Page 40 - 1st Anthology 2011

government to get what he wanted. I guess it just goes to show how powerful he was and
how he used his influence over the white people. There was no lobbying and stuff like
that. He said I want this and he got it. He had certain ways of getting what he wanted.

My mom talked to me about Bullhead. It wasn’t something that happened over night. It
happened over twelve years. He finally got what he wanted. I guess he knew that he got
the cards dealt with in his hands, some way or another. Bullhead, as far as I know for
what he wanted and it was our land. It’s six miles by eighteen miles.

The story goes that, we were down where the Blackfoot are right now. We couldn’t live
next to each other. I guess what happened, was the story I heard that it started over a
horse. I don’t know whether it was a Tsuut’ina horse or a Blackfoot horse. Then it
exploded and then everybody got involved. That’s how come we moved away. We didn’t
want to stick around there.

The Tsuut’ina were very proud people. During my time on this earth, I saw people who
were ready to fight and there was no backing away and they won’t back down. I don’t
know exactly how many people he had with him at that time when he moved away. When
he did move away he came over where 22x highway is now, and down to Fish Creek. Then
he saw the land and then he said that’s where I want my people to be. It wasn’t just
Tsuut’ina, there were other people, long ago you hung around with whoever you wanted.
It wasn’t a big deal, because there was no laws saying my friend here is not full blooded
Tsuut’ina. We hung around all these years together so why not stay there, he’s with me.
Nowadays it’s different, it’s the law.

He just didn’t stayed around here. He stayed up way near Edmonton. The Crees were our
enemies. They are people who we were always having constant fights with them. The
reason why it happened was that way long ago we were way up north of here. We ended
up somewhere near Waterton Lake area.

So that’s how we were down there. How we fought over a little argument over the horse,
and whatever happened there. He pushed us back to where we are today. So that’s how it
goes.

Long ago the Bloods took us in. They said you guys come and stick around with us. They
didn’t take us in because we had no food or no place to go. They knew us for our
reputation for being warriors. What happened back in the day is that the south west
corner was unprotected. So here we come along making our way through, we took the job
to protect the area. We stayed there but we hooked up with the Bloods. Just to see where
we were, it was the south western Alberta, the Bloods, the Blackfoots.

We were surrounding Crowfoot who was in the middle, he was the head honcho. We
were protecting him. We were allies. He was just looking at Edmonton, because he was
the centre of everything.

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