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  Our parents spent a great deal of time with us, and not just our parents but the other parents in our settlement. They taught us to dance and to make music on the guitars and fiddles. They played cards with us, they would take us on long walks and teach us how to use the different herbs, roots and barks. We were taught to weave baskets from the red willow, and while we did these things together we were told the stories of our people—who they were, where they came from, and what they had done. Many were legends handed down from father to son. Many of them had a lesson but mostly they were fun stories about funny people.

  My Cheechum believed with heart and soul in the little people. She said they are so tiny that unless you are really looking for them you will never find them; not that it matters, because you usually only see them when they want you to.

  The little people live near the water and they travel mostly by leaf boats. They are a happy lot and also very shy. Cheechum saw them once when she was a young woman. She had gone to the river for water in the late afternoon and decided to sit and watch the sun go down. It was very quiet and even the birds were still. Then she heard a sound like many people laughing and talking at a party. The sounds kept coming closer and finally she saw a large leaf floating to shore with other leaves following behind. Standing on the leaves were tiny people dressed in beautiful colours.

  They waved to her and smiled as they came ashore. They told her that they were going to rest for the evening, then leave early in the morning to go further downstream. They sat with her until the sun had gone down and then said good-bye and disappeared into the forest. She never saw them again, but all her life she would leave small pieces of food and tobacco near the water’s edge for them which were always gone by morning. Mom said it was only a fairy tale but I would lie by the waters for hours hoping to see the little people.

  Cheechum had the gift of second sight, although she refused to forecast anything for anyone. Once in a while if someone had lost something she would tell them where to find it and she was always right. But it was something over which she had no control.

  Once, when we were all planting potatoes and she and I were cutting out the eyes, she stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “Go get your father. Tell him your uncle is dead.” I ran for Dad, and I can remember word for word what she told him. “Malcolm shot himself. He is lying at the bottom of the footpath behind your mother’s house. I’ll prepare the others. Go!” (Malcolm was Dad’s brother-in-law.) Dad took off, with me right behind him. When we reached Grannie Campbell’s no one was home. While Dad went to the door I sped down the footpath. Just as Cheechum had said, my uncle’s body was lying there just as if he was sleeping.

  Another time, late at night, Cheechum got up and told Dad that an aunt of ours was very sick and that he should go for Grannie Campbell as there was no time to waste. They arrived a few minutes before the aunt died.

  She often had this kind of foresight and would tell Mom and Dad days before someone died or something happened. I wanted to be able to see things as she did, but she would reply that it was a sad thing to know that people who are close to you are going to die or have bad fortune—and to be unable to do anything to help them because it is their destiny. I am sure that she could see what was in store for me but because she believed life had to take its course she could only try to make me strong enough to get through my difficulties.

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  Qua Chich was Dad’s aunt, Grannie Campbell’s older sister, a widow, and a strange old lady. She had married Big John when she was sixteen. He had come to the Sandy Lake area before it was made a reserve. He brought with him two yoke of oxen, an axe and a beautiful saddle horse. He settled beside the lake, built himself a large cabin and broke the land. After the first year there was a home, a crop, a garden, and the saddle horse had a colt. He traded one ox for a cow and a calf, the other for another horse, and then went hunting for a wife.

  He visited all the nearby families and looked over their daughters, finally settling on Qua Chich because she was young and pretty, strong and sensible. Some years later, when the treaty-makers came, he was counted in and they became treaty Indians of the Sandy Lake Reserve instead of Halfbreeds. Then the great flu epidemic hit our part of Saskatchewan around 1918 and so many of our people died that mass burials were held. Big John went first and a week later his two children.

  Qua Chich never remarried; half a century later she still wears widow’s clothes: long black dresses, black stockings, flat-heeled shoes and black petticoats and bloomers. She even wore a black money-bag fastened with elastic above her knee, as I discovered one day when peeking under the tent flaps. A small black bitch, blind in one eye from age, went everywhere with her. She scolded it continually, calling it bitch in Cree and accusing it of running around shamelessly with the other dogs.

  She was considered wealthy by our standards as she owned many cows and horses as well as a big two-storey house full of gloomy black furniture. She was stingy with money, and if someone was desperate enough to ask for help she would draw up formal papers and demand a signature.

  Qua Chich visited her poor relations, the Halfbreeds, every year in early May and late September. She would drive up to our house in a Bennett buggy pulled by two black Clydesdales and set up her own tent for a week. The first afternoon she would visit Mom and Dad. Her black eyes never missed anything and when she focused them on us we would fairly shrink. Sometimes I would catch her watching me with a twinkle in her eye but she would quickly become her usual self again.

  The second day of her visit she would rouse Dad and my uncles out of bed early so that they could take her horses to plough and rake our large gardens. In the fall we could haul our supply of wood for the winter. When this was done, she would rest the horses for a day and then go on to visit other relatives. Our people never had strong horses and few had good ploughs, so this was her way of helping. When one of the family married she gave them a cow and a calf, or a team, but the calf was usually butchered the first year and the cow often suffered the same fate. The horses just ended up as Halfbreed horses—fat today, skinny tomorrow.

  Once a year we all went to Qua Chich’s house, usually when the cows came fresh. She would line the young ones all around the table and bring a pudding from her oven made from the first milking. She would say a prayer in Cree before we ate that awful pudding, and then we were not allowed to talk or make a sound all day, which was very difficult for us noisy, rowdy children. Dad said he had to do this too when he was little.

  Once the old lady told me never to look at animals or people when babies were being made or else I would go blind. Of course, this was repeated with great authority among the rest of the kids. About a week later one of my boy cousins looked at two dogs and screamed that he was blind. By the time we helped him to the house we were all hysterical. Cheechum finally calmed us down and found out what had happened. She told us all to be quiet and said, “No one goes blind from seeing animals make babies. It is a beautiful thing. Now stop being so foolish and go and play.”

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  When World War II broke out many of our men were sent overseas. The idea of travelling across Canada was unbelievable enough, but the sea was frightening for those who had to let loved ones go. Many of our men never returned, and those who did were never the same again. Later on, I’d listen to them talk about the far-off places I’d read about in Mom’s books, but I never heard any of them talk about the war itself.

  Daddy signed up but was rejected, much to his disappointment and everyone’s relief, especially Cheechum’s. She was violently opposed to the whole thing and said we had no business going anywhere to shoot people, especially in another country. The war was white business, not ours, and was just between rich and greedy people who wanted power.

  We also acquired some new relatives from the war: war brides. Many of our men brought home Scottish and English wives, which
of course didn’t go over very well with our people. They marry either their own kind or Indians. (It is more common among Indians to marry a white.) However, these women came and everyone did their best to make them welcome and comfortable.

  What a shock it must have been for them to find themselves in an isolated, poverty-stricken, Native settlement instead of the ranches and farms they had believed they were coming to!

  Two of the war brides I remember very well. One was a very proper Englishwoman. She had married a handsome Halfbreed soldier in England believing he was French. He came from northern Saskatchewan’s wildest family and he owned nothing, not even the shack where a woman and two children were waiting for him. When they arrived, his woman promptly beat the English lady up and gave her five minutes to get out of her sight, and told the man she’d do what the Germans didn’t do (shoot him) if he didn’t get his ass in the house immediately. Mom brought the woman home and because she had no money and too much pride to write home and ask for some, the people in the settlement got together and collected enough money to pay her way to Regina, where they were sure the government would help her. She wrote Mom a letter from England a year later and was fine.

  The other bride was a silly blonde. She married a sensible hard-working man who provided well for her, but she drank and ran around, and was so loud and bawdy that she shocked even our own women. In spite of everything she was kind-hearted and likeable, and eventually settled down to raise a large family.

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  I grew up with some really funny, wonderful, fantastic people and they are as real to me today as they were then. How I love them and miss them! There were three main clans in three settlements. The Arcands were a huge group of ten or twelve brothers with families of anywhere from six to sixteen children each. They were half French, half Cree, very big men, standing over six feet and over two hundred pounds. They were the music-makers, and played the fiddles and guitars at all the dances. We always knew, when arriving at a party, if there was an Arcand playing. They were loud, noisy, and lots of fun. They spoke French mixed with a little Cree. The St. Denys, Villeneuves, Morrisettes and Cadieux were from another area. They were quiet, small men and spoke more French than English or Cree. They also made all the home brew, of which they drank a lot. They were ak-ee-top (pretend) farmers with great numbers of poor skinny horses and cows. Because they intermarried a great deal years ago, they looked as scrubby as their stock.

  The Isbisters, Campbells, and Vandals were our family and were a real mixture of Scottish, French, Cree, English and Irish. We spoke a language completely different from the others. We were a combination of everything: hunters, trappers and ak-ee-top farmers. Our people bragged that they produced the best and most fearless fighting men—and the best looking women.

  Old Cadieux was always having visions. Once he saw the Virgin Mary in a bottle when he was pouring home brew, and prayed for a week and threw all his booze out, much to everyone’s dismay. The priest had given his daughter a bottle with the Virgin inside to try to scare him out of making home brew and she had put it beside the other empty bottles. Poor old Cadieux! He was very religious and never missed Mass, but he was back making booze again in a week. He made what we called shnet from raisins, yeast bran, old bannock and sugar. He kept it in his cellar where we once saw a swollen rat floating in it. He just scooped it out and strained the brew. His wife was a French woman who spoke no English and was almost too fat to move. One daughter, Mary, was tiny, with one of the most beautiful faces I ever saw. She was very religious and wanted to become a nun.

  In the Cadieux family was Chi-Georges, son of Old Cadieux. He was short and round with extra-long, skinny arms. He was near-sighted and slow-witted and always drooled. He walked everywhere because he didn’t trust horses, and wherever he went he had a bannock under his arm. When he got tired he would climb up a tree, sit on a branch and eat his bannock. If someone asked what he was doing up there he would say, “Hi was jist lookin’ ’round to see hif hi could spot a hindian. Don’t trust dem hindians!” It was nothing out of the ordinary to go somewhere and see Chi-Georges up in a tree.

  He died some years ago after a party with his father. He had been missing for six days when Pierre Villeneuve, out setting rabbit snares, came running to the store all bug-eyed and screaming in French, “He’s laughing at me!” The men in the store followed him and found Chi-Georges lying on a footpath with his head on a fallen tree, his eyes and mouth pecked off by birds. His whole body was moving with maggots. Poor Pierre, who was the local coward, prayed for months, and if he had to go anywhere at night he always carried a rosary, a lantern, a flashlight and matches so he would have a light. He was afraid Chi-Georges would haunt him.

  Then there were our Indian relatives on the nearby reserves. There was never much love lost between Indians and Halfbreeds. They were completely different from us—quiet when we were noisy, dignified even at dances and get-togethers. Indians were very passive—they would get angry at things done to them but would never fight back, whereas Halfbreeds were quick-tempered—quick to fight, but quick to forgive and forget.

  The Indians’ religion was very precious to them and to the Halfbreeds, but we never took it as seriously. We all went to the Indians’ Sundances and special gatherings, but somehow we never fitted in. We were always the poor relatives, the awp-pee-tow-koosons.* They laughed and scorned us. They had land and security, we had nothing. As Daddy put it, “No pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.” They would tolerate us unless they were drinking and then they would try to fight, but received many sound beatings from us. However, their old people, Moshoms (grandfathers) and Kokums (grandmothers) were good. They were prejudiced, but because we were kin they came to visit and our people treated them with respect.

  Grannie Dubuque’s brother was chief on his reserve and as they loved me, I often stayed with them. Moshom would spoil me, while Kokum taught me to bead, to tan hides and in general to be a good Indian woman. They had plans for me to marry the chief’s son from a neighbouring reserve when we grew up. But the boy was terrified of me and I couldn’t stand him.

  They took me to powwows, Sundances and Treaty Days, and through them I learned the meanings of those special days. Moshom would also take me with him to council meetings which were always the same: the Indian agent called the meeting to order, did all the talking, closed it and left. I remember telling Moshom, “You’re the chief. How come you don’t talk?” When I expressed my opinion in these matters, Kokum would look at Moshom and say, “It’s the white in her.” Treaty Indian women don’t express their opinions, Halfbreed women do. Even though I liked visiting them, I was always glad to get back to the noise and disorder of my own people.

  * Awp-pee-tow-koosons: half people.

  Chapter 4

  THE IMMIGRANTS WHO CAME AND homesteaded the land were predominantly Germans and Swedes. On small farms they raised pigs, poultry, a few cows and a bit of grain. I remember these people so well, for I thought they must be the richest and most beautiful on earth. They could buy pretty cloth for dresses, ate apples and oranges, and they had toothbrushes and brushed their teeth every day. I was also afraid of them. They looked cold and frightening, and seldom smiled, unlike my own people who laughed, cried, danced, and fought and shared everything. These people rarely raised their voices, and never shared with each other, borrowing or buying instead. They didn’t understand us, just shook their heads and thanked God they were different.

  During Christmas they would drive by all the Halfbreed houses and drop boxes off at each path. Dad would go out, pick up the box and burn it. I cried, because I knew it contained cakes and good things to eat, and clothing that I had seen their children wear. This was always a bad day for Dad as he would be very angry, and Mom would tell me to be very quiet and not ask questions. Our neighbours all wore this cast-off finery, and as I got older and started school I was glad Daddy had burned the clothes
because the white girls would laugh when my friends wore their old dresses and say, “Mom said I should put it in the box as my Christian duty.” By the time I reached the age of ten I had the same attitude as Cheechum about Christians, and even today I think of Christians and old clothes together.

  All our people were Roman Catholic, but at that time we had neither a priest nor a church. Mom was happy when the Germans built their church. They were Seventh-Day Adventists and worshipped on Saturday. She wasn’t pleased with this but overlooked it, sure that God would understand and forgive her for attending. The important thing was to go to church.

  In spite of Dad’s pleading and Cheechum’s disapproval and wrath, I was dressed up and taken with Mom in the wagon. She had told me so much about God and churches that I was fairly jumping out of my too-tight shoes. We arrived late and as we walked in the minister saw us and stopped talking, so everyone turned and looked at us. There was no place to sit except in the front pew, where Mom knelt down and started to say her rosary. A lady leaned over and said something to her, whereupon Mom took my hand and we left. We never went back and it was never discussed at home.

  The men used to tell of the only time an Evangelist minister came to our part of the country to try to civilize us. He was a Saint-Denys. He had been saved from a life of sin by the Evangelists and now he was coming back to do the same for his people.

  In the community lived an old, old man called Ha-shoo, meaning Crow. He was a Cree Medicine Man. Ha-shoo loved to chant and play the drum. When Saint-Denys arrived he asked some young men to go about the settlement and tell people about the church services. When the messenger arrived at Ha-shoo’s house, the old man asked, “What do they do?” The boy said, “Oh, Grandfather, they talk and sing.” The old man answered, “I’ll be there and I’ll bring my drum.”