This Website is owned and maintained by the Keeseekoowenin First Nation History Committee and published under the authority of the Chief and Council of Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nation.
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©Keeseekoowenin 1998
Natives of Riding Mountain
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Chief Keeseekoowenin built very fine birchbark canoes. He had a good supply of spruce pitch in birchbark containers for caulking. In later years, he ran a trap line along a creek east of his home. This creek ran in from the east along what is now the CN Railway, draining some deep lakes. He used to take Victoria, his youngest daughter, with him. She loved to help, running like the deer. Sometimes she checked the traps alone. The only part of the work she didn't like was when she found a live animal in the trap and had to kill it.
Sometimes the Chief and his wife and daughter -- later with a granddaughter -- enjoyed going out on the clear deep lakes in a birchbark canoe the Chief had made.
Chief Keeseekoowenin enjoyed good trapping and fishing until he lost his eyesight just a short time before his death. Still residing in their original farmhouse, his wife died in April, 1906, and the Chief died three days later. Both are buried in the mission cemetery close by George and Mary Flett's grave. Although Harriet had married Glen Campbell and Victoria had married Walter Scott, Maria and Eliza were still living in the homestead when the chief died and carried on raising cattle.
George Flett Burns had a fine family. All did quite well. A farm with about 150 acres under cultivation and fine horses and cattle. He was one of the reserve's biggest grain producers.
Solomon Burns was about the best farmer on the Reserve, 185 acres under cultivation. John "Jo Jo" Bone and George Bone, sons of Cardinal's French wife, were also good farmers. Jo Jo had around 200 acres of land broken for grain, and a good herd of cattle and horses.
Chief George Bone and his son John Lauder Bone had good farms. They lived by the river at the north end of the reserve where there were good meadows and pasture for their livestock. Gilbert Bone and Billy Bone also did well for themselves.
In those days, horses provided the power for transportation and work. Many horses were valuable for heavy work and freighting. Others were drivers, saddle-horses, and race horses.
In the 1870's, the HBC Post was moved down the Little Saskatchewan River to Elphinstone. There, a steam engine was set up by August Basler to run the mills. Basler lived in Rapid City, and walked to Elphinstone to run the grist mill. How the engine came to Manitoba is a matter of dispute. Some say it was shipped to the Nelson River from York Factory, then down Lake Winnipeg to Fort Garry. Others say it came from St. Paul, Minnesota. However, from Fort Garry it was shipped by boat up the Assiniboine River to Watt's Landing below Fort Ellice, hauled over land by horse and oxen to Elphinstone mostly over the Ellice Trail. The old boiler sits still today beside the last Hudson Pay Post site on a hill above the river near the village of Elphinstone.
Robert Campbell bought the abandoned Post, which surveyors had determined was in section 34-18-21, and established the Merchiston Ranch as his home and business. There was a lot of work to be done. Campbell had a good-sized barn built with a hayloft and a lean-to for box stalls opening to a corral. Campbell built a fine home overlooking the Little Saskatchewan valley. Ed Thomas, Johnny Johnstone, and Alex Sutherland did a lot of the building over a number of years.
Thomas homesteaded at the south end of Thomas Lake, named after him. Thomas Lake was then a good-sized lake; now it is in four parts. It was full of pike, walleye and perch, and many families would get their winter supply of fish here in late November or early December.
Ed Thomas married the eldest daughter of blacksmith David Murray. The log house he built still stands. Alex Sutherland moved into Thomas' house when Thomas moved to a homestead just northwest of the village of Elphinstone. Ed and Alex build several houses for settlers. They were known as good craftsmen with axe and saw. Alex married George Flett Burns' eldest daughter, Annie. They had three sons: James, Harry and Johnny.
Joe Boyer was also a valuable man in starting the Merchiston Ranch. Joe had a great knowledge of the people around the Riding Mountain. Later, he put this knowledge to the use of the Rev. George Flett and the Presbyterian ministers who followed him. The animosity between Catholics and Anglicans which was so strong in many parts didn't seem to happen with the Presbyterians. There were many mixed marriages, and Joe Boyer, a former Catholic, remained interpreter for the band and the Presbyterian Church until his death. He spoke four languages very well -- English, Ojibway, Cree, and Métis French.
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