CHAPTER II
The Formative Years
Times were tough in the latter part of the 1790's for a band of Saulteaux Indians who came from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, to the south-western shore of Lake Winnipeg. Led by the famed Chief Peguis, they came in search of a more bountiful land.
They probably left "the Sault" for a number of reasons, not only to seek abundant game. Feeling the encrouchment of the White man, they sought a home where they might continue to live the life they knew best. They hoped to find this at Netly Creek. Here Chief Peguis would remain, smoking the pipe of peace, and forming an alliance with the Assiniboine to the south. Together, they would fight their common enemy, the Sioux.
Chief Peguis was an impressive figure, although the literal translation of his name does not imply it. According to Chief Albert Thompson, he was abandoned when an infant, and was found on a pile of wood chips by an elderly woman who raised him as her own son. She named him Peeh-quaa-is, or "little chip."
He was greatly respected by the fur traders and settlers, and he, in turn, generally respected the White man and his Christian ways. On October 7, 1840, he allowed himself to be married in a Christian manner to his wife of many years. Chief Thompson recounts:
She (his wife) took the name Victoria after the Queen of England. The Chief was registered as William King: the surname in recognition of his position in the tribe, and William in admiration of William Cockran (a reverend he befriended).
"My sons are now princes, and shall be known by that name."
History took its course. The Province of Manitoba was established in 1870 and the following summer the first treaty was signed between the Indians and the Government of Canada. The Saulteaux found their new home on St. Peter's Reserve, slightly north of Winnipeg. This appeared to be the culmination of the Indians' search; they now were where they stood.
The Saulteaux lived on St. Peter's Reserve for a number of years, but on September 24, 1907, the Reserve was surrendered (some would suggest through contrived and fraudulent means) to the Government. Preparations were made to survey another location. The new Reserve, immediately north of Hodgson, was to be called "Peguis," and the people began to move from St. Peter's in 1909.
Tommy Prince was the great-great-grandson of Chief Peguis. His father Harry, met and married Elizabeth Desjarlais, who came from the Scanterbury area. After their marriage Harry Prince decided to follow his wife's allegiance and become a member of the Brokenhead band. Tommy, one of eleven offspring, was born in a canvas tent on a cold October day in 1915, at Petersfield, Manitoba.
Then, around 1920, the family moved to Scanterbury, on the Brokenhead Reserve, about 80 km north of Winnipeg. This was to be Tommy's home base, where lifes yearly cycle of activities would be reenacted over and over again. He enjoyed few comforts as he grew up, and learned his fathers skills as hunter and trapper.
Harriet Bear (nee Prince) still lives at Scanterbury. Her house is located just off the highway that leads to the city, partially surrounded by the bush, fully surrounded by the world she knows best. One is impressioned by the neatness and tidiness of this nicely painted house.
When asked about her brother, Tommy, she chuckled inwardly. Harriet cannot read or write and would rather converse in her native tongue. She apologized for the fact that she had had no schooling. But an apology was not in order here; she had lived and experienced, and knew what was human within her.
"Ol' Tommy was sure lucky," she sighed with a bit of remorse, "he could go off to school at Elkhorn and become educated while I had to stay home helping my mother look after the kids." She would repeat this several times throughout her reminiscing. Times were tough for Herriet during the "hungry 30's."
Her memories of Tommy, however, were blurred by recollections of her own hard times. She rummaged about the house, apologizing for the mess, of which there was none, and located three photograph albums.
Most of the pictures were brightly coloured, indicating how recent they were, with the camera focusing mainly on herself and her recently deceased husband. Amidst the colour, however, there were scattered a few tarnished black and white pictures. These were glimpses into a remote past almost forgotten. They seemed to belong to another world, revealing no apparent continuum with the present.
"Here's one," chuckled Harriet, "of Tommy when he was a baby. And here's one of Tommy in his uniform. See that uniform he's wearing, it's American. He sure looks good here, don't he?" For one brief moment is seemed as if the whole panorama of her brothers past would be revealed.
No more pictures were found. Harriet said that they had lost some old photos when their cabin burned at Petersfield. Moreover, during the 20's and the 30's, no one could afford to take pictures. Any images would have to be recorded on the mind. And the mind tended to get a bit foggy over the years.
At the back of one of her albums was a certificate. Handing it over she said, "My brother Bill gave me this a little while back. I can't read what it says but it's something important about Tommy." The piece of paper read:
Certificate of Merit presented to Sgt. Thomas Prince of the Brokenhead Band in recognition of his years of dedicated service to the Indian people of Manitoba on this October 18, 1976.
It seemed that the most appropriate place for this certificate would have been in some nicely fitted frame hanging in the local band office, beside a smiling image of Tommy. But here it was, loosely stuffed in Harriet's album, and she could not read.
Boys will be boys and from what Harriet could recall, Tommy was like all other Indian children. In the spring, the boys would help their dad trap muskrats. During the summer, all would help their mother to gather ripened blueberries that were so plentiful in the area. In the winter, they would cut cords of wood for fuel.
Tommy was a rather ambitious young lad. He worked hard, sometimes harder than he had to. Already at this time he seemed to contain some burning desire to show the world something, to take the reins of a shattered culture and drive it hard into the battlefield of hope and glory. It was about time that the Indian jumped out of the backseat and into the lead. And Tommy would do it; he would show that the Indian was as good as anybody else, even better. The chop of the wood axe rang loud and clear, echoing Tommy's mission within a forest of despair.
An old friend of Tommy's talked about how they both used to work hard at trapping muskrats and woodcutting. "After the hard work there were good times. There would be parties and dances. There was no Community Hall so people would offer their homes and provide food as well."
Tommy would come to these gatherings dressed in a cowboy outfit. Soon people were calling him the "Texas Ranger." Living up to his identification, perhaps, Tommy used to get into the occasional "scrap," pretending he was more than his actions indicated.
Life was hard during the 20's and 30's. Isaac Greening, store owner at Scanterbury from 1935 to 1941, gave some insight these times. Isaac knew Tommy and said that he was a "good, honest, hard worker."
Scanterbury was a busy place during these years. Cords of wood were piled at the local CN station, waiting to be shipped to other points. As well as receiving credit for wood, Indians would receive around 40 cents for a muskrat skin.
Isaac has a lot of respect for the people of those days. The women worked at home; in the evening the men would come in and use their credit to purchase lard, tea, baking powder and flour. These were the basic staples; no one needed more than this. "There was lots of sharing," Isaac said, "and Tommy would be among the first to provide." Indian families also used to help the surrounding farmers harvest potatoes. Setting their tents up in the fields, they would remain until harvesting had ended.
In this time of need it was a time to share, and Tommy shared. "He was a real gentleman," Isaac added, "a real gentleman."
Tommy's younger brother, Bill, was born at Scanterbury on May 3, 1921. Bill is a handsome man, and his broad shoulders indicate that he has worked hard during his lifetime. He works in Winnipeg now but still maintains residence in Scanterbury.
Because Bill was six years younger than his brother he cannot relate much about Tommy as a young boy.
"Yes, Tommy went to Elkhorn Residential School and got as far as grade 8, but he couldn't go any further because we had no money."
Tommy had told his father that he wanted to become a lawyer. His father explained that Indians had not enough money for such grandiose ambitions. He learned about farming, science, and a bit of machinery. But as an army cadet he learned that there was one thing in which the White man made no distinction, and that was the colour of the skin on the finger on the trigger of a Lee-Enfield rifle.
Tommy liked being in the cadets most of all. As soon as he put on a uniform he felt a better man. Once he even tried to wear it into the classroom.
Tommy was sixteen, and his formal schooling ended there. But he was still young and daring, quite capable of matching his wits with the world. How many could put five bullets through a target the size of a playing card at one hundred metres?
This skill served him well through the depression years. When he grew tired of looking for odd jobs, he could always go north with an old gun and shoot a deer. He was thrown out of a beer parlor once because he was an Indian. He then decided to grow a moustache and look like a Frenchman. He was never thrown out of a beer parlor again.
Bill and Tommy did some growing up together during the "dirty 30's." "We all had to use our wits," said Bill, "and do the best with what we had. There used to be lots of games for hunting but little ammunition. We had to make every shot count." The two brothers even had to make their own ammunition. Their Treaty allowance gave them one cupful (8 oz.) of gunpowder and three pounds of shot per family per year.
Bill recalled how one time in the late fall, Tommy went out duck hunting. Ice was already forming around the edges of the lake. Off in the distance, however, there was an open area of water containing several hundred coots, or mud hens. This was not a favourite bird for eating, but at this time hunger ruled over choice. Tommy got a heavy branch and, dragged his small boat along, continued to break ice until he reached the open area. The coot is not a very intelligent bird, and Tommy managed to slaughter over a hundred of them before they realized what was happening. Tommy was about a kilometre away from his home base, so he had to make several trips with his small boat to bring them back. "All of Scanterbury sure had a feast," said Bill. "Tommy shared his catch with the whole reserve."
Bill's sturdy physical appearance made sense when he started talking about the days when he and Tommy and a couple of others would go into the bush woodcutting. This usually continued from the first snowfall until the spring break-up. They would crawl out of their cozy beds at four in the morning but their mother would already be up, preparing a hearty breakfast. She would make fresh bannock, and a pot of beans, and occasionally bake a rabbit. The men would walk some six or seven kilometres. The sun would just start to break the horizon when they reached their destination. A small campfire would warm them up for the task that lay ahead. After a rugged eight hour day perhaps some twelve cords of wood reminded these four men of the work they had done.
The cords of wood were then dragged by horse and sled to a local storekeeper. The sawyer received no cash, just credit for his labour. Strangely, cash could only be bought. A sawyer would have to trade 75 cents worth of wood for 50 cents cash.
Bill recalled most vividly the last year he and his brother were together prior to the Second World War. It was fall and they were picking blueberries at Belair. The boys were ready for adventure so they decided to head out west in search of harvesting jobs. Bill had managed to save a couple of dollars thought this would be enough to get them started.
Not far from Belair is Grand Beach. In those days this resort was extremely popular. The train from Winnipeg would come in quite regularly. People would arrive during the afternoon for the evening dance and then return to Winnipeg. At times, however, the festivity was so great that some would not return the same night. Consequently, Bill and Tommy figured that they could purchase the return part of the ticket at a considerable discount. Unfortunately, the people who had originally purchased these tickets would not sell them to Indians. Using their wits once again Bill and Tommy delegated some local boys to collect these for them at five cents a stub. This proved successful, and they were on their way to Winnipeg.
They spent a day in the city before the grand journey. "I remember walking to the CPR station," said Bill. "We could see the long train. All seemed normal until the whistle announced the departure, and out from nowhere came hundreds of men swarming toward the cars, all eagerly anticipating a job out west. We stopped at Portage la Prairie where a whole gang of us walked into town. I guess there was just too many of us; we were run out."
The train continued to roll along the steel rails, through Brandon and on to Elkhorn where a number of men, including Bill and Tommy, got off and tried their luck once again. They went to Tommy's old school and inquired about jobs. They were told that they should split up, that as a gang they would never find anything.
"They were very kind to us," Bill remembered. "The women all got together and made us sandwiches." The two boys split from the group and decided to head back for Brandon.
From Brandon, the two of them found themselves walking southward, down a lonely highway. They walked an entire day, and as evening approached, the weary young men decided to spend the night in an adjacent field and to reassess this adventure.
The following day, they continued their trek southward. They were soon greeted by a man traveling in a Model A Ford. The car chugged noisily as the men explained their predicament. It so happened that this man knew a two-section rancher who needed some strong and able men.
Their new boss was a wealthy rancher who owned no fewer than fifty horses. But he was not eager to share much of his wealth with his hired men. Bill and Tommy worked hard and long hours, stacking hay and building fences. For all their work they received little more than their room and board. They slept in the barn with the chickens and rats, and during supper a young girl stood by the table watching the men, making sure they did not eat too much.
Two weeks seemed like an eternity for the two men. Tom decided to quit and collect what little wages he had earned. His boss refused to give him any and an argument followed. Tommy and his brother left empty-handed.
It was their good fortune, however, to locate a similar job. This time their boss was more benevolent. The two men were paid for their labour and were allowed to sleep inside the boss's house. It was sure good to know that there were some nice people in the world.
Tommy stayed for a while, ploughing the fields. The threat of war hung gloomily in the cool autumn air, however, and soon Tommy would become involved.
The timing was right. Now, with the harvesting complete, Tommy was ready to set out for his greatest adventure. "I guess joining the army was like another job to Tommy," Bill added. After reflecting a bit he concluded, "But if must have been more than this; he was a daring young man, and he was tough." Soon the world would know just how tough Tommy Prince really was.
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