Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia

Home
The Man Prairie West The Environment Political Life Multimedia

Piapot and Other Great Horsemen

Page 1 2 3 4 5

Stanley Harrison and Grant MacEwan have been close friends for years and their affection for each other warms the pages of this biography. Poet, philosopher, artist, and horseman, Harrison emerges as a man whom it is easy to like and respect. The Rhyming Horseman of the Qu'Appelle
Copyright 1978 by Grant MacEwan.
219 pages.

The other horseman to make a lasting impression upon the young man was the famous Indian, Chief Piapot. Long after Piapot's death, Harrison remembered him with untarnished admiration. Stanley was never a person to equivocate; questions directed to him received clear and forthright answers. Asked which of all Thoroughbreds was fastest, he replied unhesitatingly, "The Tetrarch." Which of all Canadian-breds was the best racer? The reply was "Inferno." A question about the most influential of all western Canadian breeders brought the ready reply, "Jim Speers, of course," and when asked to name the horse that had made the biggest impression upon himself, the response was "Delia D, bless her memory." But when questioned about the best horseman he had known, he always promptly named the old Cree, Chief Piapot, of whom he kept the most vivid memories.

It was soon after the youthful Stanley came to the region, still the North West Territories, that he encountered the lean and wrinkled old Indian wearing a threadbare blanket and riding unaccompanied through the Qu'Appelle Valley underbrush. The boy was startled and then, as stories of scalpings flashed through his mind, really frightened. But there was no reason for fear and his composure returned quickly. Piapot, then almost ninety years of age, was an epitome of the painful transition that had brought him and his freedom-loving followers to the hateful restraints of reservation life. Nobody felt the chagrin of unwanted change more than this man who in better times had been "the Prince of the Plains."

The tribulations of war, smallpox, hunger, and heartache were all chiseled on his face. There was just the faint trace of a smile buried in the wrinkles. Nobody then living knew more about the warfare between Blackfoot and Cree than this man who, in 1870, had actively participated in the last major battle, fought among the coulees of Oldman River where the chinook-swept city of Lethbridge would later arise. It was a tragic adventure for Piapot's people who left much Cree blood and many dead on the riverside.

Piapot had seen-and made-a good deal of history. Among his own people, he was regarded as one of the best buffalo hunters. Being an expert horseman aided in the hunt. He had been present in 1882 to obstruct the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway on the plains, making the builders very much aware of his presence and his views. Angry about the liberties being taken by engineers and construction crews, the chief and his followers pulled up the survey stakes and found them better than buffalo chips for burning in camp fires. Still ineffective in halting construction, the band squatted squarely on the right-of-way, just ahead of the work crews. There, defiantly, the Indians erected their tepees and ignored the pleas from foremen to move on. Only the diplomatic intervention by North West M.ounted Police was enough to persuade Piapot to move and allow the rail-laying to proceed.

A few years earlier, the aging leader had reluctantly acceded to Treaty Number Four and, under government pressure, had accepted a reservation south of Sintaluta. But the Crees were hungry and unhappy there, and in 1884, settlers watched Chief Piapot lead his disgruntled people on their famous trek of defiance. With horses of many colors and dogs of many sizes, along with all their household goods and other personal possessions, they abandoned the reserve chosen for them by the government and marched to the Qu'Appelle Valley which they had known in former years for its good hunting and loved for its broken landscape.

They might have expected that the Mounted Police would stop them and send them back to the reserve. And, in fact, the police did their duty and tried moderately to be firm in their orders, but the chiefs intent was firm also and he refused to tum back. The lives of his followers were at issue, he believed, and nobody would stop him. Nobody did. The police officers, after making a perfunctory show of authority, were wise enough to recognize both right and determination in Piapot's purpose and allowed him and his band to pass. The proud old chief led the way down the trail, passing through section twenty-four with the good well of water and into a wooded ravine to the west of Fort Qu'Appelle, there to pitch tepees. It was an area they knew well, "where the kitfox threaded his secretive way through lakeside drift tangle and fish lept in the sunfire of eventide."

In naming the aging chief as "the best horseman" he had ever witnessed, Harrison added another tribute-"possibly the noblest Canadian of his day, if gallantry of endurance and integrity of spirit be the measures of a man."

The English boy saw the chief for the second time when the youth and two companions rode up the Valley and, from a sheltered place among willows in a coulee, observed with wide-eyed wonder the ceremony of an Indian Sun Dance, that deeply religious exercise which had been forbidden by "lesser men in high places," meaning government and church.

Thereafter, Stanley seized every opportunity to be near the chief and learn the great and tragic story of his life. It began with birth during a summer thunderstorm; hence the name Piapot, "flash of lightning." While in his grandmother's care, she and the boy were kidnapped by Sioux warriors, and it was only after seven years with the enemy tribe that they made good their escape and returned to their own people. The young man quickly came to be recognized as a fearless warrior. It was said that, because of his courage, the Great Spirit had conferred upon him a special gift, love for horses and skill with them. This talent, highly valued by the Crees, had brought the old man his richest satisfaction.

As Stanley Harrison knew, the prairie Indians had acquired their horse skills in a remarkably short time, for it was only since the coming of the Europeans that they had had riding stock. Progeny from Spanish stock lost to its original owners by straying, abandonment, or theft was acquired by the natives and passed from one tribe to the next - generally by stealing until all the western tribes had them. Professor A. S. Morton of Saskatchewan believed the first horses of Spanish blood appeared on the Bow River about 1730, when the Snakes attacked the Blackfoot. Naturally, mounted attackers were too strong for the pedestrian Blackfoot, and the latter suffered defeat until they had stolen or bred enough horses for warfare. Then they were able to repel the pedestrian Crees.


Albertasource.ca | Contact Us | Partnerships
            For more on Grant MacEwan, visit Peel’s Prairie Provinces.

Copyright © Heritage Community Foundation All Rights Reserved