Page 18 - 1st Anthology 2011

Dr. Murray was an Indian Agent and he was our doctor and he was also our
administrator. He was a good man. He cleaned our reserve of TB. Our reserve was just full

of tuberculosis. I don’t know the actual years Dr. Murray came to Tsuut’ina.

Dr Murray he just came out of the army when he took that job. I don’t know the actual
years Dr. Murray came to Tsuut’ina. The boarding school was just full of TB. They
brought children from other reserves because they didn’t have facilities for them. So they
brought them to the hospital and the residential school. The small building beside the
hospital is the school. You walk from the residential place to the school every day. He
made sure the children ate good meals.

The staff would eat with butter and the children would get a slice of bread with lard. For
the mornings, the night before the cook would make porridge. The next morning we
would all sit down, boys on one side and the girls on the other side. The matrons would
serve us that porridge, it just looked all hard and lumpy. We would use skim milk for our
porridge they wouldn’t give us any sugar so we had to eat it that way. I wouldn’t eat it,
and the matrons said they would get the Indian agent after me. I told my dad and my dad
went down there and told them to leave my girl alone and the Indian agent just left it

alone. I only had to stay there if the weather was bad.

So Dr Murray made sure the children ate right, just before he came the matrons only had
butter and milk. The school had cows and they had a man that milked cows, looked after,
the chickens and the gardens and all that stuff. He put the teenage boys to work, instead
of going to school, but they would go to school half a day. The rest of the day they would
have to help farming. They would milk cows and make cream and they would make
butter from the cream.

Chief Joe Big Plume and Dr Murray are the ones that cleaned up the boarding school. Dr
Murray, I don’t know who was the Indian Agent before him.

After that when Dr Murray came they gave us fresh porridge and they gave us straight
milk and they also gave us bread with butter. All that changed, so it was good. We would
also get a glass of milk. It was never a glass it was just a cup but we would call it that. So
we would drink straight milk. The matron made good rice pudding. I think that’s why I

love rice pudding today. When my daughter goes to town she asks me what I want. I just
say rice pudding.

Dr Murray changed everything. He had an office in that one building. When he left they
closed that office down. You know when he left, my cousin, he’s gone now, they made
him take all the books and papers out of that building and burn them. He said, he sat
down and read some of them. He was reading what the Indian agents had commented on.

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