Beatrice Lavallee on Treaty Four
Beatrice Lavallee talks about Chief Piapot and Treaty-four negotiations
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I had when I was a little girl I heard many stories about young Chief Piapot. Uhhh he was a very special man. He was a spiritual man. He was a medicine man. My grandmother used to say to me he was a good man. And when he was trying to find a place to settle his people he travelled quite a few, quite a ways. Uhhh he went as far as Cyprus Hills and my grandma used to say well the land there had too much rock and so he didn’t settle there. Uhhh she used to tell me about him sitting on the railroad him and scouts, his men, sitting on a railroad track in uhhh in a little town called Piapot where he didn’t want the railroad track to go any further till they (*inaudible) some of the treaty negotiations at that time that were going on. We’d find a way to stop this, what was going on. This was one of these ways that uhhh why the treaty and during those treaty days too they say that people would all gather in the Qu’ Appelle Valley right where the treaty four area is now and they would send their scouts to inform the other people, the other language people and, and they’d all meet there uhhh to deal with their treaty, treaty negotiations I guess you could say.
If they forgot to put that one thing in, in this area, this next area would, would, would ask for that and if they didn’t settle well then they would find a way to, to add it on to their treaty, to their treaty rights and I have a little picture in my office there saying about his uhhh he says there a chief, the old Chief Piapot had a sarcastic tongue. But that only was because he was telling the people at that time that were doing the treaty negotiations with them about how they made promises as long as his arm he says. And now they get shorter and shorter and now they’re only as long as my finger. And of course they called, they said that he had a sarcastic tongue because he said that. But to us people, to the First Nations people we didn’t think it was sarcastic, he was trying to make a point.
All the treaty things that we had signed for or our ancestors had signed for, you know, we hardly had anything left, but, you know, still thankful for the things that we have left. Like, like the education, health care stuff. Those are the things that kind of really dwindled away as I see it.
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