or incident was first observed when the wail indicated a new life had begun. As this little Cree’s cry began there was a great flash of lightning leaping across the blue-black sky. So the newcomer was named Kisikawawasan Awasis, or Flash in The Sky Boy.

He had a grandmother in the camp and this wise old woman felt that the child would some day be a great leader of the Crees, a medicine man, perhaps a chief. So she took over the care of the infant while the young parents resumed killing and preparing food for the band.

Not long after his birth, some of the hunters, far out on the prairie, came upon a lonely white man, who had been left behind by a party of explorers because he was ill. The hunters took the man back to camp and gave him shelter and food and tried to nurse him back to health. They did not know that the man had smallpox.

Smallpox was the terror of all Indians, since the first terrible epidemic had spread like fire among them a generation before this time, killing thousands of their kith and kin. The one instinct of the Indians was flight. So when they realized what had happened, they rode off in all directions, abandoning all those who were unable to follow them. Survival of the few depended on their ruthlessness, for there was nothing they could do to combat the horrible disease.

Presently there was no one left in the camp but the grandmother and her helpless charge. Neither of them was infected with smallpox, but the outlook was grim for there was no one to hunt for them and no other food within the reach of the old woman.

With the stoicism of the Indian she began setting up a shelter for herself and the child from the bits and pieces the others had left behind them and contrived a little teepee from oddments of buffalo hides.

She kept the child alive by going about gathering old buffalo bones and boiling them in a kind of bag made of buffalo hide hung on stakes, dropping hot stones into the water, to make soup.

Autumn was approaching and the old grandmother had no means of coping with winter weather that was not far off. But she went bravely on, buoyed up by her secret belief that this was a child destined for greatness.

Some dogs had also been abandoned and one day as she was sitting with the child on her knees, she noticed that the dogs were uneasy and restless and sometimes howled. She pricked up her ears, because it seemed to portend that someone or something was not far off.

It was sometime before a party of Sioux came from the south, also a hunting party, right to the campsite. She was terrified of the traditional enemy of her people and had hidden in her shelter. The Sioux, when they saw human bodies lying about, turned to ride away. But one of them saw a movement under the shelter and so they rode over to the pile of skins.

When they found the old lady with a fine boy in her arms, they took them both prisoners and rode off with them towards Dakota.

In the Sioux country the woman and the child were well cared for. The boy grew up speaking Sioux and he was taught all the skills of a Sioux hunter and warrior.

When he was about 14 years of age, a Cree war party surprised this band of Sioux and since war was a game and a skill, just as was buffalo hunting, they attacked the Sioux camp and put them to rout. Then the grandmother, seeing the attackers and hearing their familiar voices cried out that she was a Cree and pointed out Kisikawawasan Awasis, telling them who he was. She convinced them, and the victorious Crees rode away to the north carrying the boy and his grandmother with them, back to their favorite country, the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle river. This was about 1830.

In the camp of his own people, Flash in The Sky Boy had to learn to use his own language and to pick up the habits and customs of the band. Naturally he was an object of great interest, for he could now tell them a great deal about the Sioux they had not known before. The Crees laughingly called him “the Sioux Cree” or Nehiyawapot. This came to be accepted as the name of the band for now they had the skills of the two cultures, their own and the Sioux, at their command. To this day the Cree name for Payepot’s band is Nehiyawapot. A brother of Flash in The Sky Boy gave him a nickname, Payepot, which is “a hole in the Sioux” meaning probably that he had made a breach in the secret life of their enemies, the Sioux, and had brought them intimate knowledge of the Sioux way of life. The nickname stuck to the boy and he became known to history as Payepot.

As he grew to manhood he proved to be remarkable in many ways. He was a famous warrior, a revered Medicine Man, a great horse thief, bringing in many fine horses for the use of the band. And he was also a man of vision and wisdom and was called to sit in the council of the Rattler’s teepee, the council of the bravest. In the rain dance he acquired a reputation for magic in rain making.

No one knows when Payepot became a chief but doubtless it was when he was a mature man, at the height of his skill as a hunter and warrior which may have been in the 1840s. If so, he was a chief for more than 60 years.

Payepot’s band of Crees was nomadic as were all the Plains Indians, but their favorite camping ground was the lovely land in and around the valley of the Qu’Appelle, roughly from the site of Fort Qu’Appelle to Craven and the area around what is now Regina. Here were the Fishing lakes which the Indians loved, where not only fish but ducks were available in vast quantities. Here, too, some of the buffalo wintered in the coulees and so meat was within reach in the months of cold and snow. Here was not only a pleasant land, but one rich in all the things that made life easier for the Crees.

It is difficult for us to visualize how many buffalo grazed on the Prairies. Herds of many thousands travelled together. There is a record of one herd which was said to comprise half a million buffalo. It covered fifty square miles. There is a story that has come down in the family of one of the early North West Mounted Police at Fort Qu’Appelle which tells how he was pursuing a man charged with some infraction of the law. He followed him up the winding trail out of the valley and was riding after him across the prairie above. The pursued man saw a herd of buffalo approaching and raced across the herd as it approached. The Mountie was too late to follow him and had to pull aside as the buffalo went by with a great pounding of hoofs and raising a great cloud of dust. The Mountie had to wait three days to let the herd go by.

In spite of this abundance the Indians did not kill except for food. Indeed a good Indian wife, imbued with respect for natural law, would refuse to accept the buffalo tongues, a great delicacy, her husband brought home, if they numbered more than the skins he brought her for tanning.

Hunting the buffalo on foot, before the days of horses, was a hard life, and even worse were the long journeys on foot in search of the herds. So the coming of the horse utterly changed the culture and economy of the Plains Crees. The horse was not native to North America. The Spaniards brought horses with them in their conquest of Mexico and some of the animals escaped, or if old or crippled, were probably turned loose. Whatever happened, they became naturalized and multiplied greatly. First the Mexicans put the horses to use and slowly they spread to the Indians. Perhaps sometimes they traded pemmican or buffalo hides for horses, but generally speaking, horse stealing became a great art and a very big factor in the culture of the Plains Indians all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Saskatchewan river. It is said that the Crees of what are now the Canadian Prairies acquired horses about 1740 and that all Crees on the Plains were mounted by 1785.

So Payepot became chief of a band of horse stealers and was one of the most skilled himself. Stories of the skill and stealth by which Indians crept in among white men and took their horses almost literally from under their noses are now Plains history. Generation after generation, the Indians recounted their adventures in horse stealing. Almost to the day of his death, when his people gathered in Payepot’s little log house on the Payepot reserve in the Qu’Appelle valley, the story tellers repeated the traditions of the band, of their great and famous horse thieves.

It was the horses that made them so mobile that their hunting territories vastly increased and so they came into conflict with other tribes and the end result was a century and a half of warfare where there had been little warfare before the days of horse culture. Only a hundred and fifty years covered the whole era of the mounted Plains Indians, for by the time the white men began trading with the Indians for pemmican for the northern fur trading posts, and the Indians were killing buffalo to supply a market where they received white men’s goods of trade, their doom was sealed. Never had any people anywhere in the world had access to such abundance of meat for food, and of hides for tents, clothing and other uses. When an enveloping fate forced them into breaking the natural laws which governed their culture, the vast buffalo herds were threatened with extinction.

When white hunters invaded the Plains to kill for the hides and when the ranchers wanted to wipe out the old way of life of the Indians, the buffalo were so systematically destroyed that they were reduced from tens of millions of animals to scattered, meagre herds. The final blow came when American soldiers declared war on the buffalo at the close of the 1870s, knowing that the only way to subdue the proud, skilled, fleet Plains Indians was to destroy their food supply. Almost overnight, the buffalo vanished.

All this time Payepot was chief of the band of Nehiyawapot. In the mid-nineteenth century Payepot could only have earned the chieftainship by vitality and skill and the qualities of personality which mark a born leader. He and his band were probably among the first to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company post on the Plains about twenty miles south of the present town of Fort Qu’Appelle in 1855. In an early account book kept by the factor is the entry “Indians stealing horses.” These were horses they would use to hunt the buffalo to make pemmican to sell to the Hudson’s Bay Company, in the heyday of the buffalo trade. The long trains of prairie wagons carrying pemmican to northern trading posts would soon put an end to the Plains Indians’ horse culture.

By 1864 the HBC fort was moved to Fort Qu’Appelle, midway along the Fishing lakes. It was at the centre of a network of trails, the travelways of the Indians and was located there at the hub of the pemmican trade. Pemmican was carried hundreds of miles across the Prairies to be sold at the Fort. With the pemmican came a great trade in furs, including the buffalo skins which sold in tens of thousands in eastern Canada in the next decade or two. The brigades came back with the carts loaded with goods of trade and so the Indians were brought within reach of the white trader and his goods. The old Indian way of life was doomed.

Ten years after the Fort began trading at the Fishing lakes, events that closed the book of the old nomadic life took shape at Fort Qu’Appelle. In the centre of the town of Fort Qu’Appelle today there stands a monument commemorating the signing away of all their lands by the Crees and the Saulteaux. After fighting off the final decision for as long as their situation made possible, the chiefs finally capitulated to the inevitable and signed the treaties by which they surrendered their ancient hunting lands and accepted reservations from the crown. Nearly 3000 Indians were encamped in teepees on the flats around the ford between the lakes in 1874 for the ceremonies of the signing of Treaty Number Four. For six days the tom toms throbbed out the dirge for the passing of their ancient freedom. Impending hunger had broken the spirit of the Indians. But it was not until September 9, 1875, that Payepot signed the surrender of his band’s right over to the Queen. Sadly and reluctantly he led his people to the Cypress Hills where the remnants of the buffalo could still sometimes be hunted. Henceforth they had to depend on bear and elk. Their health and their skills were slowly wearing away. They seemed stranded in a world that had turned alien and hostile.

The final crippling blow to their morale came when weakness and malnutrition had so reduced the resistance of the band that Payepot found he had no alternative but to accept the offer of the Canadian government of a reserve for his band.

The reserve was south of Sintaluta. In the autumn of 1883 the band set out from the Cypress Hills with Payepot at its head, moving slowly across southern Saskatchewan towards their new home.

As the Indians and their horses and all their possessions travelled through the lovely September days—The Moon of the Chokecherries—a child was born at an encampment. Because of some manifestation in the skies at the moment of his birth he was called, in the Cree tongue, Herald of The Skies. Known today in the white man’s world as Abel Watetch, Herald in The Skies became the collector of these tales.

The Crees arrived at the reserve near what is known locally today as Payepot lake. They made camp and prepared for the cold weather, depending on the government supplies of food to help them establish themselves.

It was a terrible winter. Stamina and morale were already at a low ebb, the unfamiliar bacon was rancid and other supplies very scarce. Disease descended on the band and of the 350 who arrived in late autumn, 130 died before spring.

Two-and-a-half miles away a Scottish family named Gibson had taken up a homestead. When summer came the Crees went over to see what all the hammering meant. A boy who was there to see the meeting of his father and the Indians, later in life wrote that their long barrelled flintlock guns had stocks studded with brass tacks and their powder flasks were made of polished buffalo horn, while their bullet pouches were decorated with bead embroidery. “Many a time while herding my father’s flocks on the old reservation I passed aspen groves where there were dozens of platforms lashed to the poplar trees with rawhide thongs, sepulchres that bore mute evidence of that tragic winter.” So wrote W. W. Gibson more than half a century later.

In the late summer of 1884 Payepot called a council of his warriors and told them he would not keep them another winter on this reserve. He knew of a good place in the Qu’Appelle valley where, as a young warrior, he had hunted the buffalo. There were still deer in the coulees, the lakes were filled with fish and there were great flocks of wild duck around the lakes.

He gave the signal to break camp and the whole band set out across country towards the valley of the Qu’Appelle. Probably some of the settlers became alarmed. Someone warned the Mounted Police. Half way to the valley Payepot’s band came face to face with a squad of Mounties across their trail. They ordered Payepot to return to the land assigned to him. He flatly refused to go back. The will of the old man was stronger than the law. He said he would take his people to the valley of the Qu’Appelle and nowhere else. The band stood its ground in silence and patience while their chief spoke for them. Perhaps the police saw how pitifully small the band had become. Perhaps they knew there was plenty of room for them in the valley of the Qu’Appelle. They stood aside and the little band went on its way across the Prairies and down the steep trail into the valley, near the Fishing lakes. And there they are to this day.

As one historian has said: “The reservation period after 1880 is little else than a story of imprisonment.” A people who had lived for centuries on buffalo meat, wild berries and roots were suddenly asked to turn farmers and live on potatoes and bacon, and to raise grains and fodder crops. Raise cattle and other farm livestock they would not. Cattle need daily attention and if they stayed to tend cattle they could not keep their tribal festivals and ceremonies. The Rain Dance and other rituals took days to perform and the band encamped together in some chosen spot reminiscent of the great old days of freedom on the open Prairies. The Crees still refuse to raise livestock on Payepot’s reserve. They still have their horses.

They encamped that lovely autumn of 1884 in their buffalo skin teepees. Slowly they gathered the small logs from the bluffs and sloughs to build cabins. Some still live in these log cabins, covered over with a wattle of clay and straw. They are a picturesque feature of the landscape, these little homes, but for the most part they were replaced by frame houses. These older houses are now being replaced by attractive modern white bungalows, as part of a new program of improved standards of living. But all this was a long way off. In 1884 the settlers were probably alarmed by the coming of another band for already they were fearful over the war songs and the night-long throbbing of the drums along the valley. The Rebellion of 1885 was brewing and the fate of a lot of settlers depended on which way the sympathies of the Indians turned in the crucial contest.

Another generation of young Crees had come to manhood, youths who had never known the warpath nor the buffalo hunt, but who had grown up listening to the tales told so nostalgically by the old men of the band. All the old rituals leading to initiation into the mysteries of horsemanship, hunting and fighting meant nothing at all now. The pleas of the Metis to the Indians to join them in revolt against the white man’s rule were welcome in their young ears.

Payepot was old and he was loyal to the Queen with whom he had signed a treaty. But he remembered the bodies of 130 of his people lashed to the trees in the rejected reserve, and the rancid bacon.

Payepot spent much of his time in reflection and in silence. No one knew which way his sympathies would fall. Perhaps he did not know himself.

One cold night when the young Indians were practising their war dances not far from his cabin, Payepot was sitting crosslegged on the floor and thinking. There was a knock at the door and when he bade the caller enter, he saw two men who had come unarmed through the hostile reserve. One was an old friend of the days in Cypress Hills, Colonel Irvine who had been transferred from the Mounted Police post at East End to headquarters in Regina. He had ridden down from Regina with an interpreter to talk to Payepot. The old chief waved them to a bench against the wall, but he showed no signs of warmth or sympathy for his visitors. He sat, pipe in hand, but unsmiling.

Irvine began talking. He asked for Payepot’s loyalty and help. He begged of him to use his power to prevent the Indians joining the Metis under Louis Riel in rebellion against the government. Irvine went on talking in spite of the silence. His interpreter would translate what he said and then after a pause, Irvine would go on again. The Crees of Payepot reserve call this The Night of the Long Smoke. Hour after hour Irvine talked, until dawn. By then he had given up hope of moving Payepot. He rose, exhausted, opened the door and walked out. His interpreter followed him. In the cold gray light Irvine was about to mount his horse when suddenly he was aware that Payepot had come out of the cabin. He stood beside Irvine now and his hand was outstretched.

“You are a brave man,” said Payepot, “you are my friend.” And with those words the tide was turned. Payepot threw all his influence on the side of the crown and warned his young men that they would have to deal with him first, before they could join the patriots. Payepot’s command, the decision of the great Medicine Man, could not be ignored. The southern Indians declared their intention to keep their treaties with the Queen.

When the Rebellion ended, Chief Payepot received a letter from Sir John A. Macdonald, thanking him for his part in limiting the extent of the revolt. Years later, in 1901, he went to Winnipeg as the guest of the government of Manitoba, when he was shown much honor, in recognition of his part in preventing the bloodshed of the white settlers. The band still has the letter.

Payepot was a man of 70 when the Rebellion was over and he still had more than 20 years to live. His little house was the rendezvous on the reserve for old and young who liked to listen to his reminiscences of the great days gone forever. He had been their War Chief, their great Medicine Man, but he was their spiritual leader as well. As the years passed his body weakened and shrank, and his wandering among the neighbors dwindled, until mostly he stayed at home and waited for them to come to him. But always he had the same lesson to teach, the same theme to dwell upon. “My people, love one another. I want you to keep together. You don’t know what the future holds. There will come a day when carts will no longer need horses. The white man may even be foolish enough to try to fly. Mark my words. Stay together. Love one another.”

As 1908 opened everyone was anxious. He was 92 years of age. He stayed in bed now a great deal of the time. He slept a great deal. By March they were alarmed. Still they gathered, crowding the little house. And every day he said to them: “Love one another, my children.”

Abel Watetch, Herald in the Sky, had been in the mission school at Lebret for 12 years. He had learned to be a carpenter, a wheelwright, a tinsmith and a cobbler. Now he was home again, living in his father’s house, not far from the home of Chief Payepot. Daily he, too, had gone to the old chiefs house, trying to regain the use of his Cree tongue, so that he could understand the stories of war, horse stealing, hunting, legends and supernatural affairs, of which the old chief spoke.

Then came May and one morning it seemed suddenly spring. There was warmth and softness in the air and Herald in the Sky went outdoors. The wind was from the south, but it was a strange wind. He was filled with wonder and a kind of dread. So was his father. The soft Chinook wind was moaning and coughing through the branches of the wolf willows.

“I won’t be with you much longer,” the old chief had said. “When my time comes, don’t bury me in the earth. Don’t let them put me in the ground.” And now the Chinook was sobbing through the sloughs and the bright morning seemed sad.

“Run over to the old man’s house,” said the father, and Herald in the Sky set off along the foot of the hills towards the coulee where the old Chief lived. As he came within earshot of the place he heard weeping and he turned and hurried home. “The old man is dead,” he cried “there is mourning in his house.”

Kisikawawasan Awasis had gone to the Happy Hunting Ground.

When the first grief was silenced the people said “what shall we do?” The white man’s law said he could not be lashed to a tree top as he would have wished. The old man said he must not be buried in the earth. But he must have a coffin. Abel Watetch, the young carpenter, was told to make a coffin for the dead chief. But he must be buried in the traditional attitude, with his knees drawn up. There was no lumber on the reserve. They wanted him buried quickly without drawing attention to the burial. So the young Indian took a wagon box apart, and tore up some floor boards and made the coffin, two feet high.

They drew the chief on a wagon up the rough, steep trail to the level of the prairie just above where he had lived. There they opened a grave not more than six inches deep. In it they placed the coffin. Around the coffin and over it they piled stones. And they marked out a large circle beyond it with field stones. And there they left him, as he had often been in life, resting on the point of a hill overlooking the valley he loved, and in communion with the Great Spirit. The sun would warm the stones and him.

As though the old pagan chief was working his medicine again, in revolt against the law which had forced a final compromise upon his people, the following year there was a prairie fire which swept all the way to the edge of the valley where he lay and his coffin was turned to ashes. The stones fell in to cover his bones, and there to this day you may see the stones imbedded in the earth, covered with pungent sage and bedecked by the big pink blossoms of the little prairie rose bush. From his grave you have one of the finest views of the Qu’Appelle valley and a glance down into the great coulee behind his home.

In the Saskatchewan sunlight, where the soul of the great Medicine Man seemed to wander at will, a visitor asked Herald in the Sky, “Did Payepot believe in a life after death?”

“The spirit goes back to whence it came,” he said. “God gave life and life goes back to him. The soul is life. There is a time of suffering when we know where we have erred and when we are pressed back from those we love by sharp things that cause us pain. We cannot reach them and we are sad. But that is only for a little while, until we learn what we have done by forgetting to love one another. But a man’s life goes back into the life of the Great Spirit from which it came.”

Even when Chief Payepot was an old man it was his custom to make a trip to Montana every two or three years to visit the Assiniboines and the Gros Ventres. It was a journey of three or four hundred miles. When Payepot went his band followed him and neighboring bands joined the expedition.

About 60 years ago there was a great drought. The prairie grasses were all burned, the rivers and creeks ran low or dried up altogether. The stunted growth, the limp and thirsty trees, the yellow grasses made all the land pitiful and all the people sad because they knew the drought meant hunger now and to come.

In this time of despair, the Crees decided to make the long journey to visit their friends in Montana and learn how they were faring. Thirty or 40 prairie wagons were loaded with their travel gear and food supplies at the reserve, near the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle river. Word of the journey had been passed on to other reserves and a place of rendezvous appointed where the city of Regina now stands. So the Indians, in holiday mood in spite of the dangers that threatened them, began converging on the rendezvous and when all had assembled they rode off in a long single line across country on the Moose Jaw Trail, many on horseback, some in wagons. There were no farms and no fences to impede them in those days so they travelled the shortest and best routes leading to the southwest.

They hunted along the way to supplement their supplies. Long gone were the days of the abundance that the buffalo provided, so they hunted for anything edible, antelopes, gophers, wild duck, prairie chicken, jack rabbits or chipmunks.

Each night they made camp, unloading their buffalo skin teepees from the horse-drawn wagons and pitched camp. Little fires were built before the teepees and the evening meal prepared. In the leisurely traditional way of the Indians, the warm evenings were spent in visiting and story telling, and then early in the morning the camp would break up, the possessions were loaded back into the wagons and the great company moved off once again towards the southwest. In time the cavalcade came to a place in Montana called Malta.

Now it happened that in the drought-stricken prairie of Montana, the Assiniboines and the Gros Ventres, who shared a reserve near Fort Belknap, had prepared for a Rain Dance. As the Canadian Indians crossed the border they were making preparations for their final and fourth song service, in the ceremonies leading up to the Rain Dance. The day of the great ritual was at hand.

In the midst of this the Indian agent for the region visited the reserve and said to some of the stricken Indians: “Is there a man anywhere, to your knowledge, who can make rain?”

“Yes,” said young Bill Berry, “I know a man in Canada, called Payepot, but whose name is really Kisikwawasamawasis, and who is a great Medicine Man. He can make rain.”

“If that is so,” said the Indian agent, “find him, talk to him in your own way but do everything in your power to induce him to try to make rain, for this situation is desperate. I’ll pay him well if you can induce him to do it.”

“He will not take money for it,” replied Bill Berry. “He is not that sort of man.”

“Well, make what arrangements you like with him, but find him and bring him here.”

“He comes to see us every two or three years,” said Bill Berry. “Perhaps he will come this year.”

Presently a scout was sent out to seek Kisikwawasamawasis and after riding all day he discovered the trek of the Indians from Canada. He asked if Chief Payepot was among them and when he was told that he was, he rode off back to the reserve to tell the Assiniboines and the Gros Ventres that the great Medicine Man was approaching.

When the sponsor of the Rain Dance, who had been preparing all his life for the honor of leading the great ceremonial dance, heard that Chief Payepot was nearing the reserve, he summoned a friend, to whom he entrusted the function of ambassador. He asked him to assume the responsibility of going to the Medicine Man to express the wish of the sponsor that he take over the Rain Dance and invoke the Great Spirit to send rain to the Prairies.

Meantime, Chief Payepot knew nothing of the situation awaiting him and the Canadian Crees arrived at the reserve on the very night of the fourth song service, in preparation for the Rain Dance. The visitors were welcomed with a feast.

It was on the following morning, hot and sunny, that an honored elder of the Assiniboines, who had been chosen for this post of great significance, was to go out to mark the tree that was to be the lodge pole for the Rain Dance. This man and four acolytes had been invited by the sponsor to undertake this solemn task. The leader had spent much time in meditation, seeking the vision of the tree which was to be the central symbol of the ceremony. All these honored men were old warriors, men who bore the scars of many encounters with the enemy, for their scars were the warranty of their devotion to the tribe and its safety.

Meantime the sponsor had despatched his ambassador to a meeting with Chief Payepot, carrying a ceremonial pipe. The pipe had to be wrapped in some rare and beautiful covering. Perhaps in the early days this would be a very fine skin of some kind. But at this point in their history it would be the ceremonial material called stroud, a very expensive imported material, used as sacrificial cloth.

The ambassador began walking with great dignity toward the teepee in which Chief Payepot was encamped.

There was great expectation in both camps as the ambassador moved ceremoniously on his mission. Payepot was in the teepee as the ambassador stopped and entered. He seated himself opposite Chief Payepot and then began, with the eloquence of an Indian orator, to explain the situation and the request which he had brought from the Medicine Man of the Assiniboines and Gros Ventres. He stated that in spite of the long and arduous preparations for his sponsorship of the Rain Dance and the honor it conferred, the sponsor wished to transfer that honor to Chief Payepot and asked him to use his great powers to induce rain to save the parched Prairies.

The ambassador then unwrapped the ceremonial pipe and offered it to the silent Payepot.

Unhurried, Payepot was turning the matter over in his mind. He was a great man and a humble one. Troubled by the challenge, fearful that too much faith would be placed in his power and too little honor paid to the Great Spirit, he pondered over the problem he faced.

If Payepot refused the honor he was offered, he would pass his hand over the pipe as a gesture of rejection. If he accepted the honor, he would take the pipe and smoke the sweet grass packed in the stone bowl.

In utter silence the two men faced each other, the ceremonial pipe between them. Then, at long last, Payepot lifted his gnarled old hand and slowly extended it towards his guest. Then opening his hand, with palm upwards, he accepted the offered pipe, put fire to the sweet grass, and began to smoke.

While this grave matter had been hanging in the balance, the old seer and his acolytes had set out to follow the promptings of his vision and to find the chosen tree. Directed by his meditations he set off into the woods, walking always to the right, the other four men following him silently. When at last he actually located the tree he had seen with his inner vision, he slowly walked all around it, glancing frequently upwards to inspect it at every point. Then he cleared away the brush around its roots and made an open spot. Then he sat down to the east of the tree. Filling his ceremonial pipe with sweet grass, he smoked it, pointing the pipe ceremonially to the four points of the compass. Then his four assistants placed themselves at the four cardinal points of the compass and waited in readiness.

First of all the old Medicine Man prayed for forgiveness for cutting the tree down. “The Great Spirit,” he said, “made you a perfect tree so that you might be used as a lodge pole for the Rain Dance. We ask you to look with favor and mercy upon us, because we are going to use you in our communication with the Great Spirit.”

Again he smoked the sweet grass in his great pipe and then, laying the pipe aside, he rose and approached the tree, tying around the trunk a sacrificial cloth as a sign for those who were to follow him that this was the sacred tree.

Then he and his assistants returned to the reserve, entering it from the south.

Meantime four more wise men of the tribe who were to act as acolytes in the Rain Dance went out with the sponsor to cut the tree. They were accompanied by a group of young Indians, mounted on horses, who were to assist in transporting the tree to the site of the new lodge and who were also beginning their training for a possible future sponsorship of a Rain Dance. When the party arrived at the foot of the tree, they had an ancient ritual to perform before the cutting could begin.

The tree cutters had all been provided with new axes and now they waited for the sponsor to indicate the direction in which he wanted the tree to fall. Around the sponsor and his acolytes the young men stand, looking on with great curiosity in this, their initiation into the mysteries of their tribe. The solemnity and dignity of the ritual will stir in their hearts the desire to advance in the teaching of the mysteries so that some day they will be capable of sponsorship of the Rain Dance and so emerge as Medicine Men.

The sponsor is the leader of this party and it is he who sings the ceremonial songs at the foot of the tree. The four men with the axes take their places at the four points of the compass around the tree. Then as the sponsor sings his first song, the man standing to the east where the sun rises, swings his axe and pretends to strike the trunk, but his act is purely symbolic. Then the sponsor sings another song. The man to the south from whence comes the soft Chinook winds, goes through the same gestures of a mock stroke at the tree trunk. The sponsor sings another song. The man to the west feigns a stroke at the tree. Finally the sponsor sings another song and the man to the north from whence comes the cold Keewatin wind, performs his ceremonial act and the final song is sung.

Then the tree is sacrificed, its limbs are cut away, except for those branches, at a suitable height, which will hold the nest of the Thunder Bird during the Rain Dance.

The fallen tree, stripped to the needs of the ceremony, is fastened with thongs of buffalo skin and dragged by the young men on the horses towards the site of the ceremonial lodge. They also make their entrance from the south.

All this takes a great deal of time. The Indian is never in a hurry. These rites deserve plenty of dignified leisure for their savoring. The Indian loves these ancient ceremonial acts, all so symbolic, all so generally understood and accepted as a part of their religious life. These traditional acts unite them in their homage to nature which seems to them so alive, so closely akin to them and so well loved.

This group returns to camp, preparing a dramatic pantomime. (This is the same source from which we have our tradition of the theatre, out of the drama of religion.) The men come covered with brush and leafy branches. They stop three times as they approach the waiting people. The fourth stop is within reach of the people who this time take part in the drama by rushing out and snatching bits and pieces of the branches covering the men. Then the men, stripped of their covering foliage, act out dramatic stories of imaginary experiences on the warpath, as though they were returning from a campaign against tribal enemies. One tells of a scalp he has taken, another of the horses he stole and so on. This is all a mystery dance in which the braves recount their skills in protecting the tribe and securing horses for the buffalo hunts. Everything is portrayed in action, not by words, in a traditional cultural form.

Then begins the work of other men, who plant the lodge pole in its chosen place, who go into the woods to find and cut the 11 short poles that are set up in a ring at a distance from the lodge pole. Others bring the other 11 long poles, that connect the short poles with a point on the lodge pole just below the nest of the Thunder Bird. All the poles are tied firmly together with willow thongs. Then finally the men carry in the leafy branches that are used to make a roof for the lodge to protect the participants from the glare of the sun while they fast, sing, dance and invoke the Great Spirit.

Chief Payepot has withdrawn into meditation in preparation for the ceremony of the next day. He has priestly preparations to make in order to be in the right state of mind and body to appeal to the Great Spirit for his help and compassion.

Only when all these preparations have proceeded does the sponsor himself pay a visit to Chief Payepot. Entering the teepee, the sponsor seats himself on the ground. Face to face the two Medicine Men will talk over the ceremony.

The sponsor explains what the two tribes, the Assiniboines and Gros Ventres, had hoped to achieve by the Rain Dance they had been planning through the year past. Then he explains why they have altered their plans in the face of enveloping disaster. The fortunate coming of the great Medicine Man from the north had convinced them that he should carry the pleas of all the people in their distress to the ears of the Great Spirit.

Chief Payepot listens in silence and attentiveness until his guest has concluded his story. Then Chief Payepot began to speak:

“I can pray to the Great Spirit to help us. I cannot promise to make rain. No one can make rain but the Great Spirit. But if the whole community will help me, we can have rain. I will sing four songs. I want everyone to sing these songs with me and to help me by having faith that the Great Spirit will have pity on them. Everyone must think about it and everyone must help.”

Then he put on his ceremonial dress and carrying the symbols of his office as a Medicine Man he went to the lodge and entered its leafy shelter. Again he explained to those around him who, by their status, were entrusted with the rituals of the Rain Dance, about his own inability to make rain, his willingness to be their agent, to channel their united petitions to the Great Spirit. Then in the impressive silence that followed he reached out his hand and picked up the ceremonial rattle which was the signal for the Rain Dance to begin.

Out on the parched and yellow grass, under the brassy sun, all the Indians had gathered. Within the lodge all those who were ready now to respond to his leadership in the rituals, had been in long meditations, they had been without food and water, preparing for this hour. They were pledged to fast until the Rain Dance was over.

When Payepot signalled with the great rattle the lodge was in an instant throbbing with the sound of the drums, the rhythm of the moccasined feet of the dancers, the piercing first song led by the Medicine Man. The tom toms were beaten in that strange rhythm that seems like a great heart beat, underlying the whole ceremony. Hours passed by with alternate silences and massive volumes of piercing and throbbing sounds. The rhythm of rattles, the beating of the undulating feet on the earth, the swish of feathers and beaded leather grew in intensity.

Many hours later when the third song, a long invocative song, repeated again and again, had stopped, Chief Payepot moved out of the lodge and spoke to all the assembled people. Already on the horizon there was a handful of clouds and all the Indians were rejoicing at this symbol of beneficence. The heat, the thirst, the weariness, all were forgotten in the joy of this new hopefulness. But Payepot feared this growing exuberance of hope.

“I want you all to sing with all your hearts,” said Chief Payepot, “I want you all to cry out as one person.”

Tension was growing high. There was a great sense of excitement sweeping over the Indians. The dancers and singers and drummers were taut with expectation. There was a pause for rest, then silence, and then Chief Payepot again raised the ceremonial rattle and the fierce music of drum, whistle, rattle and the human voice poured out across the sultry prairie. The feet of the dancers once more padded the earth with their mesmeric rhythm.

The song was not half sung before there was a growl of thunder from the blue-black clouds gathering against the heavens. Strange winds seized them and thrust them forward and dragged them back while bright swords of lightning slashed against the sky to which the whole drama of the Rain Dance seemed to have been transferred. Kisikwawasamawasis—Flash-In-The-Sky-Boy—made no pause in his concentrated attention to the rituals which had set up the communication between his people and their Great Spirit. He must not falter—none of them must falter—in their plea for succor and compassion. The song went on and on, and then suddenly the heavens seemed to open and a veritable cloudburst of rain fell upon the earth.

The Indians did not stop when the rains fell. They went on singing, dancing, beating their drums, blowing their whistles, shaking their rattles in a great burst of joyful gratitude.

Finally as the earth under their feet was churned into mud, the great Rain Dance ended. Drenched and happy, they at last sought shelter in the painted teepees. The drought had ended in Montana.

The Cree Rain Dance is based on reverence for life. The Indians have never named the source of that all-pervading energy of life which they recognize in every kingdom of nature and they refer to the source only as the Great Spirit. The manifestations of that Spirit take many forms, the greatest of which is the sun. The stars, the winds, and many such things are, as one Cree put it, “the hired men of the Almighty.” These lesser entities may be experienced in such a form as that of the Thunder Bird.

Communication between the individual and such a manifestation as the Thunder Bird involves precise forms of discipline handed down by Medicine Men from great ages of antiquity. There are, in fact, many factors in the surviving ceremonies, disciplines and experiences of the Rain Dance, even as it is carried out today, to relate it to other forms of similar approaches to a universal Spirit in use in many other parts of the world, including some Masonic ceremonies.

The first step in the preparation for a Rain Dance begins with the individual. It involves a series of meditations. Traditionally the right to sponsor a Rain Dance is considered a great honor. To work towards this point of achievement the Indian youth begins his disciplines while he is still virgin. Failing this he has no hope of rising to this place of honor in the tribe. But making the required approach he is set on the road to become eventually a Medicine Man. No man could become a chief who was not also wise in the ways of the tribal medicine.

During any Rain Dance the youth of the band are given preliminary training, tasks and responsibilities so that they can associate with the elders and Medicine Men and so learn the outer forms of the ceremonies. This will, of course, whet their desire to know more about the mysteries and to prepare themselves to participate in them.

When the young men come to the age where they have deep and irresistible aspirations to become sponsors of a Rain Dance, they begin by lonely meditations which take place on the peak of some hill or in some secluded wooded spot where they will not be disturbed for days at a time. Each man must choose his own seclusion and go alone and fasting to his vigil. He neither eats nor drinks but spends his time in concentrated appeal to the Great Spirit for revelation and guidance. Usually on the third day he will hear a voice or see a vision. If not he may persist for four or five days.

On his return to the camp he asks for the advice of four elders or Medicine Men. To them he explains all that has happened to him. It may be they will find the experience insufficient and he is advised to make a new attempt. But if he is an unusually sensitive young man his experience may win the approval of the elders. Even so, this is merely preliminary. No one wins a place of honor on one experience.

He may repeat his meditation in a month or two, or a year or two, or five or ten years, all depending on “human nature.” “Human beings, being what they are,” said one of the elders, “some are anxious, some reluctant, some eager, some cautious.”

The aspirant must have the same experience repeated at least three times, sometime in his life, before he makes the grade as a sponsor of a Rain Dance. If he persists and is finally approved, the process is called The Great Meditation. When he actually gives the Rain Dance depends on many things. The Indian is never in a hurry.

When the elders eventually agree to allow a certain man, already eligible, to undertake the great responsibility, actual preparations begin in the autumn when the leaves are beginning to turn color. The ceremony itself takes place the following year when the leaves are full in the late summer.

The council of elders meets again with the sponsor to make it clear just why the Rain Dance is to be performed and the sponsor must explain his motives, his objectives and his plans. A Rain Dance may be given for many different reasons. If a man has a loved one who is ill or handicapped, he may want to give the Dance to petition for aid. If he has been the recipient of good fortune, he may want to express his gratitude in this way. It may be that the band is facing difficulties which he feels can be helped to a solution through this means; or it may be for a wider brotherhood, all humanity, that he is making an appeal. But the motive must be well-defined.

Once all this has been cleared away, it is then open to anyone else to participate in the Rain Dance on the basis of some personal and secret vow. Such a person takes part in all the preparations and makes the appropriate invocation for aid or gratefully pays a spiritual debt. One day a white man came to Payepot reserve and asked if he would be allowed to participate. He had a very sick son and no one seemed able to help him. “I believe in your altitude to the Great Spirit,” he said. He was accepted, taught the rituals and followed the preparations. In due time his son was restored to health. In gratitude he returned to the Rain Dance for many years.

With plans and motives clarified, the preparations begin to move. First there must be a symbolic Thunder Bird created. Wise old women of the band are entrusted with this work. In secrecy they take twists of tobacco and fasten them together to make the figure of the bird. They then take 40 braids of sweet grass, such as the women make in every home, and wrap them securely around the Thunder Bird. These braids made by the women are kept for use all the year round. They are burned in thunder storms to invoke the protection of the Thunder Bird. They are used as incense in some rituals.

Next comes another wrapping provided by the sponsor. In the old days this would have been some fine fur, perhaps some white skin. But since the Hudson’s Bay Company moved down into the Prairies to trade with the Indians, they have imported what the Crees call sacrificial cloth. It is called stroud in trade and has always been a rare and expensive fabric, in blue, white or red. The Crees never hesitate to give what is best to the Great Spirit. Stroud came to be the most precious fabric known to the Indians and two yards were required for the wrapping. Outside this sacrificial cloth came other wrappings until a considerable bundle resulted, securely tied into a great medicine bag.

The sponsor selects one man to be his chief acolyte and he is put in charge of the symbolic Thunder Bird. From that day until the day of the Rain Dance, the medicine bag never leaves him. He will not take it into a house which is not clean.

Another man is nominated to take charge of the four ceremonial pipes. One of these pipes, belonging to the sponsor, must be a new one. It takes priority over all the other pipes when used ceremonially. The acolyte takes great care of the pipes, he cleans them, he purifies them with the smoke of sweet grass and he sees to it they are always available when needed. When the pipes are passed around in a ritual, they always move with the sun.

Finally four elders, Medicine Men, are selected by the sponsor to act with him in the long and complicated rituals entailed in the Rain Dance. If during the year of preparation the sponsor dies, these men will carry out his obligations in the short form of the dance which can take place in one day.

There are four song services leading up to the Rain Dance. The first is in the autumn, the second in midwinter, the third in the spring and the fourth just before the dance itself. The medicine bundle containing the symbolic Thunder Bird must be at every song service. These gatherings last all night and are intended to generate spiritual enthusiasm. The traditional songs are sung with great dedication and fervor and the drums beat out the mesmeric rhythms that accompany all the tribal ceremonies.

Fasting from food and drink plays a considerable part in all the Cree religious functions. But when an Indian for any reason, a single day’s fast, or a preparation for the Rain Dance, determines to drink no water for a specified time, he precedes the fast by addressing the spirit in water by explaining that he is not repudiating the use of this good manifestation of the Great Spirit, but that he is making a sacrifice in refraining from its use. If he fasts from food he also explains the sacrifice he is making. To him, food and water are conscious of him and it is courtesy to explain his actions.

It is difficult to explain why the Cree approaches the Great Spirit as he does. It is not merely that he seeks protection or even some good to be applied to some others. It is indefinable, a sort of fusion of the particular with the universal, of the lonely and separated man with the Great Spirit from which he emanated. Perhaps a kind of demonstration of the essential unity underlying the visible and tangible world and all humanity. Words but confuse the real meaning of his religious impulses.

The Rain Dance is a true community enterprise. As Payepot told the Indians in Montana: “Making rain is something that is not in my power. It is in your power. Not one or two can do this. Only the whole community joining together can call upon the Great Spirit to act in pity for us.” So after the four song services, after all those who have made vows, and have taken whistles to the services to be blessed, after all the acolytes have been appointed to their various responsibilities, the days appointed for the Rain Dance have come and the entire band is in action.

The rites performed in Montana, that came down from antiquity, are performed yearly on Payepot reserve. The old Medicine Man seeks the tree in a vision, he finds the tree, invokes its blessing, and marks it with the sacrificial cloth. The sponsor and his acolytes perform the ceremonial cutting and it is dragged to the site of the new lodge with rejoicing and dramatic pantomime. Then, where the hole has been dug, the top of the tree is marked with the symbol of the sun, and it is then raised with four forked poles. The ceremonial nest of the Thunder Bird is placed in the crotch of the limbs, left for that purpose. Around the lodge pole the lodge itself is built.

As the first day of the Rain Dance dawns the people of the reserve and visitors from reserves at distances from Payepot, arrive with their teepees and set them up in a great circle. In the lodge the sponsor and his acolytes and the singers and drummers are assembled, all fasting.

When the sponsor has raised his ceremonial rattle to give the signal for the dance to begin, the singers and drummers and dancers set the ceremonies in motion. For three days they will neither eat nor drink.

One by one those who have made vows approach the lodge pole and signify their participation by knotting a sacrificial cloth around the pole. From time to time they will join the dancers, feeling in every nerve and muscle the ceremonial rhythms through which their devotion is expressed. The singers will try to distract them from their deep concentration as a test of their sincerity, for these dancers are hoping that at some point before the Rain Dance ends they will have achieved an experience, an insight, a revelation, as an answer to their avowed intention. So earnest are these dancers that they are prepared to go on dancing, fasting, for the three days in order to earn a spiritual revelation.

The dancers can come and go at will, returning to their teepees to rest or visit with their friends. The sponsor and his acolytes never leave the lodge, but when they are exhausted merely lie down on the earth to snatch a little sleep.

The Indians never try to convert anyone to their religion. They never quarrel about religion. It is an intensely personal matter and indeed its community efficacy depends upon the individual’s sincerity. The chief aim of their religion is to express the individual’s gratitude for what he receives in this life. Life itself and its chief end is the unity of the Indian group, expressed in the reiterated injunction, “love one another.” “The first thing a parent teaches a child, the last thing a dying Indian says to those around him is ‘love one another’,” said one of the elders.

The Indian loves the land, the sky, the birds and animals about him because they are all expressions of the one life. One of the things that strangers to the Prairies will notice is an Indian or a group of Indians sitting quietly in some high spot, the side of a coulee perhaps, for hours at a time, just looking at a familiar landscape.

Difficult as it may be for the organizing and competitive mind of the white man to understand this phase of Indian life, it is necessary to understand it in order to evaluate the Indian. The Rain Dance has survived in spite of all the changes that have come to the Indian in the last century. None but an Indian can go to a Rain Dance without an invitation. The non-Indians who are invited are only those who will, perhaps, try to understand. When the guests make their way over the long, twisting trails to a remote part of the reserve on the floor of the valley, they can have little doubt of the solemnity of the three-day ceremony in which they are welcome to share for a few hours. There they find the circle of teepees reminiscent of the great buffalo hunting encampments of old. In the great open space even the drumming and singing and dancing in the leafy lodge is muted, and there is an atmosphere of peace and quiet. There is also an air of mystery as participants in tribal costumes come and go. Sometimes the music lapses and there are spells of silence until the dancing begins again and the drums throb. There is a small sacrificial fire within the lodge and there are mysterious comings and goings by the men who have charge of the ceremonial objects.

At the end of the three-day ceremony all who participate officially, retreat to a sweat house. This is large enough to hold eight men. It is built of 40 willows, bent and bound together with willow bark. In the centre of the sweat house is a hole into which eight white hot stones are dropped. Blue stones are used for this purpose for they can be heated without cracking. Sticks fashioned in a way used since antiquity are made to carry the hot stones to the pit. When the men in breech cloths are in the sweat house, water is thrown on the stones by sweet grass braids which are also burned as incense. There are songs and invocations used in the sweat house as the sponsor and acolytes purify themselves in the final act of the Rain Dance.

There is a great deal of gift-giving in relation to the Rain Dance and when the dance is complete the sacred medicine bundle is opened. The tobacco and the sweet grass braids are distributed, in small pieces, to be carried away as talismans, in a kind of communion service. They are symbols of Life.

The Rain Dance has always been a thorn in the side to the government which was trying to adjust the Indians to the white man’s way of life, and to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who carried out the instructions of the Indian department. The three reasons given for the efforts to suppress the Rain Dance, or the Sun Dance as it was originally known, were, first that it kept the Indians away from their farms; second, that they gave away too many of their possessions in connection with the dance, and thirdly, the white man’s dislike of the ceremony of piercing the flesh in the making of braves.

The last Rain Dance in which the piercing of the flesh was carried out was about 1899. It was the cause of 20 years of unhappiness for the Crees of Payepot reserve. It came about in this way.

By that time a whole generation of young Indians had grown up who knew nothing about the buffalo hunting days except what they heard from the elders as story tellers. Perhaps the youths began to think the old men were telling tall tales.

A Rain Dance was about to take place when one evening a group of about 20 Cree youths sought out Chief Payepot. They were of the age at which, even 50 years earlier, they would have been initiated into the status of young warriors. Their spokesman told the old chief that they wanted to be pierced and allowed to perform the dance of which they had been told so much. In a spirit of bravado, they asked the chief to make warriors of them. They wanted to ape the old braves.

Payepot looked at the band of young men and silently thought the matter over. Then he answered them:

“This is not a laughing matter. But since you have asked for this experience, and the Great Spirit has heard you and knows what you ask, you must carry it through. Come back tomorrow morning before dawn and you will be pierced.”

Sobered by the old man’s words the youths went away to talk it over. Their chief’s reaction was a challenge and they suddenly realized they could not back out now without becoming the laughing stock of the tribe, and the whole countryside.

In the cold dawn the young Indians turned up at Payepot’s home in breech cloths only. Payepot had brought another Medicine Man to carry out the function of piercing. The old men were doubtless silently enjoying the discomfiture of the young men who were looking at each other and at the elders with questions in their eyes. The old men were making the most of the opportunity. The man who was to officiate carried in his hand a great bear claw which was traditionally used for the piercing. He went from one young man to the other pinching the flesh on his breast, pulling it from the bone, thoughtfully feeling and measuring it. “Ah! so you want to be pierced, eh?” he asked from time to time, prolonging the anxiety of each of the boys. Slowly and impressively he completed his preparations.

The ritual was to open two slots on each side of the young man’s breast and cut the flesh free, so that a length of shaganapi, or buffalo hide, could be inserted. In the dance the ends of these thongs would be fastened to the lodge pole. In the dancing the youth, singing with all his force, danced slowly farther and farther from the pole, loosening the flesh and wearing it down until finally it broke. The young man would have proved his ability to endure pain courageously and would be left with two big scars on his breast to testify to his initiation.

All the young men were pierced, and took part in the Rain Dance. It was the last time the rite was carried out on the Prairies.

One of the elders recalling the incident says that the ritual made “good men” of some of them. In their ritual dances they cried aloud to the Great Spirit for strength and courage. Some of them eventually became Medicine Men.

But word must have got about on what had happened on the Payepot reserve. Not long afterwards Chief Payepot was arrested by the Mounted Police and taken to the prison of the force in Regina.

At that time Harry Ball, who later became Chief Sitting Eagle Changing Position, was a boy at school in Regina, in a Presbyterian industrial college. One of the staff came to him one day and said, “Your chief is in prison in Regina. Do you want to visit him?” The boy went immediately. As he came to the cell where the old man was held he saw beside the door a paper with his name and his indictment.

During his visit Chief Payepot said: “What am I in here for?”

“It says on the paper outside that you were arrested for being drunk.”

“But I never drink,” protested the old man. Then after a pause he went on:

“I know why I am here. It is because of the Rain Dance and the piercing of the boys.”

The Indian department deposed Chief Payepot and invited the band to elect another chief. Twenty-five years after he had signed away to the Crown his rights to his native land, 15 years after he had prevented the southern Indians from joining the Metis in rebellion, he was imprisoned on a false charge of drunkenness and deprived of the chieftainship he had held for half a century.

It broke the old man’s spirit. He returned to the reserve, humiliated and sad. On the reserve there was one silent, unbroken determination to have no other chief as long as Payepot lived. On the books of the Indian department the band had no chief. In the hearts of the Crees on Payepot reserve, most of whom by now had known no other leader, he remained the Chief, the great Medicine Man, the old warrior, the wise and durable leader.

The years went by and they refused to elect a chief. The old man had told them to love one another as a protection against the hostile world into which time had driven them. To this day Chief Payepot dominates the reserve as a symbol and his medicine is still potent.

Year after year the pressure of government and police was aimed at ending the Rain Dance. One of the elders said smilingly, “The Rain Dance was a short form of the Sun Dance. Like low mass and high mass. We performed the Rain Dance in one day instead of three days we had to dance the Sun Dance. The white man never knew that it was the same ceremony.”

The piercing of the flesh had been abandoned. Symbolically the same dance was performed with the dancers fastening ribbons to their clothing and tying the ends to the lodge pole.

But for all the efforts made to stamp out the Sun Dance or its new form of Rain Dance, it persisted. The white men who now dominated the country were determined to make stay-at-home farmers of the Indians, thrifty, cautious and hard-working. Never in the thousands of years of Indian culture lying behind them had the Indians ever had the need to be stay-at-home, thrifty and cautious. They were nomadic, non-agricultural, adventurous. Their survival depended on pursuit, speed, skill, recklessness. Nothing in their religious or social history held a clue to the property-owning, competitive way of life. They had no fear of death, and their religion had no hell. Life was abundant and inexhaustible, and on the other side of death was a world like this world, only with less of its difficulties.

Then came the First World War. Under the Indian treaties no Indian could be conscripted for service in the armed forces. But about 35 percent of young Indians of military age volunteered to serve in the Canadian Army. Many young men on Payepot reserve went to serve Canada in Europe.

At the close of the war when some of these young men came back, the band wanted to express its gratitude by an old time Sun Dance, or Rain Dance, as they now called it. They sent one of the returned soldiers to Regina to ask permission of The Big Boss, Indian Commissioner W. P. R. Graham. He explained the situation and asked that the band be allowed to revive its ancient ceremonial for the event. Graham refused. “Look,” he said, “you have been forbidden to hold the Sun Dance. It’s part of the Indian religion and it’s no damn good.”

The young soldier spoke quietly:

“I went to the war. I offered my life to protect this country. I have come back. I fought for you and I fought for all those who sat in this office during the war. I have a right to ask you to give us back our Sun Dance.”

There was silence in the office and the commissioner found it difficult to make an answer. Then he said:

“On one condition. You can have it for yourselves. You cannot invite the Indians from any other reserve.”

“We will give no invitation,” said the soldier, “but I cannot say the Indians will not come.”

“If they come,” said the commissioners, “the mounties will put a stop to it.”

“We will not prevent them from coming,” said the soldier.

The preparations for the Sun Dance began. In due time the days of the dance arrived. Indians from nearby reserves had heard about the preparations and came to join it. When everything was about to begin, the mounties arrived.

“These people don’t belong here,” they said pointing to the visitors. “They should be on their land working.” They threatened to break up the festival.

At this point the Indians of Payepot had to compromise with the short form of the dance. But they did not give up the struggle. “We got a lawyer to back us up.” From that day to this Payepot reserve has the ancient right to perform its Rain Dance in conformity with tradition.

They try to maintain the old spirit. There is much gift-giving at the dance. The Indian is generous, the white man might say, foolish, in his gifts, but he makes his gifts as sacrifices to the Great Spirit.

The history of the Sun Dance, even in its modern form of the Rain Dance, is almost over. There are few left to carry on the tradition. The youths who once learned the ethics of the Crees in various steps of participation are no longer in training in sufficient numbers to maintain the tradition. It is almost impossible to find young men of the necessary quality. They are contaminated by their contacts with the worst side of the white man’s culture before they are of an age to begin their training. The Indian, even when he is corrupted by his contacts outside the reserve, has a great respect for tradition. He will not try to carry on an empty form if he has not the true qualifications for attempting his communion with the Great Spirit. The Crees will not feed on the husks of ancient rituals. No man will attempt to sponsor a Rain Dance if he knows he lacks the spiritual capacity. Moreover the Rain Dance demands powers of endurance and self-discipline which few will possess when the present elders are gone.

The Plains Indians had very little outside of themselves to depend upon. The nomadic society was not an acquisitive one. They owned little, only what could be carried with them. There were no permanent camping places, no store houses for supplies, no fortification to which to retreat in times of danger. The Plains Indian’s life was based on the bare essentials of existence, insofar as material things were concerned. The nomadic bands lived on the flat Prairies between the endless expanse of earth and the endless expanse of the heavens. No one even today can live on the Prairies or visit the Prairies without being constantly aware of the skies. Prairie artists devote much of their thought to the skies and their canvases are very often largely paintings of sky with a small portion depicting the earth. This is part of the character of the western plains. And here the nomadic tribes chose to live and loved the land. The Indian and his family had as their only shelter the buffalo skin teepee, usually painted with the owner’s history of his contribution to the life of his band.

The Indian band was a small community. Payepot’s band, when it surrendered its nomadic tradition and retreated to a reserve, was made up of 350 persons. Keeping in mind the old people and the dependent children, the group of men and women responsible for the safety and continuity of the band was a small one indeed.

This society living in space and loneliness was naturally introspective. If the Crees had not had a great sustaining faith in the livingness and friendliness of the world in which they lived they would not have come through all the crushing experiences of the last hundred years as the philosophical and humorous people that they are. Materialism had no hold upon them and they lived with a very old tradition of mysticism.

The Indians have a religion which was handed down to them from their forefathers. Its antiquity is so great that it is obvious to students of religion that its origins were in some unknown centre from which many of the old world religions stem. This religion was unwritten and maintained only by oral tradition. Its concepts are universal and must have emanated from a highly developed source of religious faith and disciplines. Their religion, still surviving in spite of all the vicissitudes of recent history, teaches them to be united, to be thankful and to love one another. It still teaches them to avoid resentment and hate. It has never been a religion of fear. It has no hell. Belief in an afterlife is general and often times when they gather together in the winter to exchange experiences, stories of experiences of the other side of life are told quite naturally and often with humor.

The Indian does not speak of his religion so long as it matters to him. When he has ceased to believe in it he speaks of it slightingly and inaccurately. Most of the studies which have been made of the Indian religion have been done by people prejudiced against it at the outset, and in the transition period when it was being modified by the religions of the white man. Old reports of religious ceremonies speak of the outer symbolism without any knowledge of their inner meaning. Much of what has been put on record is mixed with biblical legend or even invented for commercial purposes. The old travellers wrote of the faith of the Indians merely as a matter of curiosity.

The missionaries were good men imbued with the narrowness of their age. They thought of the Indians as devil worshippers. They told them they would be eternally lost if they did not adopt one or other of the imported religions. The fur trader, “the black robes” (Roman Catholic priests), the military and finally the Protestant missionaries, all worked at the disintegration of the Indian tribes for many years before they were forced by hunger and by the influx of settlers to give up their nomadic life and settle on reserves.

Yet even after generations of association with Christians, of education in the white man’s schools, and of nominal membership in various Christian institutions, the Indian often finds far more satisfaction in the surviving beliefs and rituals of his own people. He can accommodate within this framework what really attracts him in the Christian creeds, but a very great many Indians today are at heart and of their free choice, exponents of the ancient mysteries of their forefathers.

Payepot never relinquished his ancient faith. Yet he was a good friend of young Father Hugonard who came in 1884 to head the Indian Industrial School at Lebret on the Fishing Lakes, the very year that Payepot brought his band to the Qu’Appelle valley reserve. Father Hugonard worked hard to convert the old chief, and never gave up hope as long as the old man lived. Father Hugonard spoke fluent Cree so there were often long discussions between the two.

Payepot’s two youngest sons were nearly school age and the priest urged that they be placed in school and brought up in the ways of the white men. “My son,” said Payepot, “my oldest boy, will be coming here soon. The other one, when he is old enough, he will come too.”

“Ah, that is good,” said the priest. “You know, my Elder Brother, you are getting old. We are going to teach your children our religion. They will be telling you how good is our religion. You should take our religion also.”

“My Younger Brother,” Payepot replied, “you want to teach me your religion. Do you know the Great Spirit made that country where you came from and planted you there and gave you this religion. The Great Spirit gave you a land over there and people who grew up there got this religion. Then something got into your head to come to this country—my country—for God gave me this country and all these Indians. The paleface gets so greedy, having a foothold in this country he wants to own the whole country.”

“Well, I want you to try to understand my religion,” said Father Hugonard, “because that’s the only way that you will see God.”

“Ah, my Younger Brother, you have nice ideas but you don’t know the first thing of what our forefathers taught us.”

“Your religion will just lead you down to the devil where you will be burned forever,” said the priest.

“My Younger Brother,” said Payepot, “you are foolish, you are only a child. You are trying to scare me. In your country I think you are using that same method—fear. You try to work it on me. I am too old for that. You can’t scare me. You are using that method of fear among Frenchmen and you have them so fixed in your hands they dare not open their mouths for fear they are going to hell. What is hell? We have no such thing in our religion.”

“That is where you are heading for,” said the priest.

“Well,” said Payepot, with a gleam of his sardonic humor, “you will have to show me the way.”

But Payepot liked Father Hugonard and he disliked arguing about religion.

“Well,” said the old Chief. “We’ll go fifty-fifty.”

“Fine, I’ll teach you to pray and teach you our history,” said the priest.

“No, nothing of the kind,” said Payepot, “I know my history, and you know yours. We’ll meet half way.”

“How do you mean,” said Father Hugonard, “meet half way?”

“My Younger Brother, you are going to take half my beliefs, and I’ll take half of yours. Eventually, I guess, we will go to the same place.”

There was silence for a little while. Then Payepot continued.

“You could be wrong. The Indian religion could be right. I will keep two strings to my bow.”

Father Hugonard never got any farther with the shrewd and witty Payepot. He died as he had lived, a devotee of the Great Spirit by the rituals and ceremonies by which he had lived all his long life.

Payepot, lithe and slender, even when his grey hair hung over his shoulders in two long braids, had a sharp, eagle eye and his speech could be trenchant. He had a deep sense of his own personal power and never failed to use it when faced with a crisis and a demand for decision. He had brought his people through many a slender margin of safety by that power of decision. It was spiritual and moral power which he believed had come to him as the result of devotion to the traditional beliefs of his tribe.

There is a story told of him which occurred at the great territorial exhibition at Regina in 1895, when the Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, was the guest of honor. The Indian department had decided on a great congress of Indians from Manitoba to the foothills of the Rockies. This included the Crees and the Blackfoot Indians, long deadly enemies. They had signed a treaty of peace, but old fears and jealousies die slowly. Moreover, Crowfoot, the chief of the Blackfoot tribe had recently died, without an heir and without proposing a successor. Two men contended for the honor, Iron Shield and Running Rabbit. Indian Commissioner Forget could not make up his mind which man to support.

There were thousands of Indians encamped around Regina and some hundreds milling around the office of the Indian Commissioner. Among them was Payepot, waiting for an interview with Forget.

Meantime Iron Shield and Running Rabbit and a number of their supporters were in the commissioner’s office and he was trying to bring about a compromise. At one point something he said was misinterpreted and an uproar ensued. One of the contestants laid violent hands on the commissioner and the situation was very serious. Someone ran to inform Payepot. Now Payepot was one of the chief men of the Crees, of great personal influence on the Plains, and one of their former enemy chiefs. But Payepot did not hesitate to enter the room full of angry Blackfoot Indians. He assumed command of the situation, rescued the commissioner and brought quiet among the indignant Indians.

The following day Commissioner Forget sent for Payepot and thanked him officially for his intervention. He then offered him any reward he would ask. Payepot refused any reward for an act which he felt was his responsibility.

Back on the reserve these evidences of his integrity and influence pleased the members of his band and justified their loyalty to the Chief. Payepot spoke five Indian languages, Sioux, Assiniboine, Saulteaux, Piagan and of course his native tongue, Cree. So in his meetings with Indians of many tribes, he was able to speak freely with them and understand their attitudes.

Many of the band had brought to the reserve much experience and mysticism, in healing, in the use of herbs and the ways of the old Indians were passed along to any who chose to learn. There were secret recipes for old tonics, brews for rheumatic conditions, blood purifiers and poultices, and knowledge of how to deal with accidents and wounds. There was a knowledge, too, of how to treat horses which continues to this day. There were also recipes, from roots, barks and herbal plants, for love potions, and even some black magic which could be used to maim or handicap an enemy.

Psychically sensitive as was almost every Indian before his association with white man’s civilization, there were many tales and legends told of strange encounters, and experiences in which an Indian, or a group of Indians, had been able to see into the unseen.

Among other things the Indians were able from time to time to see “the little people,” or maymaykwaysiwak, as they are called in the Cree tongue. The little people are seen or contacted in many forms. They range in size from minute creatures who can stand on a leaf, to some the size of young children. There is a story told of a woman on the Payepot reserve who was sitting by a stream when she heard voices. Peering around to locate the speakers, she failed to find them. Then when eyes turned again to the water she saw a poplar leaf floating by, but on it were two tiny creatures who were holding a conversation.

The Indians do not like to see the little people, for they may bring them misfortune. The little people do not want to be seen and they resent the intrusion of human beings and may do them some harm in retaliation. Yet they are not alone in this, for Falstaff is made to say by Shakespeare: “They are fairies! he that speaks to them shall die!”

Thirty years or more ago a Cree on Payepot reserve was working in his barn in the dusk of an autumn evening. His wife wondered what was keeping him so late, for supper was ready to serve. So she went out to call him in. As she walked around a corner of the barn she heard voices and decided that her husband had a visitor. But when she came to the barn door and opened it she found him alone.

“Who were you talking to just now?” she asked him.

“No one. There has not been anyone here.”

“But I heard voices?” she said, “it sounded like this” . . . and she imitated the rise and fall of hurried voices.

When he continued to deny having spoken at all, she became alarmed.

“It was the little people,” she said, and then recalled that as she listened to them she had become chilled as though something very cold had been laid on her back. Now she was thoroughly alarmed. After overhearing them, she might be visited with misfortune.

This went on for some months but one day she called to her husband from the second floor bedroom. “Come see what I have found,” she called.

He went up and there on the outer sill of the window was a small and beautiful flint arrow head.

“It is a gift from the maymaykwaysiwak,” she said happily. “It means they are friendly. We will suffer no misfortune because I overheard them.”

To this day the arrow head is a family treasure. These people had never heard that in northern Europe the little people are regarded as the makers of small and exquisite arrow heads which are found in places which are regarded as fairy country.

Nanipawis, a member of the band still living on Payepot reserve, tells a story that concerns the making of maple sugar. It may be a surprise to a lot of people to know that these Crees still make maple sugar, tapping it from the dwarf mountain maple or the Manitoba maple. In this case a Cree named Flying Ice and his wife had settled down near the site of the present town of Craven and had tapped a number of trees. Each morning Flying Ice would make the rounds of the sap pails. But he was annoyed and puzzled to discover that the pails would be empty though the sap was running. First he thought someone was stealing the sap but then he noticed that the pails did not appear to be disturbed. At this point he decided to go shooting for Prairie Chicken. He knew a place where they gathered to perform their mating ceremonies. He took his muzzle loading gun and went to the spot, where he lay on his stomach and waited for the birds to appear. Presently several came and for a while he watched them, for the ceremony is most interesting. Then he fired, and with one shot he got two birds. With them he started home and went by way of the trees he had tapped to have another look at them. In the trees he saw what he took to be two small boys, though they did not seem more than knee high and their clothes were not those usually worn by white boys. They had knee pants and swallow tail coats. But Flying Ice decided to run after them, and as fast as he knew how he pursued them through the woods. He could not gain on them, and presently they disappeared. He went on looking for their footprints but he could find none. Very annoyed, he went home to his wife and told her what had happened. When he was through she said:

“They were maymaykwaysiwak. We must move away. This is their country. No matter how long we stay, we will never have any maple sugar.”

Wherever there are cut banks and sandy pits, there you may come upon the little people.

There is another story that illustrates the Cree’s sense of the necessity of living up to the ethics of the tribe. This story comes from the final period of nomadic life when the band was still living in the Cypress Hills but there was a Metis population on the Plains. It might have been as long ago as 1850. This story was told to Abel Watetch by an old aunt, Kapapamastimat, who was in the party, as well as by others of the elders. There was a Sun Dance in the Cypress Hills and one of the sacrificial cloths used in the ceremony was a stroud, the highly valued HBC material then used by the Indians in this ceremony. There was a very large crowd at the ceremony and after it was over, everyone left the lodge except one man who was of mixed blood, a Metis. He was an independent sort and did not belong to any party, was camped alone, and took no part in the ceremony, being merely an onlooker.

He was amazed at the big and beautiful sacrificial cloths thrown away, as he thought. So he lingered on after all the others had left and helped himself to the stroud. He did not know he was doing any harm but he wanted the fabric for his own use. After getting what he wanted from the lodge, he left and began his journey eastward. In the evening he came to the slough where the Payepot band had camped but he did not join them. He made a camp on the other side of the slough. As night fell, a storm came up. First of all there was a light rainfall but then there came thunder and lightning and presently a very heavy downpour. As the storm grew to be very fierce, the rain turned to fire. It was terrifying and the Indians in the Payepot party ran to the slough with their blankets and dipped them in the water, so that they could cover themselves as a protection from the fire from heaven. Eventually the storm passed, but everything had become so hot that the water in the slough was warm. They had to move away from the place as soon as there was light. As they left the slough they saw the camp of the Metis. It was a charred mess. The whole outfit of the desecrator was completely burned out.

There is another story that will become one of the great legends of the end of the buffalo age. It was told to Abel Watetch by a man who participated in the events and whose name was Rock Thunder.

The events took place probably in the 1870s when the buffalo were almost extinct on the Canadian Prairies although there remained lingering hopes in the hearts of the Indians that they might still sometimes be found. They could not believe that the vast herds had actually been destroyed. Their entire way of life depended on the buffalo for food, for clothing, for shelter.

Payepot’s band was still roaming the country it loved best, the land in and around the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle river and the Fishing Lakes. It was a long time since they had killed any buffalo and winter was not far away. They decided to set out on a hunting party, travelling southwest towards the Cypress Hills.

For ten days they travelled across the Plains alertly watching for any sign of a buffalo herd. They were hungry, for the last of the pemmican was gone and they were growing weak. That night when they encamped they did something they disliked doing and which was only done in the case of extreme emergency. They killed a mustang to renew their strength.

Next day they began again their journey in search of the buffalo. At the end of seven days they had still seen no sign. So that night when they made camp they decided to make an appeal to the Great Spirit for pity and for help. The whole night through they sang and danced to the drums, their ancient petitions for mercy.

The next day they set out again more hopefully and they travelled for seven days. But there was no sign of the buffalo. When they encamped that night they prepared for another night of invocation. They repeated, with waning strength, their singing and dancing and drumming in a sad demand upon the Great Spirit.

They had renewed their hope and at dawn they set out again south-westward. Presently they came to a lookout from which so often in the past they had watched for the approach of the herds. Somehow as they stood there, they felt their spirits rise with an assurance that help would come from the Great Spirit. And so they watched.

Presently, far to the southwest they saw a small, dusty cloud hanging over the Prairie. When they recognized that this truly was a cloud of dust raised by a herd of buffalo travelling towards them, they burst into songs of thanksgiving and made camp.

All day they waited and as the time passed they heard the rumble of the buffalo feet, and felt the tremor of the earth. By evening the herd was still a long way off, but the cloud had grown and was travelling fast.

By dawn they could see the buffalo, a vast herd of countless bison. The scouts went out on their swiftest buffalo ponies and returned to tell the band that the herd was travelling in a body two miles wide and eight miles long.

Strangest of all, the Crees discovered, that the herd was led by an enormous snow white bison.

Five of the hunters in the band vowed to shoot the white bison for to own a snow white buffalo hide with that great white shaggy head would be a great distinction. These were the five best hunters and owned the five swiftest ponies who could travel as fast as the fastest deer. The horses were as excited as the hunters over the coming buffalo hunt.

Finally the buffalo had come near enough for the hunt to begin. The exultant Crees killed a hundred buffalo and in happy excitement the women went to work to turn the meat into pemmican.

The hunters decided that next day they would kill another fifty buffalo and so their needs would be taken care of for the coming winter. Meantime, the whole band feasted all through the night. The drums beat out a happy rhythm and the dancing was gay. Nor did they forget songs of praise to the Great Spirit.

In spite of the all night festivities, fifty mounted hunters were ready at dawn to ride away after the buffalo. They rode in the two mile wide trail the buffalo had left behind them, where the prairie was beaten into dust. They rode all day without catching up with the herd, and at sunset they came to the edge of a great slough fed by beautiful springs, to which the dusty trail had led them.

They decided not to attempt to cross the slough that night, but made camp and settled down to sleep. By dawn they were ready to continue the pursuit. Still as full of confidence and rejoicing as they had been the day before, they set off expecting to pick up the trail on the other side of the great slough.

But to their amazement as they skirted the woods and the spring-fed pond, they found no trail on the western side. Puzzled and distressed they fanned out across the Prairie searching fearfully for the lost trail. All day they searched and at night returned to the slough in despair. No one had seen the slightest sign of the two mile wide dusty trail.

It was a very dark night, so dark that not a star could be seen. The hunters sat around their camp fire talking about the mystery. Then they fell into silence. Presently the blackness of the night was lighted by a tremendous flash of light across the sky. Every face was turned to the heavens, and there, led by the snow white bison, was the lost herd, moving massively across the sky. In awe they watched. When the old men of the band recounted the story in the following years, when they had come to dwell in little log cabins on the Payepot reserve, they said that they had seen the last great buffalo herd going to the Happy Hunting Ground, with the white bison leading the way.

Finally Abel Watetch tells his own story of the Thunder Bird. It was about 1897 when as a boy of sixteen he was nearing the end of his twelve year sojourn at the Lebret school on Mission lake.

Two of the students were getting married at the school. The custom was, when students married before graduation, that the ceremony was performed early in the morning and attended by the whole school. It was followed by a feast and the rest of the day was spent in square dancing.

This was a beautiful morning but unusually hot and everybody was trying to stand in the shade by 10:30 o’clock. A dark cloud coming up in the West threatened a storm. The storm came up with most unusual suddenness with a heavy display of lightning and a great orchestra of thunder. The students had run indoors but were at the windows watching the storm over Mission lake in fascination.

One boy cried out that something was hanging from the clouds in the middle of the lake. Every eye was fastened on the storm clouds ripped with lightning and shaken with thunder. Then suddenly one and all could see what was happening. There, in the midst of the storm was the great Thunder Bird. He had dragged up from the bottom of the lake a huge serpent and carried it off through the clouds.

One of the sisters, Sister Goulet, standing with the boys, was shaking her head in bewilderment. She said to them in Cree: “It is true. The old Indians used to tell of such things happening, away back before the white men came. They told us about the Thunder Bird coming to carry off the evil spirit in the big serpent.”

The struggle between good and evil is symbolized in every great tradition. England has her St. George and the Dragon. The valley of the Qu’Appelle has the Thunder Bird and the Serpent of the Fishing lakes.

The annual reports of the Department of Indian Affairs and of the North West Mounted Police, published in the Sessional Papers of Canada, contain many references to Payepot and his band. In one of the earliest of these, dated September 30, 1880, Edwin Allen, Indian Agent at Fort Walsh, described the condition of the band and gave some assessment of its chief prior to his settlement on a reserve:

Subsequent reports provide interesting details of the removal to the reserve. They establish that Payepot arrived at Fort Qu’Appelle in June, 1882 and accompanied A. McDonald, the local Indian Agent, to the site of the proposed reserve on the plains. Payepot expressed his satisfaction with it and asked that the boundary be run between it and the neighboring Assiniboine Reserve. He made a number of demands of the Indian Department which are not specified in the report. These being refused, he departed for the south. Over a year later he again arrived at Fort Qu’Appelle and, on August 30, 1883 moved to the reserve. The story of the first disastrous winter is reflected in the statistics provided by the Department of Indian Affairs. A census taken the following summer showed 375 persons on rations, and the statement is made that 45 had died during the previous winter. Even if not of the proportions cited by Mr. Watetch, the department figures constitute a very high mortality.

Only in the matter of the abandonment of the first reserve do the government reports vary markedly from the Indian version of events. In summary, the reports indicate that on May 16, 1884, at the request of Indian Commissioner E. Dewdney, Commissioner Irvine of the N.W.M.P. accompanied Dewdney to Indian Head where they encountered Payepot and his whole camp enroute to Pasqua’s reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley to attend a Sun Dance. Payepot pointed out that he wished to remove his people to some place where they could catch fish. Irvine reported: “Having explained to him that the Government would not permit armed bodies of men, whether Indians or whites, to roam about the country at large, and that he must consider his future movements, we left him to reflect thereupon, and returned to Regina for an escort.” On May 21, Irvine, Supt. Herchmer, and 56 N.W.M.P., arrived within a few miles of where Payepot had by this time camped at the west end of the Qu’Appelle Lakes. Irvine and an interpreter rode into the camp, explained that he was not there to fight Payepot, but to persuade him to return to the reserve. This Payepot agreed to do, returning to the reserve on May 23rd. In June, the Department recommended that the chief be allowed to select a new reserve, and he and his band had removed to the permanent site by September, 1884.

Commissioner Irvine does not in his report for 1885 mention the visit to Payepot which Mr. Watetch has described. He does describe a visit to the reserve on another occasion. Within a week of the first despatches reporting impending trouble in the north, Irvine, accompanied by four officers and 86 men, set off for the affected area. On March 18, 1885, after a six-hour trip they halted at Payepot’s reserve for dinner, to which they invited the chief and “of which he partook.” The force then proceeded to Muscowpetung’s reserve for the night, and moved off to the north the next morning. There are a number of references to Payepot in the rebellion literature. A contemporary newspaper account states that Payepot transmitted a message of loyalty to Sir John A. Macdonald through the medical officer, while another indicates that he and his band travelled to Regina to pledge their loyalty directly to Governor Dewdney.

—Editorial Committee,

Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by Bill Perehudoff (1918-2013) have been omitted from this etext.

A cover which is placed in the public domain was created for this ebook.

[The end of Payepot and His People by Abel Watetch]