Post by grahamew on Feb 18, 2009 15:08:17 GMT -5
Louis O’Soup - or Ochoup (Backfat (of a Moose)) was a Plains Saulteaux (Ojibwa) leader born in the late 1830s, probably in the Riding Mountain area of Manitoba. He was the older son of Okanese (Little Bone) or Michel Cardinal, a leader of a mixed band of Metis, Cree and Saulteaux who had married an Assiiniboin woman. O’Soup married Omasinakikewiskwew of the Nez Percé and fathered two sons and six daughters; he died in 1913, probably on the Cowessess Reserve in Saskatchewan.
Louis O' Soup and 'Le Joueur'
Cardinal’s family and his followers migrated from the Bow River region of the Rockies to Riding Mountain during the 1820s. As Chief Okanase, Cardinal led a band living by hunting, trapping, and trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Ellice and Riding Mountain House. O’Soup identified himself as a Saulteaux, but he was geneologically linked to the Cree, Metis and Assiniboin. His brothers included St Paul, Mekis (Eagle), and the Cree leader Cowessess. Among his half-brothers were Keeseekoowenin (the Saulteaux leader Sky Chief), Baptiste Bone (Baptiste Okanase), Samuel Bone, and John L. Bone.
O’Soup’s Plains Saulteaux migrated west in the 1860s and 1870s to hunt buffalo and he camped regularly in the Qu’Appelle valley. In 1872, the HBC postmaster at Fort Qu’Appelle recognised him as one of three influential Saulteaux leaders in the area. He was at the negotiations for Treaty No. 4 at Fort Qu’Appelle with the Cree and Saulteaux under Cowessess, who normally hunted in the Cypress Hills, in September 1874. At the time he thought, “Oh, we will make a living by the promises that are made to us, ” but he later felt the government did not keep its side of the argument and that his people could not make a living.
In 1877 at Fort Qu’Appelle, O’Soup was spoke for the 14 bands, or 2,290 people, who gathered at Fort Qu’Appelle in 1877; he was forthright about the fact that Treaty No. 6 was more favourable to its Indian signatories than Treaty No. 4, but the Cowessess band split in 1877: O’Soup persuaded a faction to leave the Cypress Hills and return to the Qu’Appelle River valley in the hope of he would recognised as leader; he then lured others away to Crooked Lake, 300 miles east of Maple Creek where the majority of the band remained with Cowessess. In 1880 the O’Soup Reserve (later the Cowessess Indian Reserve) was surveyed for the entire band. This has been seen as a shrewd political move so he could be recognised as chief of a separate band and the government welcomed his willingness to settle on a reserve at a time when it was meeting resistance from other leaders.
In 1881, the government took advantage of his ambition and appointed him messenger to the people of Treaty No. 4 who lived in the Fort Walsh region; they wanted him to use his influence to get the Indians to move to the reserves along the Qu’Appelle and he was one of those who spoke to Governor General Lord Lorne when he visited the area, saying:
"While prairie was open I could clothe myself but now that the buffalo are driven away I can not do so. The dothing you see on the people round all comes from $five[annuity] and in two or three months it will all be gone--Your heart would melt if you saw these people in the winter. I have got no shoes nor mittens ... Take this to your heart and think it over. And how do you think these people can live on half a pound of flour a day ... According to treaty a yoke of oxen going to keep 100 people alive. Will they break up land enough to keep them alive? Now the Indian knows more ... "
O'Soup gave Lorne "a handsome present in the shape of a complete and elaborately ornamented Indian dress," (accroding to the Globe's correspondent) and in exchange O'Soup was presented with a "handsome Waltham watch."
The shirt O'Soup wore when he met Lord Lorne; shirt and leggings are in the British Museum. He was sketched by Sidney Hall of the Graphic, but I can't find a copy of this on the net!
Things did not go smoothly, because most of his own band did not remove to Crooked Lake until the next year after the government discontinued rations to force the bands out of the Cypress Hills and Indian agent Allan McDonald had to persuade O’Soup to resign as headman and welcome Cowessess to Crooked Lake in 1882.
Louis O’Soup had been listed in government records of annuity payments as one of the headmen for Chief Cowessess from 1875 until 1879, and he appeared in this role again from 1881 to 1887. In 1888 he was paid as chief and he received his final annuity payment as holder of this office in 1890.
Throughout this period, he continued to to express the concerns of his people. During 1884 on the Sakimay Indian Reserve, when Yellow Calf and over 20 men broke into the Department of Indian Affairs’ warehouse to protest against a new policy that stopped the distribution of rations, O’Soup spoke for them and undoubtedly help both defuse the situation and explain their actions clearly to the authroties on the grounds that people were starving and had only taken what was originally intended for them. While he appealed to the elders for guidance and help, he also persuaded four of the men to go to Regina for trial. The charges againjst Yellow Calf were dropped and while the others were convicted, their sentence was suspended and they were discharged. Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed noted there was “no doubt that O’Soup, who is an able orator and shrewd councillor, is the man to whom the Indians look for guidance.”
O’Soup advised accommodation: his children attended the Qu’Appelle Industrial School and he become a successful farmer, who, by the mid-1880s, was considered reasonably well off. In 1887 a visitor described him having a “splendid field of wheat of thirty or forty acres, and plot of excellent potatoes,” and two large, well-furnished log houses, joined by a vestibule.
While he enjoyed importance amongst his own people, the authorities considered him to be “intelligent, hardworking, trustworthy.” In 1886, he was one of the four Treaty No. 4 men thought by the Department of Indian Affairs officials to possess “sound judgment” and influence and they travelled east for the unveiling of a monument to Joseph Brant. They also visited parliament and were entertained by Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton, the commander of the North-West Field Force during the 1885 rebellion. O’Soup ingratiated himself with the authorities, clearly hoping they would look favourably on him and his people in the future.
O'Soup at the back; in front: Starblanket, Flying in a Circle and Big Cloud, during the 1886 trip for the unveiling of the Brant Monument
However, when surveyors began to subdivide the Treaty No. 4 reserves into 40 acre lots, he told his people to ptotest because he felt, correctly, that the outcome would be the loss of Indian land and he expressed his suspicions to Piapot in 1889 and the latter then refused to cooperate with the surveyors. The authorities began to introduce a number of policies to limit the expansion of reservation farming so there would be no competition with neighbouring whites and O’Soup became disillusioned with a government who failed to honour its commitment to agricultural assistance. In 1896, taking one of his sons with him, he left for Manitoba and transferred to the Pine Creek Indian Reserve on Lake Winnipegosis; he lived by hunting and didn’t move back to Cowessess until 1908, by which time, he had lost the lower part of his right leg in a railroad accident.
In 1911 O’Soup was the key spokesman for nine representatives from Saskatchewan and Manitoba reserves who met with Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior, and Francis Pedley, deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, in Ottawa. He showed them many letters expressing grievances from other reserves including Piapot, Leech Lake, Valley River, Gordon, and Muscowpetung. The leaders were annoyed that the treaties did not allow them to make a living and were worried about the resent loss of reserve land and the resultant use of funds raised from land sales. O’Soup spoke out against the school system that involved much manual work, but little academic learning and pointed out the graduates had difficulty in finding jobs; he also objected to the loss of status and privileges suffered by women who married non-Indians. He protested against the confiscation of some ponies that he had brought from the United States but which he couldn’t pay duties on, noting, “You take our little ponies from us although we gave you the country and you are making money on the country we gave you and we have not money to pay for the ponies.” Although it was claimed that the delegates were pleased with their trip and the responses they heard, Cowessess band members continued to protest through a lawyer.
O’Soup lived through a period of drastic change for the First Nations of the Canadian prairie: the demise of the buffalo; the final days of the traditional life of subsisting by hunting and trading; the arrival of more settlers; the incorporation of the prairie region into Canada. He spoke for the treaty rights of the Saulteaux, Cree and Assiniboin of southeastern Sasktachewan and Southern Manitoba in the Treaty No. 4 area, but Indian Affairs officials felt O’Soup was intent on causing trouble and tried to marginalize him. When he died, between 26 February and 9 July 1913, it did not even merit a mention in the annual report of the Cowessess reserve.
This relies heavily on Sarah L. Carter's entry on O'Soup in the excellent Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online:
www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7632&&PHPSESSID=s9cmu40404t25oo3o9iojuno46
I also used Kenneth Tyler's entry for Kiwisunce (Cowessess):
www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5628&&PHPSESSID=s9cmu40404t25oo3o9iojuno46
and Sarah Carter's article, "Your great mother across the salt sea": Prairie First Nations, the British Monarchy and the Vice Regal Connection to 1900, in Manitoba History, 22 Sept 2004
Louis O' Soup and 'Le Joueur'
Cardinal’s family and his followers migrated from the Bow River region of the Rockies to Riding Mountain during the 1820s. As Chief Okanase, Cardinal led a band living by hunting, trapping, and trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Ellice and Riding Mountain House. O’Soup identified himself as a Saulteaux, but he was geneologically linked to the Cree, Metis and Assiniboin. His brothers included St Paul, Mekis (Eagle), and the Cree leader Cowessess. Among his half-brothers were Keeseekoowenin (the Saulteaux leader Sky Chief), Baptiste Bone (Baptiste Okanase), Samuel Bone, and John L. Bone.
O’Soup’s Plains Saulteaux migrated west in the 1860s and 1870s to hunt buffalo and he camped regularly in the Qu’Appelle valley. In 1872, the HBC postmaster at Fort Qu’Appelle recognised him as one of three influential Saulteaux leaders in the area. He was at the negotiations for Treaty No. 4 at Fort Qu’Appelle with the Cree and Saulteaux under Cowessess, who normally hunted in the Cypress Hills, in September 1874. At the time he thought, “Oh, we will make a living by the promises that are made to us, ” but he later felt the government did not keep its side of the argument and that his people could not make a living.
In 1877 at Fort Qu’Appelle, O’Soup was spoke for the 14 bands, or 2,290 people, who gathered at Fort Qu’Appelle in 1877; he was forthright about the fact that Treaty No. 6 was more favourable to its Indian signatories than Treaty No. 4, but the Cowessess band split in 1877: O’Soup persuaded a faction to leave the Cypress Hills and return to the Qu’Appelle River valley in the hope of he would recognised as leader; he then lured others away to Crooked Lake, 300 miles east of Maple Creek where the majority of the band remained with Cowessess. In 1880 the O’Soup Reserve (later the Cowessess Indian Reserve) was surveyed for the entire band. This has been seen as a shrewd political move so he could be recognised as chief of a separate band and the government welcomed his willingness to settle on a reserve at a time when it was meeting resistance from other leaders.
In 1881, the government took advantage of his ambition and appointed him messenger to the people of Treaty No. 4 who lived in the Fort Walsh region; they wanted him to use his influence to get the Indians to move to the reserves along the Qu’Appelle and he was one of those who spoke to Governor General Lord Lorne when he visited the area, saying:
"While prairie was open I could clothe myself but now that the buffalo are driven away I can not do so. The dothing you see on the people round all comes from $five[annuity] and in two or three months it will all be gone--Your heart would melt if you saw these people in the winter. I have got no shoes nor mittens ... Take this to your heart and think it over. And how do you think these people can live on half a pound of flour a day ... According to treaty a yoke of oxen going to keep 100 people alive. Will they break up land enough to keep them alive? Now the Indian knows more ... "
O'Soup gave Lorne "a handsome present in the shape of a complete and elaborately ornamented Indian dress," (accroding to the Globe's correspondent) and in exchange O'Soup was presented with a "handsome Waltham watch."
The shirt O'Soup wore when he met Lord Lorne; shirt and leggings are in the British Museum. He was sketched by Sidney Hall of the Graphic, but I can't find a copy of this on the net!
Things did not go smoothly, because most of his own band did not remove to Crooked Lake until the next year after the government discontinued rations to force the bands out of the Cypress Hills and Indian agent Allan McDonald had to persuade O’Soup to resign as headman and welcome Cowessess to Crooked Lake in 1882.
Louis O’Soup had been listed in government records of annuity payments as one of the headmen for Chief Cowessess from 1875 until 1879, and he appeared in this role again from 1881 to 1887. In 1888 he was paid as chief and he received his final annuity payment as holder of this office in 1890.
Throughout this period, he continued to to express the concerns of his people. During 1884 on the Sakimay Indian Reserve, when Yellow Calf and over 20 men broke into the Department of Indian Affairs’ warehouse to protest against a new policy that stopped the distribution of rations, O’Soup spoke for them and undoubtedly help both defuse the situation and explain their actions clearly to the authroties on the grounds that people were starving and had only taken what was originally intended for them. While he appealed to the elders for guidance and help, he also persuaded four of the men to go to Regina for trial. The charges againjst Yellow Calf were dropped and while the others were convicted, their sentence was suspended and they were discharged. Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed noted there was “no doubt that O’Soup, who is an able orator and shrewd councillor, is the man to whom the Indians look for guidance.”
O’Soup advised accommodation: his children attended the Qu’Appelle Industrial School and he become a successful farmer, who, by the mid-1880s, was considered reasonably well off. In 1887 a visitor described him having a “splendid field of wheat of thirty or forty acres, and plot of excellent potatoes,” and two large, well-furnished log houses, joined by a vestibule.
While he enjoyed importance amongst his own people, the authorities considered him to be “intelligent, hardworking, trustworthy.” In 1886, he was one of the four Treaty No. 4 men thought by the Department of Indian Affairs officials to possess “sound judgment” and influence and they travelled east for the unveiling of a monument to Joseph Brant. They also visited parliament and were entertained by Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton, the commander of the North-West Field Force during the 1885 rebellion. O’Soup ingratiated himself with the authorities, clearly hoping they would look favourably on him and his people in the future.
O'Soup at the back; in front: Starblanket, Flying in a Circle and Big Cloud, during the 1886 trip for the unveiling of the Brant Monument
However, when surveyors began to subdivide the Treaty No. 4 reserves into 40 acre lots, he told his people to ptotest because he felt, correctly, that the outcome would be the loss of Indian land and he expressed his suspicions to Piapot in 1889 and the latter then refused to cooperate with the surveyors. The authorities began to introduce a number of policies to limit the expansion of reservation farming so there would be no competition with neighbouring whites and O’Soup became disillusioned with a government who failed to honour its commitment to agricultural assistance. In 1896, taking one of his sons with him, he left for Manitoba and transferred to the Pine Creek Indian Reserve on Lake Winnipegosis; he lived by hunting and didn’t move back to Cowessess until 1908, by which time, he had lost the lower part of his right leg in a railroad accident.
In 1911 O’Soup was the key spokesman for nine representatives from Saskatchewan and Manitoba reserves who met with Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior, and Francis Pedley, deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, in Ottawa. He showed them many letters expressing grievances from other reserves including Piapot, Leech Lake, Valley River, Gordon, and Muscowpetung. The leaders were annoyed that the treaties did not allow them to make a living and were worried about the resent loss of reserve land and the resultant use of funds raised from land sales. O’Soup spoke out against the school system that involved much manual work, but little academic learning and pointed out the graduates had difficulty in finding jobs; he also objected to the loss of status and privileges suffered by women who married non-Indians. He protested against the confiscation of some ponies that he had brought from the United States but which he couldn’t pay duties on, noting, “You take our little ponies from us although we gave you the country and you are making money on the country we gave you and we have not money to pay for the ponies.” Although it was claimed that the delegates were pleased with their trip and the responses they heard, Cowessess band members continued to protest through a lawyer.
O’Soup lived through a period of drastic change for the First Nations of the Canadian prairie: the demise of the buffalo; the final days of the traditional life of subsisting by hunting and trading; the arrival of more settlers; the incorporation of the prairie region into Canada. He spoke for the treaty rights of the Saulteaux, Cree and Assiniboin of southeastern Sasktachewan and Southern Manitoba in the Treaty No. 4 area, but Indian Affairs officials felt O’Soup was intent on causing trouble and tried to marginalize him. When he died, between 26 February and 9 July 1913, it did not even merit a mention in the annual report of the Cowessess reserve.
This relies heavily on Sarah L. Carter's entry on O'Soup in the excellent Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online:
www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7632&&PHPSESSID=s9cmu40404t25oo3o9iojuno46
I also used Kenneth Tyler's entry for Kiwisunce (Cowessess):
www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5628&&PHPSESSID=s9cmu40404t25oo3o9iojuno46
and Sarah Carter's article, "Your great mother across the salt sea": Prairie First Nations, the British Monarchy and the Vice Regal Connection to 1900, in Manitoba History, 22 Sept 2004
