Naming the West : Stories Siksika Crowfoot School School

Elders' StoriesElders' Stories

Siksika Elder Story 4:
Crowfoot School

My mother, she’s gone. My mother said “You can’t even write, you can’t even read. You don’t even know how to count, and you don’t know how to tell time. I am going to take you to Crowfoot school, maybe the nuns will teach you at least how to write your name.”

And that’s how come I ended up there, but I got really lonesome because I was from this end. I didn’t know the boys at the other end of the reserve. So when I got so lonesome, I had to run away. Now, I don’t want you to do what I did, because to this day I cannot read very well. I cannot spell, my grandkids will say, “This is how you spell this”, and they’re just little kids.

How I used to do it, at dinner time, when you go in the dining room, I steal some bread and put it away, because it takes me two days to get home. And then I know, four o’clock, four thirty is the first count. Four o’clock, that’s the time I have to run away from school. Because I had to go through the bushes, you know Crowfoot School, down there and then there’s a creek that winds all the way through to the railroad track You follow that creek. And then when I get to the railroad you go on the other side, because the road is too close. They’ll take you- they’ll take me right back. But I used to go on the north side and start walking.

Halfway to Gleichen, there’s a culvert; you know where the water runs through underneath the railroad. I pick up some gravel and throw them in there. And gravel makes a lot of noise. I do that for two reasons. I do not like garter snakes; I do not like mice, because they are all in there. This way, you do that three or four times, then I can crawl in there half ways, take my boots off, put them together, and use them for pillow, until the next morning, before the sun even comes, start getting daylight, I have to get out of there and go through Gleichen before everybody wakes, before the police start looking in town for me. But I always go through there early in the morning, and make it right to the other end of the reserve. And that’s how I got home.

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