Page 9 - 1st Anthology 2011

stole you are going to lose more than what you stole. You also might lose something that
is precious to you. That’s what my dad used to tell us.

That’s what my mom said. It’s always good to tell everything I know because I want my
great grandchildren to listen to my stories and tell them where I come from. I want them
to know that we’re Tsuut’ina, instead of Sarcee and it’s Tsuut’ina again. If I don’t know it I
won’t talk about it. I might talk about it a little bit of where it came from and how things
happened.

Later on Archdeacon Timms took over the boarding school on the reserve. He came from

Gleichen or somewhere down there anyway. Those days we were called Sarcee. Sarcee is a
Blackfoot word. So that’s what he knew. So he called us Sarcee. The Indian Agent picked
it up, and they called us Sarcee. Lately not very long ago we took back our name.
Tsuut’ina means a lot of people. The old people used to say when you camp out you have
to watch your children. You might lose them and you’ll never find them because there is
so many Tsuut’ina in camp.

From what I heard Archdeacon Timms wasn’t a good man. I knew him; I didn’t go to

school yet but from what my mom told me about him. My sister was in the boarding
school first. I used to be with my sister. I knew him. He had a beard and a cane. When the
children didn’t listen he used to hit them with a cane. When the boys used to steal
vegetables from the garden some of them will be looking out for him, and some of the
boys crawled underneath the fence. When they would get caught they would get hit with
that cane. I saw him do it.

The children starved when the minister or someone was in charge of the boarding school.

I was there when that happened. The minister was Archdeacon Timms. He ran the
boarding school. The boarding school was terrible. That’s where lots of children got the
sickness of tuberculosis. There were children from different reserves that came to the
boarding school. It was to recuperate in the hospital and the school.

I wasn’t going to school yet. I was with my mom and I asked her why is he doing that. She
said because the boys were starving and they were picking vegetables to eat. It must have
been in the 1920’s because I was born in 1918. So I must have been eight years old or ten.

We had to be in school when we were seven years old. So it was around when I was seven.
When the parents didn’t want their children going into boarding school, the Indian Agent
would come with police and take the children to school by force. That’s what happened to
my mom and dad. My mom and dad said it was terrible because they couldn’t do
anything about it because the Indian agent will always turn to the RCMP. My parents
were scared of the RCMP.

8