Halfbreed Page 3

  Poundmaker and Big Bear surrendered, were charged with treason, and sentenced to jail for three years.

  The other Halfbreeds escaped to the empty pockets of North Saskatchewan.

  The total cost to the federal government to stop the Rebellion was $5,000,000.

  Chapter 2

  MY PEOPLE FLED TO SPRING RIVER*1 which is fifty miles northwest of Prince Albert. Halfbreed families with names like Chartrand, Isbister, Campbell, Arcand, and Vandal came here after the Riel Rebellion where the men had been actively involved. Riel was gone now and so were their hopes. This new land was covered with small lakes, rocky hills and dense bush. The Halfbreeds who came were self-sufficient trappers and hunters. Unlike their Indian brothers, they were not prepared to settle down to an existence of continual hardship, scratching out a scanty living from the land. They were drawn to this part of Saskatchewan because the region was good for hunting and trapping, and there were no settlers.

  In the late 1920s the land was thrown open for homesteading and again came the threat of immigrants. By this time the lakes were drying up and the fur and game had almost disappeared. Having nowhere else to go, nearly all the families decided to take homesteads so that the land would belong to them. It was difficult to accept the fact that times were changing, but if there was to be a future for their children, the roaming, free life must be forgotten.

  The land was ten dollars for a quarter section. Ten acres had to be broken in three years, along with improvements, before title would be granted. Otherwise the land was confiscated by Land Improvement District authorities. Due to the depression and shortage of fur there was no money to buy the implements to break the land. A few families could have scraped up the money to hire outside help but no one would risk expensive equipment on a land so covered with rocks and muskeg. Some tried with horse and plough but were defeated in the end. Fearless men who could brave sub-zero weather and all the dangers associated with living in the bush gave up, frustrated and discouraged. They just did not have the kind of thing inside them that makes farmers.

  Gradually the homesteads were reclaimed by the authorities and offered to the immigrants. The Halfbreeds then became squatters on their land and were eventually run off by the new owners. One by one they drifted back to the road lines and crown lands where they built cabins and barns and from then on were known as “Road Allowance people.”*2

  So began a miserable life of poverty which held no hope for the future. That generation of my people was completely beaten. Their fathers had failed during the Rebellion to make a dream come true; they failed as farmers; now there was nothing left. Their way of life was a part of Canada’s past and they saw no place in the world around them, for they believed they had nothing to offer. They felt shame, and with shame the loss of pride and the strength to live each day. I hurt inside when I think of those people. You sometimes see that generation today: the crippled, bent old grandfathers and grandmothers on town and city skid rows; you find them in the bush waiting to die; or baby-sitting grandchildren while the parents are drunk. And there are some who even after a hundred years continue to struggle for equality and justice for their people. The road for them is never-ending and full of frustrations and heart-break.

  I hurt because in my childhood I saw glimpses of a proud and happy people. I heard their laughter, saw them dance, and felt their love.

  A close friend of mine said, “Maria, make it a happy book. It couldn’t have been so bad. We know we are guilty so don’t be too harsh.” I am not bitter. I have passed that stage. I only want to say: this is what it was like; this is what it is still like. I know that poverty is not ours alone. Your people have it too, but in those earlier days you at least had dreams, you had a tomorrow. My parents and I never shared any aspirations for a future. I never saw my father talk back to a white man unless he was drunk. I never saw him or any of our men walk with their heads held high before white people. However, when they were drunk they became aggressive and belligerent, and for a little while the whites would be afraid of them. Even these times were rare because often they drank too much and became pathetic, sick men, crying about the past and fighting each other or going home to beat frightened wives. But I am ahead of myself so I will begin again and tell of Dad’s family.

  Great Grandpa Campbell came from Edinburgh, Scotland, with his brother. They were both tough, hard men, and on the boat to Canada they got into a fight and disowned each other. They settled in the same area, both married Native women and raised families. Great Grandpa married a Halfbreed woman, a niece of Gabriel Dumont. Prior to the marriage both brothers had wanted the same woman, and although Great Grandpa won, he was convinced that his only child was his brother’s son and so he never recognized Grandpa Campbell as his own, nor did he ever speak to his brother again during his lifetime.

  He ran a Hudson’s Bay store just a few miles west of Prince Albert and traded with the Halfbreeds and Indians around that area. When the Northwest Rebellion broke out in 1885, he was involved with the North West Mounted Police and the white settlers. He was not well-liked by his neighbours or the people who traded with him. Our old people called him “Chee-pie-hoos,” meaning “Evil-spirit-jumping-up-and-down.” They say he was very cruel and would beat his son, his wife, and his livestock with the same whip and with equal vengeance.

  Grandpa Campbell ran away from home once when he was about ten. His father found him and tied him beside his horse. The old man then climbed in the buggy and whipped both the horse and Grandpa all the way home.

  He was also a very jealous man and was sure his wife was having affairs with all the Halfbreeds in the area. So when the Rebellion broke out and he had to attend meetings away from home he would take his wife with him. She in turn passed on all the information she heard at these meetings to the rebels and also stole ammunition and supplies for them from his store. When he found out he became very angry and decided the best way to deal with her was by public flogging. So he stripped the clothes from her back and beat her so cruelly she was scarred for life.

  He died not long after. Some people say her family killed him, but no one knows for sure. His wife went to her mother’s people who lived in what is now known as Prince Albert National Park. Even though they were Indians they were never part of a reserve, as they weren’t present when the treaty-makers came. She built a cabin beside Maria Lake and raised her son. Years later when the area was designated for the Park, the government asked her to leave. She refused, and when all peaceful methods failed the RCMP were sent. She locked her door, loaded her rifle, and when they arrived she fired shots over their heads, threatening to hit them if they came any closer. They left her alone and she was never disturbed again.

  I remember her as a small woman, with white hair always neatly braided and tied with black thread. She wore black, ankle-length full skirts and black blouses with full sleeves and high collars. Around her neck were four or five strings of bright beads and a chain made of copper wire. On her wrists were copper bracelets which she wore to ward off arthritis. She wore moccasins and tight leggings to emphasize her tiny ankles. These were covered with bright porcupine quill designs.

  Great Grandma Campbell, whom I always called “Cheechum,” was a niece of Gabriel Dumont and her whole family fought beside Riel and Dumont during the Rebellion. She often told me stories of the Rebellion and of the Halfbreed people. She said our people never wanted to fight because that was not our way. We never wanted anything except to be left alone to live as we pleased. Cheechum never accepted defeat at Batoche, and she would always say, “Because they killed Riel they think they have killed us too, but someday, my girl, it will be different.”

  Cheechum hated to see the settlers come, and as they settled on what she believed was our land, she ignored them and refused to acknowledge them even when passing on the road. She would not become a Christian, saying firmly that she had married a Christian and if there was such a thing as hell then
she had lived there; nothing after death could be worse! Offers of relief from welfare were scorned and so was the old age pension. While she lived alone she hunted and trapped, planted a garden, and was completely self-sufficient.

  Grandpa Campbell, Cheechum’s son, was a quiet man. No one remembers him too well, as the old people who are alive now seldom saw him or his wife. Grannie Campbell was a small woman with black curly hair and blue eyes. She was a Vandal, and her family had also been involved in the Rebellion. I cannot remember her ever saying very much and I never heard her laugh out loud. After their marriage, they lived miles out in the bush and never bothered much with anyone. Grandpa Campbell was a good friend of Grey Owl, an Englishman who came to our land and lived as an Indian. Grandpa loved the land and took from it only what he needed for food. Daddy says he was a kind, gentle man who spent a great deal of time with his children. He died when he was still young, leaving nine children, the oldest of whom was Daddy, aged eleven.

  After Grandpa died, Grandma Campbell went to a white community and hired herself and Dad out to cut brush for seventy-five cents an acre. She wrapped their feet with rabbit skins and old paper, and over this they wore moccasins. They would put on old coats, then drive by horse and sleigh to work. Dad says that some days it would be so cold he would cry, and she would take the skins from her feet and wrap them around him and continue working.

  In the spring after the farmers had broken the brushed land, they would return and pick the stones and roots and burn the brush, as the farmers wouldn’t pay the seventy-five cents an acre until all this was completed.

  In the fall they went to work harvesting. They did this until they had enough money to buy a homestead. She and Dad built a cabin and for three years tried to break the land. Because they only had one team of horses and Dad used these to work for other people, Grannie on many occasions pulled the plough herself. After three years of back-breaking work they still weren’t able to meet the improvements required, so they lost title to the land. They moved then to the Crown lands along the road lines, and joined other “Road Allowance people.”

  As Daddy and his brothers grew older, they trapped, hunted, and sold game and homemade whiskey to the white farmers in the nearby settlements. When they each were married, they built their cabins beside Grandma’s.

  Grannie Campbell had a special place in our hearts. Daddy loved her a great deal and treated her with special tenderness. She was a very hard worker and it seemed as though she worked all the time. When Daddy tried to make her stop, as he could have looked after her, she became quite angry and said he had a family to worry about and what she did was none of his business. She brushed and cleared the settlers’ land, picked their stones, delivered their babies, and looked after them when they were sick. Her home was always open to anyone in the community who cared to drop in, but in the forty years she lived there no white people ever visited her home, and only three old Swedes came when we buried her.

  Daddy married when he was eighteen. He went to a sports day at the Sandy Lake Indian Reserve, saw my mother, who was then fifteen, wanted her and took her. He was a very good-looking man with black curly hair and blue-grey eyes, strong, rowdy and wild. He loved to dance and was dancing when Mom first saw him, his moccasined feet flashing in a Red River jig. Dad first saw Mom cooking bannock over a fire outside her parents’ tent. She flipped the bannock over just like his mother did. When she looked up he nearly fell off the wagon she was so pretty. He told me that he asked some people about her and learned she was Pierre Dubuque’s only daughter and he’d best leave her alone or the old man would shoot him. Daddy said Mom had many admirers, the most ardent of these a Swede from a nearby community who had a large farm and lots of money. Dad said he made up his mind he was going to marry Mom, and that night he noticed Mom liked to dance, so he danced as hard as he could, hoping she would notice him. Mom said she saw him and knew she belonged with him. I remember Dad being the same when I was a little girl—warm, happy, always laughing and singing, but I saw him change over the years.

  My Mom was very beautiful, tiny, blue-eyed and auburn-haired. She was quiet and gentle, never outgoing and noisy like the other women around us. She was always busy cooking or sewing. She loved books and music and spent many hours reading to us from a collection of books her father gave her. I grew up on Shakespeare, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, and Longfellow.

  My imagination was stirred by the stories in Mom’s books. In good weather my brothers and sisters and I gathered our cousins behind the house and organized plays. The house was our Roman Empire, the two pine trees were the gates of Rome. I was Julius Caesar and would be wrapped in a long sheet with a willow branch on my head. My brother Jamie was Mark Anthony, and shouts of “Hail Caesar!” would ring throughout our settlement. Other times we would build a raft with logs and put a bright patchwork quilt canopy over it, with Mom’s bright scarves flying from the four corners. An old bearskin rug was laid down and Cleopatra would go aboard. She was our white-skinned, red-haired cousin.

  Oh, how I wanted to be Cleopatra, but my brother Jamie said, “Maria, you’re too black and your hair is like a nigger’s.” So, I’d have to be Caesar instead. Cleopatra’s slaves would all climb aboard and we’d push the raft into the slough and I as Caesar would meet it on the other side and welcome Cleopatra to Rome. Many times poor Cleo and her slaves came to a bad end for the logs would come apart and they would fall into the water. Then the Senators (our mothers) would fish everyone out and we would have to do something else. Many of our white neighbours who saw us would ask what we were playing and would shake their heads and laugh. I guess it was funny—Caesar, Rome, and Cleopatra among Halfbreeds in the backwoods of northern Saskatchewan.

  Mom laughed often in those early years, but I remember mostly the clean, spicy smell when she held me close and sang to me at night. She had a soft voice and sang and crooned the babies to sleep.

  Mom’s parents were very different from Dad’s family. Grandma Dubuque was a treaty Indian woman, different from Grannie Campbell because she was raised in a convent. Grandpa Dubuque was a huge, strong-willed Frenchman from Dubuque, Iowa. His grandfather had been a coureur de bois and had been given a land grant in Iowa by the Spanish king. There the family mined ore and started a lumber industry and founded the city of Dubuque. Grandpa came to Canada and arranged his marriage with Grannie through the nuns at the convent. Mom was their only daughter and when she was five years old they sent her to a convent to be educated.

  Grandpa wanted her to marry a gentleman and live like a lady. He was heart-broken when she ran off with Dad. And to add to his disappointment she was on the trapline in early spring when I was born. However, he finally gave them his blessing at the marriage six months later.

  *1 Names of persons and places have been changed in some cases.

  *2 Road Allowance: Crown land on either side of road lines and roads.

  Chapter 3

  I WAS BORN DURING A spring blizzard in April of 1940. Grannie Campbell, who had come to help my mother, made Dad stay outside the tent, and he chopped wood until his arms ached. At last I arrived, a daughter, much to Dad’s disappointment. However this didn’t dampen his desire to raise the best trapper and hunter in Saskatchewan. As far back as I can remember Daddy taught me to set traps, shoot a rifle, and fight like a boy. Mom did her best to turn me into a lady, showing me how to cook, sew and knit, while Cheechum, my best friend and confidante, tried to teach me all she knew about living.

  I should tell you about our home now before I go any further. We lived in a large two-roomed hewed log house that stood out from the others because it was too big to be called a shack. One room was used for sleeping and all of us children shared it with our parents. There were three big beds made from poles with rawhide interlacing. The mattresses were canvas bags filled with fresh hay twice a year. Over my parents’ bed was a hammock where you could always find a baby. An air-tight heater warmed the roo
m in winter. Our clothes hung from pegs or were folded and put on a row of shelves. There were braided rugs on the floor, and in one corner a special sleeping rug where Cheechum slept when she stayed with us, as she refused to sleep on a bed or eat off a table.

  I loved that corner of the house and would find any excuse possible to sleep with her. There was a special smell that comforted me when I was hurt or afraid. Also, it was a great place to find all sorts of wonderful things that Cheechum had—little pouches, boxes, and cloth tied up containing pieces of bright cloth, beads, leather, jewellery, roots and herbs, candy, and whatever else a little girl’s heart could desire.

  The kitchen and living room were combined into one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever known. Our kitchen had a huge black wood stove for cooking and for heating the house. On the wall hung pots, pans and various roots and herbs used for cooking and making medicine. There was a large table, two chairs and two benches made from wide planks, which we scrubbed with homemade lye soap after each meal. On one wall were shelves for our good dishes and a cupboard for storing everyday tin plates, cups and food.

  The living-room area had a homemade chesterfield and chair of carved wood and woven rawhide, a couple of rocking chairs painted red, and an old steamer trunk by the east window. The floor was made of wide planks which were scoured to an even whiteness all over. We made braided rugs during the winter months from old rags, although it often took us a full year to gather enough for even a small rug.

  There were open beams on the ceiling and under these ran four long poles the length of the house. The poles served as racks where furs were hung to dry in winter. On a cold winter night the smell of moose stew simmering on the stove blended with the wild smell of the drying skins of mink, weasels and squirrels, and the spicy herbs and roots hanging from the walls. Daddy would be busy in the corner, brushing fur until it shone and glistened, while Mom bustled around the stove. Cheechum would be on the floor smoking her clay pipe and the small ones would roll and fight around her like puppies. I can see it all so vividly it seems only yesterday.