Happy Halloween.
In this video, we’re going to take a look at a few old native ghost stories from the
Canadian prairies.
Enjoy!
If you drive about 50 minutes west of Regina, Saskatchewan, you’ll come to the city of
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, one of the quaintest, prettiest little towns on the Canadian prairies.
Once a rough and rowdy outlaw haven frequented by gangsters from Chicago, this prairie oasis
has managed to retain much of the charm of its Roaring Twenties heyday while shearing
itself of most its appendant degeneracy.
Today, visitors to Moose Jaw’s downtown – one of the few in the Prairie Provinces
still dominated by the old brick and sandstone buildings epitomical of early 20th Century
Canadian prairie architecture – can tour the underground tunnels once used as hideaways
by Chinese railway coolies and American rum-runners; take the natural geothermally-heated mineral
waters at the Temple Garden Spa; and walk the paths of beautiful Crescent Park, in the
library of which this author has spent many an enjoyable evening.
If you travel about 30 kilometres southwest of Moose Jaw, past the Sukanen Ship Pioneer
Village and Museum, you’ll come to a large body of water with the peculiar name of Old
Wives Lake.
Designated a Migratory Bird Sanctuary due to its large seasonal populations of migratory
waterfowl and shorebirds, Old Wives Lake is the largest natural lake in southern Saskatchewan
and the fourth largest saline lake in North America.
Old Wives Lake owes its peculiar name to an old Cree legend which, as is the case with
most oral lore, has a number of different versions.
According to one version, which was recounted to the first officers of the North-West Mounted
Police by their Metis guides during their 1874 march across the prairies, a Cree hunting
party from the east of Wood Mountain ventured up the Wood River to Old Wives Lake in search
of buffalo one spring in the early 1840’s.
Earlier that spring, a prairie fire on the eastern plains had decimated the local buffalo
population, and the Cree, running low on their winter stores of pemmican, were desperate
for food.
Luckily, the Cree discovered a herd of buffalo grazing on the shores of Old Wives Lake.
The hunters made camp on the lake’s shore and brought down many animals in the ensuing
hunt.
As the men skinned and dismembered the carcasses, a group of old women, who had accompanied
the hunters specifically for this purpose, set about rendering the suet and marrow and
drying and pounding the meat to make pemmican, a nutritious and imperishable prairie staple.
Soon, the Cree had prepared enough food to sustain their starving band back east.
Just as the Cree had finished loading their horses’ travois, a Blackfoot war party attacked.
Although unprepared, the Cree delivered an effective counterattack and successfully repelled
the warriors, who retreated to the nearby hills.
That night, the Cree held a powwow.
They knew that the warlike Blackfoot would likely return at dawn in strength, preventing
them from returning to their easterly band with the pemmican.
After some deliberation, the Cree braves resolved to make a stand and fight, allowing their
women and children to escape with the pemmican under the cover of darkness.
No sooner had the warriors made their decision, however, than the old wives spoke up.
The old wives knew that they, the younger women and the children would likely not make
it far without the braves, and so they offered to stay behind instead.
They had seen many summers, they maintained, and wished to give life to the tribe one last
time, as they had in their childbearing youth.
The old wives would not be overruled, and so, with great reluctance, the men, women
and children of the hunting party left for home with the pemmican in tow.
At the lakeside camp, the old wives tended the fires and talked loudly throughout the
night so as to not arouse the suspicions of the Blackfoot.
At dawn, a horde of Blackfoot warriors thundered into the camp screaming war whoops.
When they discovered that they had been deceived and that the bountiful spoils they had anticipated
were reduced to a handful of gray scalps, they tortured and killed the old wives.
Legend has it that the spirits of the dead women haunt a small island in the lake, known
as the Isle of Bays, to this day.
Some say that on windy spring nights you can hear the old wives’ howls of laughter mocking
the Blackfoot they deceived.
In the southwestern corner of Alberta, the westernmost of Canada’s three Prairie Provinces,
lies the city of Lethbridge, home to the Lethbridge College and the stunning Nikka Yuko Japanese
Garden.
The area surrounding this prairie metropolis has its fair share of ghost stories.
Lethbridge’s Galt Museum, formerly the Galt Hospital, is said to be haunted by the spirit
of a patient who was unexpectedly killed during a routine appendectomy.
The lady’s washroom of Lethbridge’s Bowman Arts Centre, formerly the Bowman School, is
said to be haunted by the ghost of a Chinese girl whose young life was fraught with tragedy.
And the Empress Theatre in nearby Fort Macleod, the oldest continually operated theatre in
western Canada, is purported to be the home of at least one spectral resident who shows
his face to unsuspecting patrons in bathroom mirrors.
These ghost stories are only fitting for an area that has seen more violent and tragic
death than almost any other place in Alberta.
In 1837 and 1838, the Lethbridge area was swept by a smallpox epidemic that decimated
the local Blood Blackfoot Indians.
A similar plague ravaged the region in 1869, the same year that American merchants established
a trading post called Fort Hamilton on the banks of what is now the Oldman River.
Better known by its nickname, Fort Whoop-Up, Fort Hamilton provided the local Blackfoot
with repeating rifles and other trade goods in exchange for buffalo robes.
The most infamous commodity sold at this trading post was a noxious homemade liquor which the
traders called ‘bug juice’ – a mixture of American whisky and river water, spiced
with ingredients like tobacco, lye soap, red ink, and strychnine, which had a devastating
effect on its native consumers.
And in 1870, the coulees outside Fort Whoop-Up became a battleground when thousands of Blackfoot,
Cree, and Assiniboine warriors clashed in the Battle of Belly River, North America’s
last great intertribal Indian battle.
So many lives were lost in the Lethbridge area to violence, whisky, and disease that
the Blackfoot name for the place was Akai’niskui, or ‘Many Died’.
As might be expected, the Lethbridge area serves as the setting for several classic
Blackfoot ghost stories, the most famous of which appears in the writings of both American
anthropologist George Bird Grinnell and the late Canadian historian Hugh Dempsey.
According to this unnamed oral tradition, sometime in the 1850’s, seven Blood Blackfoot
warriors travelled on foot to the prairies east of the Cypress Hills for the purpose
of stealing Cree horses.
The leader of the party was a young and successful brave named Heavy Collar.
After scouring the plains of what is now southwest Saskatchewan without any luck, the party decided
to head home.
They travelled west through the Cypress Hills, then followed Bulls Head Creek (now known
as Ross Creek) towards the South Saskatchewan River near present-day Medicine Hat, Alberta.
While camped on a hill overlooking the Seven Persons Creek, which joins Bulls Head Creek
just before its confluence with the South Saskatchewan, Heavy Collar announced that
he would travel ahead in the hopes of finding friendly Blood camps and horses, which he
would bring back for his pedestrian companions.
If he did not return with horses, he asked his companions to meet him at the Belly Buttes
to the west, a traditional summer campsite of the Bloods.
Heavy Collar travelled west up the river for some time.
Eventually, he came upon three buffalo grazing by a cutbank and succeeded in killing one.
He dressed the carcass and packed a good amount of meat onto his horse, leaving the rest for
his companions.
He built a fire, cooked some of the meat and ate.
Cognizant of the risk of travelling alone, he left his camp and travelled upriver under
the cover of nightfall, leaving the fire burning.
If any hostile eyes spotted his fire and tried to ambush him, he would be long gone.
Heavy Collar travelled upriver for some time, careful to conceal his tracks, before reaching
the place his people called Akai’niskui.
With only the moon to light his way, he travelled to a nearby coulee, found a soft patch of
grass, and lay down for the night.
Try as he might, the Blood couldn’t sleep.
Every time he began to doze, he heard a strange noise nearby.
He peered into the dark but couldn’t see anything.
He wasn’t sure what was making the noise, but was convinced it wasn’t an enemy brave.
Nevertheless, he kept his rifle close, unable to shake the unnerving feeling that he was
being watched.
In the morning, Heavy Collar learned that he had spent the night lying next to the skeleton
of a Blackfoot woman.
Judging from the condition of the body, the Blood warrior estimated that she had been
cut down by enemy raiders about a year earlier, and left to rot where she fell.
With haunting certainty, he knew that it was her spirit which had kept him awake the previous
night with her strange noises.
Filled with dread, Heavy Collar forded the river and continued his journey on the other
side.
As the day wore on, a storm began to brew.
Soon, the rain became too heavy to travel through, and Heavy Collar decided to retire
for the night.
He built a crude shelter on an island in the middle of the river, built a fire, and began
to settle in.
Suddenly, through the lightning and the pounding rain, he heard the distant hoot of an owl
– the very sound that ghosts make as they wander through the night.
Heavy Collar felt a chill run down his spine.
As he cowered beneath his shelter, the warrior heard a peculiar sound in the distance.
It sounded like something being dragged through the brush.
As he listened, the sound came closer and closer.
Soon, whatever was making the noise was right outside his shelter, on the other side of
the fire.
Heavy Collar hazarded a glance.
At the other end of the fire sat a tall, slender figure.
It was dressed all in white, its face concealed by the shadow of a hood.
It had long, skeletal legs, which it stretched out towards the fire as if to warm them.
“Who are you?”
Heavy Collar managed, his voice barely a whisper.
The hairs on his neck stood on end, and cold sweat trickled down his back.
The figure did not answer.
Instead, it stretched its long, bony legs towards him as if to touch him.
Heavy Collar drew back, his knuckles white as he clutched his gun.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“If you’re a human, speak to me.
If you’re a ghost, then take pity on me and leave me in peace.”
Again, the figure was silent.
Again, it stretched out its pale, bony legs towards him.
Heavy Collar recoiled, then levelled his gun at the figure.
“You won’t speak, and you won’t leave,” he said.
“Maybe this will drive you away.”
He fired a shot at the figure, and it tumbled back into the darkness.
Suddenly, Heavy Collar heard a ghastly wail.
“Heavy Collar!”
moaned the spectral voice of a woman.
“You have shot me!
There is no place where you can hide where I will not find you.”
It was too much for the young brave.
Heavy Collar left his shelter, waded back to the mainland and ran through the night,
heedless of the rain.
At dawn, he arrived within sight of the familiar Belly Buttes, the rendezvous point where he
had agreed to meet his companions.
After taking a brief nap beneath the cottonwood, the exhausted warrior made his way towards
the meeting place.
At that time, one of Heavy Collar’s companions stood sentry atop one of the Buttes, the raiders
having arrived before their leader.
The Blackfoot saw two figures approaching the Belly Buttes from a distance and alerted
his companions.
As the pair came nearer, the Bloods recognized the familiar figure of Heavy Collar.
Right behind him was a woman.
The Bloods laughed amongst themselves, assuming their leader had captured a girl from another
tribe.
They debated whether Heavy Collar would keep the woman for himself, or present her as a
gift to one of them.
As they joked, they saw the warrior and his female companion disappear into a coulee bottom.
Only Heavy Collar emerged from the other side.
He saw his friends and made his way up the hill to join them.
“Where is your woman?” asked one of the braves, gesturing towards the nether coulee.
“Are you hiding her from us?”
“Where did you find her?” asked another.
“What tribe is she from?”
Heavy Collar realized with a thrill of horror that the ghost woman must have followed him.
He told his friends of his frightening encounter with the phantom the previous night.
Some of the Bloods believed him.
Others did not, and decided to investigate the coulee themselves.
Sure enough, the mysterious woman was nowhere to be seen, and in the muddy coulee bottom,
there was only one set of moccasin tracks.
After that, they all accepted his story.
The seven Blackfoot travelled together and soon came upon a small band of Bloods.
They decided to spend the night with them.
That night, Heavy Collar dreamed of the ghostly woman in white.
The woman cursed him for shooting her.
She told him that, from that day on, he would never be hit by an enemy bullet, but he would
also never capture an enemy’s gun in battle.
The ghostly woman also warned him never to return to the place where her skeleton lay.
Heavy Collar was plagued by that curse for the rest of his life.
Whenever he led a war party, his warriors were never able to engage an enemy force in
battle.
He was never hit by an enemy bullet, but he never earned the honour of capturing a gun.
Soon, the Blood began to believe that Heavy Collar was cursed with bad medicine, and refused
to follow him on raiding or war parties.
Instead of becoming a great chief, as many once believed he was destined, Heavy Collar
remained an unlucky warrior for the rest of his life.
In 1869, when Heavy Collar was an old man, Montanan traders established Fort Whoop-Up
on the Oldman River, at precisely the spot where the ghost woman’s skeleton lay.
Although he realized that the ghost had forbade him from returning to the area, the downtrodden
elder felt that he had little to lose, and made no objections when his band decided to
pay the whisky fort a visit.
Heavy Collar and his band reached Fort Whoop-Up without incident, and the men brought in their
buffalo robes to trade.
That night, after the trading was done, the warriors celebrated by breaking into the bug
juice they had purchased and trying out their new repeating rifles.
One of the young Bloods, his judgement impaired by whisky, fired carelessly into the camp.
The bullet hit Heavy Collar in the back, killing him instantly.
The ghost woman of Akai’niskui had her revenge.
Thanks for watching!
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