Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation facts for kids
 |
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| People | Nakoda |
|---|---|
| Treaty | Treaty 4 |
| Headquarters | Sintaluta |
| Province | Saskatchewan |
| Land | |
| Main reserve | Assiniboine 76 |
| Other reserve(s) |
|
| Population (2019) | |
| On reserve | 892 |
| On other land | 0 |
| Off reserve | 2029 |
| Total population | 2921 |
| Government | |
| Chief | Scott Eashappie |
| Council |
Shawn “Tuguy” Spencer
|
| Tribal Council | |
| File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council | |
| Website | |
| cegakin.com | |
Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation (Assiniboine: céǧa kʾína [Chay-gah-keen], "Carries the kettle", also known as Assiniboine First Nation or Assiniboine 76) is a Nakota (Assiniboine) First Nation located about 80 km (50 mi) east of Regina, Saskatchewan and 13 km (8.1 mi) south of Sintaluta. The reservation is in Treaty 4 territory.
The Cypress Hills, known as traditional Nakoda/Assiniboine territory are within the boundaries of treaty 4. Bands were also given Reservations within their traditional territories.
Other previous names of the band have been:
Chief Man Who Takes the Coat Reserve #76 Chief Long Lodge Reserve Hurricane Hills reserve Jack’s Reserve Indian Head reserve Assiniboine Reserve Carry the Kettle First Nation #76 Assiniboine #76
History
The band is modern day descendants of the victims of the ‘Cypress Hills Massacre’ of 1873 on Battle Creek, Cypress Hills, NWT. This event happened in June 1st 1873. It was one of the final events that prompted the Canadian Federal government to create the North West Mounted Police (now the RCMP). The NWMP arrived to the massacre site two years later in 1875 and investigated the Massacre. They were unable to bring the American Wolfers (perpetrators) to justice. Carry the Kettle elders and survivor accounts say that 300 of their ancestors died on the day of the massacre.
Shortly after the Great March west in 1874, the newly created NWMP avoided the Cypress Hills and went around the north slope and went to create Fort McLeod that fall. In the Spring of 1875 the NWMP ‘F’ division would enter this cypress hills via the west end (Fort McLeod to the hills trail) to investigate the Cypress Hills Massacre. At this time, the NWMP referred to the band as the ‘Cypress Mountain Assiniboine’. Cypress Mountain being located today at Elk Water, AB.
Fort Walsh was established that summer of 1875 and was just 1.5 miles north of the actual Massacre site and Farwell and Solomon’s trading posts.
In 1859, John Palliser's expedition (spry) identified the Cypress Hills as "Assiniboine country/territory". The ancestors of the nation signed adhesion to Treaty 4 at Fort Walsh on September 25, 1877. The three Assiniboine chiefs who signed the treaty were Man Who Takes The Coat (Cuwiknaga Je Eyaku, in the Assiniboine/Nakoda language), Long Lodge (Teepee Hanska), and Lean Man (Wica Hostaka). After signing the treaty, the federal government began creating three separate reserves in the fall of 1879 in the Cypress Hills for these 3 Assiniboine, treaty 4 signatory chiefs. as Edgar Dewdney made his way into the Cypress Hills as the new Indian Commissioner and exercised the "duty to consult" in Treaties 4, 6, and 7 in 1879.
The Assiniboine/Nakoda has their reserve established in the western end Cypress Hills, at the Head of the Mountain in Alberta, because this was where their ceremonies were held and this where they called home.
The farming instructor for the Assiniboine reserve at the Head of the Mountain was J.J. English of Omeemee Ontario. English would establish a place of residence on the reserve and would locate the home farm near the Head of the Mountain. English was an experienced farmer and knew that Barley and Potatoes would yield when shielded in certain coulees at the high altitude. English helped show the Assiniboine how the farm and had at least two successful crops at the Assiniboine reserve home farm at the head of the Mountain in 1880 and 1881.
In 1880 John McCoun a DLS hired by Canada to survey the northwest in his booked call the ‘great northwest makes several references to the Assiniboine Reserve at the Head of the Mountain from 1879 to 1881.
The newly appointed Indian Commissioner Edgar E Dewdney would visit and acknowledge the ‘Assiniboine Reserve’ twice in 1879. Once in July and the other in October. With its locality being at the Head of the Mountain at the west end of the Cypress Hills. (Dewdneys Journals, Glenbow). Further Dewdney would also appoint JJ English as farm instructor in his papers.
The NWMP police surgeon who cared for the Assiniboine at the Head of the Mountain was Dr. George Kittson of St. Paul Minnesota. In the fall of 1879 the Department of Indian Affairs would rent out office space at the Fort Walsh townsite for Kittson and Edwin Allen. Indian Affairs would cover half of Kittsons Salary. In 1884 Kittson resigned from the police force and returned to St. Paul where we would die and his NWMP daily log journals were never found.
McCoun mentions in 1880 an event where a two Blackfeet warriors snuck into the Large Assiniboine camp at the west end of the Cypress hills at Elk Water Lake and stole two horses in the middle of the night. He noted that the Assiniboine were camped in a large circle with each tibi no longer than 7-8 feet apart.
After the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876, the Cypress Mountain Assiniboine invited Sitting Bull's Lakohta tribe for a Sun Dance at the Medicine Lodge coulee south of the Head of the Mountain. (18 miles west of Fort Walsh) AG Irvine of the NWMP mentions meeting Long Lodge and this Nakoda/ Assiniboine band at the west end of the Cypress Hills as he was on his way to meet Sitting Bull at Fort Walsh in 1877.
The NWMP book vol 1 and 2 by Turner also acknowledged the early NWMP troops witnessing a sundance at medicine lodge coulee in 1876.
In 1876 a group of American Assiniboine who were led by ‘Crows Dance’ had stolen some horses from Little Child’s Cree/Saulteaux tribe near Fort Walsh. Crows Dance would take the horses to the west end of the cypress hills to a large Assiniboine camp near Head of the Mountain. In the book Sitting Bulls Boss, tells of when JM Walsh wrote to his daughter about this event. He mentioned that their officers went the area what is now known as Elk Water Lake, AB and apprehended Crows Dance and about 16 of his warriors without any trouble in the middle of the night.
AG Irvine would boast about this event and of JM Walsh’s skill as a great leader and respected figure by the CTK ancestors and leaders of the Cypress Mountain Assiniboine in one of his annual reports.
Allan Ponytz Patrick, the reserve's dominion land surveyor, called the area the Assiniboine Reserve in the Cypress Hills. He surveyed the reserve in 1879.
The Nakoda elders refer to their ancestral home in the Cypress Hills as Wazihe (the mountain by itself). Elders also speak of Hay-Ipa (literally in Nakoda language: Head of a Mountain, a spiritual place for the Nakoda). The original Assiniboine Reservation at the Head of the Mountain covered 340 square miles (880 km2). The southern boundary ran west to east from Head of the Mountain for 12 miles (19 km),to a point prior to descending to Reesor Lake and north to Lake of Many Isles for 34 miles (55 km). After this. it ran west for 12 miles (19 km) and south back to Head of the Mountain.
In May 1881, the federal government decided to re-route the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) south through the reserve instead of the (original) present-day Highway 16 route. To complete the CPR southbound route, Indian Agent based at Fort Walsh Edwin Allen tried to obtain a legal land surrender and Edgar E Dewdney began writing contradicting reports about farming at Cypress Hills Assiniboine Reserve at Head of the Mountain . Dewdney claimed that farming in the Cypress Hills would be a failure, and used this claim to justify the unlawful removal, genocide, and breach of trust of many Treaty 4 and Indian Act laws by him and John A. Macdonald. MacDonald received a large kickback from the Sand's Mill, which took timber from the Assiniboine reserve for the railway. Sands Mill was located right at Elk Water Lake ( on the Assiniboine Reserve).
The Cypress Hills reserve was never legally surrendered as per the Indian Act after 5 attempts by government officials were futile for taking the Reservation
The government sent Edwin Allen five times to obtain a land surrender from Chief Cuwiknaga Je Eyaku (Man who Takes the Coat), Teepee Hanska (Long Lodge), and Wica Hostaka (Lean Man). Carry the Kettle elders say in oral history that no land surrender was ever obtained. These attempts began in July of 1881 and continued until April of 1882. Since the CPR was approaching, the Assiniboine people had to be removed. After they were starved, the first removal of the Assiniboine from the Cypress Hills Reserve occurred in April 1882; they arrived south of Qu'Appelle and Indian Head in June 1882. The Assiniboine did not want the new reserves, and were not consulted. The entire band walked over 500 kilometres from the Cypress Hills to now present day Carry the Kettle reserve south of Sintaluta and Indian Head once in 1882 and again in 1883.
The Nakoda/Assiniboine still wanted to live at original their reserve at the west end of the Cypress Hills at Head of the Mountain, spiritually significant since they held their annual Sun Dance and vision quests in the Medicine Lodge coulee. The Band returned to their Cypress Hills Assiniboine reserve at the west end of the Cypress Hills in October of 1882. They starved that winter of 1882-1883.
In August 1882, Long Lodge and others left IH and returned to their original reserve in the Cypress Hills in fall of 1882. Due to starvation that winter, they were forced to return to Indian Head reserve the next spring. In may of 1883 the band was put on flat deck railway carts at the newly created town of Maple Creek.
According to Carry the Kettle elders, their train derailed while east bound near Swift Current.; many Assiniboine died, and the survivors walked the rest of the way to Indian Head. After two removals, the 1880 Cypress Hills Assiniboine Reserve population was about 1,700 people; the 1883 population of Assiniboine, south of Indian Head and Qu'Appelle, was 300. Two reservations were surveyed for the tribe near Qu' Appelle in April 1882. These were for Chiefs Man Who Takes the Coat (220m2) and one for Chief Long Lodge (120m2). Today Carry the Kettle First Nation #76 is made up of members of both tribes on a significantly smaller land base of only 63m2. (Man who takes the coat and long lodge)
As per treaty 4 and Indian act reserve creation processes the dominion land surveyor would survey one square mile for a family of 5 band members. The 340 square mile surveyed for Chiefs Man Who Takes the Coat and Long Lodge at the Head of the Mountain in 1879 was enough for 1700 band members. This would have been the largest reserve ever created in Canada and the Cypress Mountain Assiniboine would have been one of the largest bands in Canada.
Present day
In 2000, the Indian Claims Commission ruled that Canada had no lawful obligation to Cega’kin (Carry the Kettle) and that no reservation was legally established at Cypress Hills for Assiniboine descendants from 1879 to 1882. In 2014, the land claim was in federal court.
The Indian Claims Commission relied heavily on a report done for the department of Indian Affairs by James (Jim) Gallo. This is report is šija or mamasheesh.
The present-day Carry the Kettle reserve is south of Sintaluta and covers 72 square miles (190 km2) well short of the original Cypress Hills Assiniboine reserve that was surveyed at 340 square miles at the west end of the Cypress hills.
Carry the Kettle sued the federal and Saskatchewan governments in December 2017 to halt development which would infringe on its members' rights to hunt and gather.
