Old Wives | |
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  Old Wives | |
| Coordinates: 50°12′00″N106°00′02″W / 50.2°N 106.00055°W | |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Saskatchewan |
| Region | Southwest Saskatchewan |
| Census division | Division No. 3 |
| Rural Municipality | Hillsborough |
| Post office Founded | 1912-01-01 (Closed 1969-10-10) |
| Government | |
| • Governing body | Hillsborough No. 132 |
| Time zone | CST |
| Area code | 306 |
| Highways | Highway 363 |
| [1] [2] [3] [4] | |
Old Wives is an unincorporated community in the Rural Municipality of Hillsborough No. 132, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The village that became Old Wives was formed about 1900, but it was not until 1929 that the community officially got the name. Mail delivery began 1911, when Tom Lundrigan began bringing in the mail from the post office in Mortlach. Eventually, a post office was open January 1, 1912, and remained open until it closed on October 10, 1969. [5] The area was home to several schools, with the first opening in 1916. Bay Island School, officially Bay Island School District #4362, was a one-room school on Highway 363 just east of Old Wives, which served the community from 1919 to 1950. The building still stands today. [6] The first general store in town opened in Mr. Bill Sheldon’s house in 1920. In 1930 a new store was built at the town site and it would operate for nearly 40 years, before closing in 1968. In 1931 the CPR laid tracks from Archive to Shamrock and in 1933 a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator was built alongside the tracks. On July 4, 1930, a De Havilland DH.60 Moth crashed on takeoff from Old Wives. The fate of the pilot is unknown but the aircraft was destroyed by the post-crash fire. [7]
Old Wives has been a ghost town for several decades and while the town briefly prospered, The Great Depression and severe droughts in 1937, 1951 and 1959 began an irreversible downward spiral. Many businesses closed in the 1950s and 60s. The final nail in the coffin for the community came in 1973 when the railroad was abandoned, followed by the Pool elevator being moved to Bateman in 1975. Today, very little remains of Old Wives. [8]
Old Wives and nearby Old Wives Lake were named after a local Cree legend. [9] According to traditional stories recounted by Métis guides accompanying the North-West Mounted Police in 1874, sometime around 1840 a band of Cree hunters followed a herd of buffalo into Blackfoot territory and made camp near the lake. Blackfoot scouts discovered this band and attacked. Although the Cree were able to defend themselves, they anticipated an attack by a larger Blackfoot war party the next morning. The older women volunteered to stay behind to tend the fires through the night in the hope of fooling the Blackfoot into believing that they were not abandoning their camp to escape. Using this diversion as cover, the rest of the Cree successfully fled back to their home territory in the Qu'Appelle valley. When the Blackfoot arrived that morning they found only the old women, whom the Blackfoot killed in vengeance. This commonly recited version of the lake's naming has been commemorated by a historical marker situated beside Highway 2 near the lake. A variant telling of this narrative states that the Blackfoot warriors were so impressed by the women's courage that they left them alone and allowed them to rejoin their own people. Another First Nations oral tradition describes how a band of Assiniboine fleeing from pursuing Blackfoot warriors abandoned the old women in their band who could not keep pace with everyone else. The women continued their effort to escape by wading across the lake. However, they misjudged the water's depth and drowned. [10] An Assiniboine tradition associates the name with a battle which occurred at the lake around the beginning of the 19th century in which Assiniboines vanquished their Blackfoot enemies. According to some First Nations traditions, the spirits of the dead women continue to haunt a small island in the lake from which their voices can be heard at night. [11]
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations.
The Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi, is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Blackfeet people: the Siksika ("Blackfoot"), the Kainai or Blood, and two sections of the Peigan or Piikani – the Northern Piikani (Aapátohsipikáni) and the Southern Piikani. Broader definitions include groups such as the Tsúùtínà (Sarcee) and A'aninin who spoke quite different languages but allied with or joined the Blackfoot Confederacy.
The Saskatchewan River is a major river in Canada. It stretches about 550 kilometres (340 mi) from where it is formed by the joining together of the North Saskatchewan and South Saskatchewan Rivers to Lake Winnipeg. It flows roughly eastward across Saskatchewan and Manitoba to empty into Lake Winnipeg. Through its tributaries the North Saskatchewan and South Saskatchewan, its watershed encompasses much of the prairie regions of Canada, stretching westward to the Rocky Mountains in Alberta and north-western Montana in the United States.
The Battle of Cut Knife, fought on May 2, 1885, occurred when a flying column of mounted police, militia, and Canadian army regular army units attacked a Cree and Assiniboine teepee settlement near Battleford, Saskatchewan. First Nations fighters forced the Canadian forces to retreat, with losses on both sides.
Pîhtokahanapiwiyin, also known as Poundmaker, was a Plains Cree chief known as a peacemaker and defender of his people, the Poundmaker Cree Nation. His name denotes his special craft at leading buffalo into buffalo pounds (enclosures) for harvest.
Old Wives Lake is a shallow endorheic salt lake in south central Saskatchewan, Canada, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) south-west of Moose Jaw. The lake is fed by the Wood River but seasonal water relatively flattened the terrain, and as such results in significant mudflats. A Migratory Bird Sanctuary was established at the lake on March 9, 1925. This lake, in conjunction with Reed Lake and Chaplin Lake, forms a site of hemispheric importance in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. It was designated in April 1997, and is "one of the most important inland sites for migratory birds in North America". A variety of First Nations oral traditions explain the origin of the lake's name. At various times during the lake's human history, it has attracted interest from several First Nations tribes, duck hunters, military trainers, sodium sulfate producers, conservationists, and birdwatchers.
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people, also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota, are a First Nations/Native American people originally from the Northern Great Plains of North America.
First Nations in Alberta are a group of people who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The First Nations are peoples recognized as Indigenous peoples or Plains Indians in Canada excluding the Inuit and the Métis. According to the 2011 Census, a population of 116,670 Albertans self-identified as First Nations. Specifically there were 96,730 First Nations people with registered Indian Status and 19,945 First Nations people without registered Indian Status. Alberta has the third largest First Nations population among the provinces and territories. From this total population, 47.3% of the population lives on an Indian reserve and the other 52.7% live in urban centres. According to the 2011 Census, the First Nations population in Edmonton totalled at 31,780, which is the second highest for any city in Canada. The First Nations population in Calgary, in reference to the 2011 Census, totalled at 17,040. There are 48 First Nations or "bands" in Alberta, belonging to nine different ethnic groups or "tribes" based on their ancestral languages.
First Nations in Saskatchewan constitute many Native Canadian band governments. First Nations ethnicities in the province include the Cree, Assiniboine, Saulteaux, Lakota, Dene and Dakota. Historically, the Atsina and Blackfoot could also be found at various times.
The Gros Ventre, also known as the Aaniiih, A'aninin, Haaninin, Atsina, and White Clay, are a historically Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe located in north central Montana. Today the Gros Ventre people are enrolled in the Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana, a federally recognized tribe with 3,682 enrolled members, that also includes Assiniboine people or Nakoda people, the Gros Ventre's historical enemies. The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is in the northernmost part of Montana, just south of the small town of Harlem, Montana. Chiefs: The Belly Government Council
The Nakoda are an Indigenous people in Western Canada and, originally, the United States.
Fort Pitt Provincial Park is a provincial park in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Fort Pitt was built in 1829 by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and was a trading post on the North Saskatchewan River in Rupert's Land. It was built at the direction of Chief Factor John Rowand, previously of Fort Edmonton, to trade for bison hides, meat and pemmican. Pemmican, dried buffalo meat, was required as provisions for HBC's northern trading posts.
The Sakāwithiniwak or Woodland Cree, are a Cree people, calling themselves Nîhithaw in their own dialect of the language. They are the largest indigenous group in northern Alberta and are an Algonquian people. Prior to the 18th century, their territory extended west of Hudson Bay, as far north as Churchill. Although in western Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, by the 18th century, they acted as middlemen in trade with western tribes. After acquiring guns through trade, they greatly expanded their territory and drove other tribes further west and north.
Mossbank is a town in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. The town is south of Old Wives Lake and 68 km south of Moose Jaw.
The Lac La Ronge Indian Band is a Woodland Cree First Nation in northern Saskatchewan, it is the largest Cree band government in Canada and the largest First Nation in Saskatchewan. The administrative centre of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band is located in La Ronge.
The Looting of Battleford began at the end of March, 1885, during the North-West Rebellion, in the town of Battleford, Saskatchewan, then a part of the Northwest Territories.
The Iron Confederacy or Iron Confederation was a political and military alliance of Plains Indians of what is now Western Canada and the northern United States. This confederacy included various individual bands that formed political, hunting and military alliances in defense against common enemies. The ethnic groups that made up the Confederacy were the branches of the Cree that moved onto the Great Plains around 1740, the Saulteaux, the Nakoda or Stoney people also called Pwat or Assiniboine, and the Métis and Haudenosaunee. The Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade when they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations, and the flow of furs to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and North West Company (NWC) trading posts. Its peoples later also played a major part in the bison (buffalo) hunt, and the pemmican trade. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds sapped the power of the Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to U.S. and Canadian expansion.
The Montreal Lake Cree Nation is a Woodland Cree First Nation in northern Saskatchewan. The administrative centre of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation is located in the community of Montreal Lake.
Saddle Lake Cree Nation is a Plains Cree, First Nations community, located in the Amiskwacīwiyiniwak region of central Alberta, Canada. The Nation is a signatory to Treaty 6, and their traditional language is Plains Cree.
The Little Pine First Nation is a Plains Cree First Nations band government in Saskatchewan, Canada. Their reserves include:
Places adjacent to Old Wives | |
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Coordinates: 50°12′00″N106°00′02″W / 50.20000°N 106.00056°W
