Page 20 - 1st Anthology 2011

Just to help promote the language in the schools, that’s how come they built two schools
on the reserve, to teach the young people to learn how to speak Tsuut’ina. To teach

themselves and other people whichever way. They weren’t qualified to teach the
language. It’s hard to teach the Tsuut’ina language.

Small pox, I really don’t know anything about small pox, my mom used to talk about it
but I never took any interest in it.

My mom told me, that they went to the city to sell potatoes. It wasn’t a city then, it was
just a fort. It was called Fort Calgary. The Tsuut’ina used to sell livestock and a lot of

potatoes. They used to use dog travois, to take the potatoes to Calgary. They had to cross
the Elbow River, the one where they built a bridge over the Elbow River.

It was the fall harvesting. We stayed with my grandfather, and we went home everyday to
feed the chickens and pigs to see if they were okay. I don’t know why we had to go home.
Anyway my dad was the boss I guess.

The army built that bridge, and I wish we got that back. I also wish we got Weasel Head
back from the city. The army never used to have land on our side. The only place they had
was where the fighting range. The army barracks, but we never gave them land that was
on our side. The army said the city gave it to them, and they enforced it. Every time I go
to gamble at the casino, I see that fence, and the city is claiming all that land. It is not
true, and we should try and get it back while there’s still people alive who knows that is
our land.

There’s a bridge further down from the present bridge, that’s where we used to cross. We
never used to cross the new one because that was only for the army tanks and trucks. The
people used to cross the one further down the stream because we all used wagons and in
the winter we used sleighs with a team of horses. We put feed on for the horses. We
would go up to Killarnary. We would tie our horses up to that wagon or sleigh, so the
horses will have something to eat. Then we would go down with a streetcar. Even if we
had children, we would pack them.

We would buy groceries and we would eat, it was always a treat to eat. Then we would
come back on our streetcar and go home. The bridge is still there. There was a movie
theatre called the Empress, but who knows. We didn’t know any movies. Now there are
all different kinds of movies people watch.

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