Genealogy Branch lecture explores history of Moose Jaw River Valley
Although genealogy focuses on the history of family and humanity, the Moose Jaw Genealogical Society brought in a guest lecture to focus on the extensive history of the Moose Jaw River Valley and its changing landscape. Rich Pickering has been doing his own research about the valley and the many different people who have called the area home for a number of years. Pickering was a part of the committee that worked on renaming the Wild Animal Park to its new moniker Tatawâw Park, which means “welcome, there is room for everyone” in Cree. For Pickering, the name is accurate, especially considering the land’s history. “We thought that was fitting because there is room for everyone down there,” said Pickering. “Everybody has a story or connection to that place.” He’s amassed an impressive knowledge about the river valley prior to the largescale settlement of the community beginning in 1882 and collected plenty of evidence about the cultures that made this area home before it was even known as Moose Jaw.
Settlers came to Moose Jaw en-masse in the early 1880s, settling along the CP Rail line in what is now the city of Moose Jaw, but this part of the prairie been inhabited for far longer than that.
The Moose Jaw River Valley is located within Treaty 4 territory and the traditional lands of the Métis, which means archaeological evidence covers nearly every part of the surrounding area.
Oral history names the area as a gathering place for many cultures and remains have been found showing the presence of at least 26 distinct groups that dates back thousands of years.
“Basically, anywhere [in this area] you want to put a shovel in the ground, it’s an archaeological site,” said Pickering.
It can be difficult for amateur history-sleuths to do research on this time in the area’s history, considering the lack of paper documents from the period, but Pickering has looked back as far as he could to get a picture of what things were like in the valley.
He focused his presentation on the research he has done on how the landscape and population in the river valley changed since the 1850s, especially focusing on the Métis presence in the area.
The Moose Jaw River is mentioned in a few different expedition journals that predate the first official census in the area, including Henry Hill’s expedition in the 1850s, James Palliser’s survey mapping journey from 1857 to 1860, and the memoirs of Hudson Bay Company employee Isaac Cowie in 1868.
Several names are used to reference the river valley, including Moose Jaw Forks, Moose Jaw Creek, Moose Jaw Bone Creek, and the Turn — which references a specific curve in the river.
In all of his rabbit holes of research, Pickering still has yet to determine the exact reason that Moose Jaw sports its unusual name, but he does have a theory.
He thinks that the story about a Red River cart breaking down in the area and having a wheel spoke replaced with a moose’s jaw bone is definitely not the origin story of the city’s name.
Rather, Pickering thinks that in one of the early European expeditions to survey the area — as early as the 1850s — an explorer was quizzing his Métis area guide on what this particular river called, to record in his journal. Because these Métis guides spoke numerous languages and had a different accent, it’s possible that they gave the explorer a Michif word for what they called the river, which was then written down phonetically by a European who didn’t speak the language.
The mention of Métis guides in these journals doesn’t necessarily mean they were living in the area, but Pickering found another way of proving that there was a significant Métis presence in the area during this time. He discovered an HBC servant named Xavier Denomie, mentioned in Cowie’s memoir, who was known to offer lodging cabins to travellers on the Moose Jaw River. Denomie’s name also appears on the official listings for scrip claims from the federal government.
Denomie, along with many others, submitted his entire family for their scrip claims in this area, which shows that there was a Métis population that was, at the very least, wintering in the area and had a relationship with the HBC at that time.
Denomie is also mentioned in the official listings of homesteads in Saskatchewan, which are accessible through the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.
The first census of the area was a special census in 1884, just two years after settlers appeared in the area from down the rail line. Moose Jaw is listed as a sub-district and recorded just over 220 individuals of Métis descent living in the settlement. Using a photo Pickering found of a local plow-salesman in the area surrounded by Red River carts, he theorizes that at this time, some Métis had begun working as freighters with their carts, delivering goods to buyers.
By 1901, just before Moose Jaw officially became a city, the Métis population had all but disappeared from the census records, although that’s likely because the time following Louis Riel’s rebellion meant identifying as Métis was unpopular and potentially hazardous.
Tatawâw Park is also notably the area where a large number of the Lakota Nation settled, in an encampment that called the river valley home for decades.
In a tour of the park earlier this year, Pickering and historical author Ron Papandrea trekked down to their best estimate of where the Lakota camp was likely set up, based on photos and geography.
The iconic photo of Chief Black Bull — one of the powerful chiefs who took part in Custer’s Last Stand with the famous chief Sitting Bull — shows a distinct set of hills in the background, which can be matched to the ridge that borders Tatawâw Park.
The Lakota encampment is estimated to have been set up as early as 1883, and remained there for over 30 years, before a large portion of the group moved to the reserve land at Wood Mountain.
Some stayed, however, and the 1901 census in Moose Jaw recorded a number of Lakota and Sioux residents still in the area.