Page 13 - 1st Anthology 2011

I was talking about my mom and her relatives. Pat Grasshopper is her dad and my mom
was a Grasshopper before she married my dad. From the way I understood it, Pat

Grasshopper was a great warrior. He gave my mom and dad a teepee. I was the only one
with the painted teepee. I was living with my mom and dad at the time when they had a
ceremony for that teepee design. There are two teepees. My older son Harley has one but
he wasn’t initiated with it. He only asked for it and took it. I don’t mind if they ask. He
had the respect for me to ask me if he can use the teepee.

We were curious as children, and we wanted to know how we got the name Otter. It was
a man with a lot of power, and you can’t pronounce it with our language. So the white

people pronounced it as Otter. Pat Grasshopper was never a Chief.

Grasshopper was going to paint with another teepee and he went to fight a bear with a
knife. He just about got killed but he survived and he killed that bear and it was his
traditional way of saying he’s going to make another teepee with bears on it. The people
that have the teepee now, I think they have trees in front. I have to see it again to
remember the story about that one.

The one he gave to my mom and dad went through the ceremonies. It had water and
whatever you call them, they grow in the sloughs. I forget the name of it. The teepee of
my mom and dad, I know where it came from and how it was given to my mom and dad
in a ceremony. The part I know is what the design means. I know the designs that were
on the smoke flaps. The flaps did not let the rain in or to let the smoke out or the wind
coming in from the east. You can close the flaps with the flap poles. I know these things,
but I don’t know why the design is on the flaps.

They have the ceremonies and they serve special food. The forth night, I remember that
day when my mom and dad were getting the teepee. On the forth night they gave the
teepee design to my mom and dad. I remember that because every night my aunt took me
to her tent to sleep. They pray and sing for four days and four nights, everything was for
four days and four nights.

That’s how my son Harley’s boys Gilbert and Daryl got married, through the Indian way.
We have two teepees anyway and he still has one and my oldest daughter Regina has one.

She can’t use the design, because she never went through the ceremony. That’s the only
time you can own a teepee, is when you’re initiated with it.

Brokenknife, all I know is that he’s my mom’s relative. He’s buried in Saskatchewan. They
were on a warpath and the enemy tribe caught them. They were stealing horses. They got
surrounded and all his warriors were killed. They were killed one or two every day. Him

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