VOLUME 09 JAN., 1991 NUMBER 1

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DR. JESSIE SAULTEAUX: THE FAITH GOES ON by John McFarlane

When Jessie Pretyshield was a little girl she used to stay with her grandmother in a tee-pee during the summer. Her grandmother was one of the Assiniboines who had come from the Cypress Hills in what is now Southwestern Saskatchewan and Southeastern Alberta. She was a story teller. One of Jessie's favorite stories was about when her grandmother was a young girl. Her grandmother had a dream, a dream about an attack by the Blackfoot on their village, in which she was injured. In the dream she was told how to be treated for the injuries she was to receive. When she awoke she told her dream to her father.

Several days after the dream she was Dr. Jessie Saulteaux out picking berries with some of the women and girls, when the Blackfoot attacked. The women ran away, and of course the young girl ran too. As she ran she came to a bank of loose soil and when she tried to climb the bank, her moccasins slipped on the loose soil. She was caught by a man who was chasing her. He stabbed her several times, and left her for dead. But she was not dead. She was found by her people and brought to her parents lodge. A medicine person was called for and because her father had been told of her dream the instructions that
she had received in the dream were carried out.

Her lungs were sticking out of her body. These were pushed back in and her chest was sewn up. Evergreen boughs were placed on the ground, over these a buffalo skin. She was laid on the skin, and another robe put over her. The treatment worked it seems, because Jessie's grandmother lived into her nineties!

Not only did Jessie's grandmother survive the Blackfoot attack but she survived the removal of her people from their ancestral land in the Cypress Hills, and the trip from that place on rallway flat cars to Indian Head. and from there oil foot to the Hurricane Hills, South ol'Sintaluta. She returned with her people back to the Cypress Hills the following year, but was in the forced return to Ind I an Head the next year. Her people have lived there since that time. People who hunted, raised horses, and lived in one of the most beautiful places in the Southern prairies were placed on unfamiliar land. They were told to farm. Their ancestral land was given to others for the raising of horses. They were forced to leave the American border area where their relatives lived. They became refugees from their own land.

Jessie was born in 1912, at a t I me when the old way was giving way to the new. The people were encouraged to engage in farming, and to live in log houses. Her grandmother still prayed to the Great Spirit at sunrise with arms outstretched to the Creator. She prayed when the creation was coming to I fe with the rising of the sun. The people still had feasts for the dead. They still practiced the Sun Dance. They gathered for pow-wows to dance and socialize. Grandmother took her little grandchild along with her when she went out to gather plants and roots for medicine. But it was also the time of the coming of the Presbyterian missionaries. The McKenzies came to live in the community, bringing with them new ways. They said the old religious ways were wrong. Jessie's father and mother became members of the Church. Attendance at worship became a weekly event.

Jessie recalls a memory from childhood of how the McKenzies brought change to her own family.

The way I know it is my father one time, we, my brother and I after church, he told us to go outside and play because they had visitors. So we went and we went into our granary and we found something hanging up there from the ceiling. We climbed up there. This granary was full of some grain. But we were able to reach that. We pulled it down. My father come and caught us. He said, You know, he said "You children shouldn't play with that. I meant to burn it" he said, "I should have did it that time," he said. "This is no good", It was a drum that had hide, a little drum, and a rattler and some sweet grass and a bag too. I don't know what was in the bag. lie said "you know", he said "since Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie come" he said, "they tell us" he said "these things are no good what we're using it for. And the Y.M.C.A., and the Red Cross say the same things," he said. "So since they told us that story", he said, "I got no use for them."

When Jessie was tw,elvc years old her mother died. Jessie was sent to Round Lake School. She spoke no English, except ,yesand "no". At Round Lake she was a part of Mission Band, C.G.I.T. and took part in worship conducted by the students. It was a time for learning leadership, and how to conduct meetings. After eight years there she graduated with a diploma from grade eight. Part of the life at the school was learning how to do domestic chores. The boys learned farming by working on the school's farm, while the girls learned cooking and sewing by doing the cooking and sewing for the school. They used to have debates about agriculture between the girls and boys, "sometimes the girls lost, sometimes we won", she said. In the evenings after school, the principal Mr. Ross would take them out to the garden to pull weeds. For pulling a hundred weeds, he sa I d they would get a carrot. She says some of us would only pick fifty but we would still get a prize. "Mrs Ross thought if I could get a job, I would do a good job, but I didn't get a job", Jessie said.

For one year after Round Lake she went to Brandon Residential School. The meals at Brandon were so bad, a constant diet of mutton, that Jessie got sick. On the instructions of the doctor she was ordered to be given a better diet. She had to eat in the kitchen, where the other children could not see the food she got. She finished the year and passed her grade nine, but was unable and unwilling to return. So she stayed home, after nine years away from her home, except for summers.

After a year at home she married David Saulteaux. There were eventually five children: Marietta, Roy, Frank, Aletha, and Bernice. The years when the children were at home were a happy time for Jessie. The missionary who was also the teacher used to give them Sunday school papers. The stories from the papers, and from the Bible were read to the children. They looked foreward to having stories read to them at night. Later some of them took part in Sunday School of the Air, a church school for children who were in isolated locations. Bernice tells how upset she would get when Frank would listen to the hockey game on Saturday night and wear out the battery on the radio so she could not get Sunday School the following day. Jessie says that religious education is best when our children are young and at home. "Even if they don't live up to it when they are young it seems to come back to them in later years when they have some children of their own. They seem to come back to the Church then."

"Right from the start going to Church here and then going, to Round Lake that's where I had the strong faith that I was safe in the Christian world. Still today I feel God had a purpose for me in life. I am thankful to God in Jesus Christ who has been close to me throughout my life". She believes that I Corinthians 13 was and is what she has in her heart.

Love is patient and kind: it is not jealous or conceited or proud - Love never gives up in it's faith hope and patience.

In the period when I was the minister in her church I remember when there was a difficult time in the congregation. Some members were about to kick out one who had been providing leadership. Jessie suggested that we begin the meeting by reading John 8:111. Verse 7 says,

Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.

This caused those who had come to condemn to leave without carrying out their threat.

The wisdom of this elder was not just the result of a good church background, and participation in two United Church residential schools. It came from a strong grandmother, a loving father, her own children, and other children she raised as her own. Endurance came from such tasks as making over army surplus coats into children's coats for winter. Recently a man was heard to say to his children, "We used to go to school looking like army guys". He was telling this to his children who had to have the latest styles for school. Patience came from being on Church committees that seemed to lead nowhere. She stuck with the United Church when others were going to the sect groups. Her wisdom was recognized in her election as the first woman Chief of the Carry The Kettle Indian Band.

She nevertheless suffered great disappointments in the Church. One time she took part In a neighbouring congregational meeting to discuss looking for a new minister. One of the members expressed the view that they would like a minister such as the male missionaries they had in the past. This person was of the opinion that these men had been such good examples for their young people. After the meeting, on the way home, Jessie was heard to say "they sure don't know ministers like I know them". When the Plains Presbytery was being formed she said that the nativc people used to go to presbytery. They used to sit in the back of the church in which the meeting was being held. "if they had anything to say, the minister said it for them."

She served on Church committees such as Native Concerns, and a national native committee. She also served, at the request of Qu'Appellc Presbytery, as lay rninister with two other people. One of these was a member of the Full Gospel group. It was very frustrating since the Full Gospel people were not interested in cooperating with the United Church. She had no transportation or funds to hire transportation. One day her son came home and said, "Mom do you want help with your Church work". "I told him yea!" she said. And he said, "you know that Salvation Army guy in Indian Head, I was telling him about it and he said he's willing to come out and help you". "So I told him" she said, "I just can't do it alone. I'll have to let somebody know I told him. I'll have to let Presbytery know. So I told them. Then that same summer I got Rev. McFarlane. They didn't accept the Salvation Army to come in.

After many meetings attended by Mrs. Saulteaux, such as Native Concerns, and the National Native Task Force, everything seemed to be going nowhere. She had suggested at the last Native Concerns meeting she attended that they should begin training their own ministers. She was aware that a program had already begun in Manitoba. At that meeting the committee broke up.

It was several years later that an experimental approach to training native students for ministry began at the White Bear Reserve, near Carlyle, Saskatchewan. Shortly after, one began at Carry The Kettle (the name of the Assimboine Reserve, named after one of their first chiefs). A former daughter-in-law of Jessie's was the second student to begin training. Mariah Shepherd, and Bonnie Saulteaux began training, and more were soon to follow. A fiveyear program for training students on the job was begun.

In the meantime the one who had received the vision, and worked and prayed to see training begun for native ministry, was recognized by St. Andrews College in Saskatoon. In May, 1983 a Doctor of Divinity degree was granted to Mrs. Saulteaux. She became Dr. Jessie Saulteaux. At the convocation the speaker, the Rev. Stanley McKay said "Jessie has been an example to all of us of gentle leadership, and long suffering. Her vision of the Church has always been one where we as a people had a part."

The next year, 1984, the Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Resource Centre was Inauguirated by Dr. Saulteaux herself, the purpose being to prepare native students for the ministry. The first director was the Rev. Alf Dumont, a native person from Ontario. The board was made up of native people. This tradition has carried on with Stan McKay becoming the second director. One of the things Dr. Saulteaux told the students at a recent class was, "Never forget you are Indian".

In the second graduating class, Dr. Saulteaux's youngest daughter was one of the graduates. Bernice is now the chairperson of the Centre board and pastor to her own community. When the name for the Centre was being chosen it was suggested that it should be the Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Institute. Jessie would have none of it. She did not want her name connected with anything that was called an institute! So it became a resource centre.

Soon after the Centre moved to Winnipeg, there arose a controversy over its bid to use an abandoned school in the area of the city known as Woodhaven. At one of the public meetings of the St. James Assimboia School Board, the Centre board brought Dr. Saulteaux to the meeting. Some people took offense at her presence. This however did not hinder her from explaining to them that we all sin and have need of God's forgiveness. It is not too late to repent of our wicked ways and turn to God. The community as a whole did not heed her words of love - neither did the School Board.

Dr. Saulteaux is now a senator for the Saskatchewan Indian Women's Organization. She is not always well. Her eyesight is not good. But she still is the centre of her family. Her granddaughter Dallas, who accompanied her when she received her degree, is now a mother herself and says this about her grandmother:

When I was growing up with my grandma I always felt a closeness to the Church. When I'd be lonely, I'd get very lonely as a child, she'd read to me from the Bible. She'd hold me and talk to me. She always sang Jesus Loves Me to me. I grew up with that song, and when I hear that song, I think of my grandma. Now that I'm older I know I can always get strength to go on. When I pray, she has given me that, I know that there is a God. She taught all of us right from wrong, my children, her children. It seems we never saw the meaning of what she taught us till we got older. I am very proud of her and my mother. They've worked hard all their life. It's nice to see they have been rewarded for what they have done. I hope some day to be like them and to achieve some of the things they have.

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Phyllis Airhart is associate professor of church history at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

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