About Us
Our History
The ancestors of the modern
Carry the Kettle
First Nation/Reserve signed an adhesion to Treaty 4 at Fort Walsh on September 25, 1877. The three Assiniboine chiefs who signed the treaty 4 adhesion were Man Who Takes The Coat (Cuwiknaga Je Eyaku, in the Assiniboine/Nakoda language), Long Lodge (Teepee Hoksa), and Lean Man (Wica Hostaka).
Historically, First Nations bands/chiefs signed treaties in their traditional territories/homelands. One might allude to the fact that if Carry the Kettle were in their current traditional homelands/territory (south of Sintaluta, SK), they would have been present at the initial signing of treaty 4 in Fort Qu’Appelle in 1874. Or any of the other subsequent adhesions of 1875 and 1876 in the area of the prairies in treaty 4 or what is now known as southern Saskatchewan.
Traditional Home
Territory of the western end of the Cypress Hills
One of the earliest encounters that Canada had with the ancestors of the modern-day Assiniboine ‘Carry the Kettle’ First Nations band/tribe was in 1875. Shortly after the great march west, the newly formed NWMP came west; they avoided the Cypress Hills and went around the north side of the hills, on their way to set up Fort McLeod. But it was in 1875 when the NWMP ventured into the hills from the west end under the leadership of James Morrow Walsh and the ‘F’ Division to investigate the ‘Cypress Hills Massacre,’ at the time, the tribe was referred to and recognized as ‘The Cypress Mountain Assiniboine.’ Walsh and the ‘F’ division eventually made their way into the hills, and to the site of the Cypress Hills Massacre; that is when they built a fort and called it ‘Fort Walsh,’ just a mile north of the massacre site in the summer of 1875.
Upon signing an adhesion to Treaty 4 in 1877, the Assiniboine wanted a reservation in their traditional home territory of the western end of the Cypress Hills. The Head of the Mountain (Hay He Pa), 18 miles west of Fort Walsh, was and is a place of great significance to the Assiniboine. Here just south of the Head of the Mountain, is Medicine Lodge Coulee; this is where the Assiniboine would hold their annual Sundance and once even invited and hosted Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) and his Lakota tribe for a ceremony in 1877.
The DLS in charge of surveying the reservation for the Assiniboine in the Cypress Hills was Allan Ponytz Patrick. In 1880, after consultation with the chiefs of the Assiniboine bands, A.P. Patrick, surveyed a reserve for Man Who Took the Coat and Long Lodge. The size of the reserve was 340 square miles.
The farm instructor designated
To teach the
Assiniboine
Assiniboine about farming on their reservation at Head of the Mountain was J.J. English.
In 2000 the Indian Claims Commission concluded that Canada did not owe a lawful obligation to Carry the Kettle and that there was no reservation established the Cypress Hills for the modern-day descendants of the Assiniboine band back in 1879-1882.
As of September 2014, Carry the Kettle First Nation has their Cypress Hills Land Claim in federal court.
