James Wishart subsisted for two days and two nights on a diet of snow and flour, then had to amputate his own gangrenous toes.
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FEATURE Essay
Finding
Jimmie No-Toes
In the strokes of a hammer on flesh,
sinew and bone, our ancestral roots were laid bare.
The hidden truth was revealed.
p h otos c o u rtesy o f Ve r n o n R. Wi s hart
I
By vernon R. wishart
In 1887, James Wishart, my great-grandfather, was caught
in a prairie blizzard. He had gone from his home near Rosebud
to get supplies in Gleichen. On his way back, the storm forced
him to take shelter under a sandstone ledge in a coulee called
Chimney Rock.
Over two days and two nights, he subsisted on a diet of snow
and flour. His team of horses froze to death. If he was going to
survive, he would have to cover the remaining 15 kilometres
home—on foot. So he set out, dragging his frostbitten body
through the snow and ice. Only a short distance from home,
he collapsed with exhaustion.
His wife, Eliza, caught sight of him through the window and
ran to his aid with their eldest son, David. They half-dragged,
half-carried James’s six-foot-six frame back to the house, where
they determined the extent of the damage to his body. His toes
had turned gangrenous. They would have to be amputated.
Eliza placed his toes on a block, and with a knife and hammer
began the operation. Overcome by the stench, she fainted.
James completed the task himself.
In 1965, my sister, Shirley, attended a bridal shower where
a fellow guest asked if she knew a John Martin of Rosebud. A
self-educated man with an eye and ear for local history, he had
written a history book that mentioned the Wisharts.
Shirley visited him and purchased his book The Rosebud Trail,
which contained a description of “the great blizzard of 1887”—
including what happened to James Wishart.
“Eliza’s knowledge of Indian surgery and medicine saved Jim’s
life,” Martin wrote, adding that Eliza owned a medicine bag.
These words revealed to Shirley a long-standing family secret:
we had Mixed-blood heritage. In the strokes of a hammer on
flesh, sinew and bone, our ancestral roots were laid bare.
Like many western Canadians, we were unaware of our
Aboriginal background because our family had concealed it. My
father very likely came to believe at an early age that a native
heritage was not something of which to be proud. When he was
a boy, children of mixed ancestry in Western Canada heard the
taunt “half-breed” and they never forgot it.
My father tried to escape the stigma by moving away from the
Rosebud area. He was an excellent baseball player, and in the
Depression years baseball was a popular summer entertainment.
The Bowden team got wind of Dad’s ability and persuaded him
to come to town as a player/coach, dealing with the question of
salary by hiring him to work in the local hardware store. It was
in Bowden, where his native background was unknown, that he
met our mother.
Dad hoped to give his children the best possible opportunity
A L B E R TA V I E W S A P R I L 2 0 0 7 45
FEATURE Essay
Left: James and Eliza Wishart. Right: A very young Vernon R. Wishart in the arms of his father, who kept his Cree ancestry a secret.
to make our way in the world. But racism always threatened to
resurface. Shirley recalls wondering if our father had Indian
blood, and asking him often. Every time, he said no. He died in
1959, believing he had protected his family from the shadow of
racism.
In one sense, he succeeded. While growing up, my siblings
and I were spared from being ashamed of who we were. We
never had to face prejudice, or define ourselves by the disdain of
others. By the time we discovered our native heritage, all three
of us were well established in our chosen vocations. We had
nothing to fear.
P
Prompted by Martin’s book, Shirley began to research
our family history. I was busy with my duties as a United Church
minister, but she kept me posted as she went. One day in 1993,
shortly before my retirement, Shirley and I took a walk along
the Wishart Trail in the Gaetz Sanctuary near Red Deer, a path
named after James and Eliza. It was as though we were walking
back in time: above the trail was the site of the log cabin where
they settled in 1885 after moving from the Red River Settlement
outside Winnipeg. Below the trail were the two small lakes
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where David, our grandfather, trapped muskrat as a young man
while his sisters gathered the eggs of mud hens. It was here that
I decided to build on Shirley’s research, focusing specifically on
our native heritage.
With her guidance, I scoured the Hudson’s Bay Company
archives and gathered information from friends and relatives,
tracing our ancestry back 250 years to fur traders and their
Mixed-blood wives.
Two of these ancestors, William Flett and his Cree wife,
Saskatchewan, lived and worked at Fort Edmonton from 1814 to
1823 before retiring and returning to the Red River Settlement.
After Flett died, the 66-year-old Saskatchewan accompanied
the first colonists that the Hudson’s Bay Company sent from
the Red River Settlement to the Oregon Territory: 23 families
totalling 121 people, 77 of them children. Saskatchewan went as
the surrogate mother of her grandchildren, whose own mother
had died. She was the oldest of the colonists and the only fullblooded native. The colonists travelled 2,700 kilometres, half a
continent, over some of the most difficult terrain imaginable.
They were under constant danger of native attack. Not a single
life was lost. Historian Geneva Lent says this feat “is little less
than miraculous, and surely unequalled in the pioneer history
of this continent.”
Remarkably, Saskatchewan made the journey back again
after her son remarried. She died at the Red River Settlement
at the age of 70. Though Flett and Saskatchewan had shared a
life in the woodlands and on the plains, rivers and lakes of a
Finding jimmie no-toes
Vernon R. Wishart at Chimney Rock (now called Rocky Springs), where his great-grandfather nearly froze to death in 1887.
vast northern landscape, they did not share the same gravesite.
Flett was buried in the churchyard of St. John’s Cathedral,
designated as the company cemetery. Saskatchewan was buried
in the Indian Church cemetery.
Many Albertan families are not aware of their
Aboriginal heritage. Some older people know it but conceal
it. Thankfully, a door is beginning to open. In August 2005,
Shirley and I attended a reunion of the descendants of the Red
River Settlement. People came from across Canada and as far
away as Scotland, France, Holland, Japan and Alaska to claim
their roots and share their stories.
I talked to many people who, like myself, were there because
they had discovered their native heritage quite by accident.
Some spoke of “grandmother having a secret.” One woman,
when she had tried to learn more about her background, had
been told by family members, “You don’t want to go there.”
I encourage everyone to research their own ancestry, and
to identify themselves as Métis, Mixed-blood or First Nations
members if they find evidence in their genealogy. You can
begin by checking the genealogical resources at the Royal
Archives of Alberta in Edmonton; the archives of the Glenbow
Museum in Calgary; the Hudson’s Bay Company archives; and
online search tools that provide new accessibility to historical
documents and genealogical databases. The search alone
promises great adventure.
By tracing our ancestry and telling our story, my sister and
I can tell everyone what we never had the chance to tell our
father before he died: that we are tremendously proud that our
heritage is linked to the people who were inhabitants of this
land for thousands of years before the white man came. We are
tremendously proud of the native women in our background,
without whom our white ancestors, rugged as they were, would
have been unable to survive and thrive. We are proud of our
great-grandparents, Eliza and James. And we our proud of our
father.
After James Wishart lost his toes, the Blackfoot
gave him a nickname: Keesh-ket-toe Jimmie, which means
“No Toes Jimmie.” When she learned the story of James and
Eliza, Shirley wrote a poem, “Whetstone,” which includes these
lines: “Those stumps / never did heal / He could stomp / the
Red River jig / on those moccasined / toe-less feet.”
Stories like these have illuminated the legacy of our ancestors
and their native and Mixed-blood wives who ventured to carve
out a life in a rugged and formidable continent. For my family,
what began as a bolt out of the blue—a single line in a book
about Eliza’s knowledge of Indian medicine and surgery—has
led us to draw back the veil on our hidden past. In doing so, we
have not only embraced a heritage we never knew existed, but
have also reclaimed a part of our own identity. #
Vernon R. Wishart is the author of What Lies Beneath the
Picture? A Journey into Cree Ancestry, published in 2006.
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