LACOMBE, ALBERT (2) (138 ENGLISH + 137 fran)

 LACOMBE, Albert (2) (138 ENGLISH)

        THE FIRST MAN TO BUILD LIVING QUARTERS AND                TILL THE SOIL HERE IN  BROSSEAU-DUVERNAY

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       Father Lacombe was visiting the Cree Indians just north of the Red Deer River during the fall of 1864, when he decided on a new plan which could bring the Indians to him at a selected location, instead of him following the different tribes all over the prairies in search of the buffalo which they depended upon for their food during the summer months. 

       So before he departed for his main mission at St-Albert, he held a meeting at which he outlined his new plan of action. He invited the Chiefs and Councillors to help him selected a place for a permanent Mission for the Cree Indians. They accepted his idea and decided on a place they called matapeeskutteweyak(the prairie which come out of the river) and it was surveyed in 1900 it was called by Edmond Brosseau in 1902 and a small hamlet bearing his name was started there at that time. 

     After spending the winter at St-Albert getting his expedition organized he left in early May on a raft down the Saskatchewan River to his New Mission one hundred miles east or Fort Edmonton. The Hudson Bay Company objected to his new plan claiming that it would draw the Indians away from Fort George.which was located close to where Elk Point is today. But the Indians favored the location and that was fertile and easy to till on the north side of the river and Father Lacombe was determined to locate there in the hope of getting some of the Metis and Indians interested in tilling the soil as they were doing in St. Albert. He found a large encampment of Crees faithful to their promise of the fall before awaiting for him. They greeting him with entusiasm, running into the water to pull his raft ashore. On this he and his faithful servant Alexis had fifty bushels of potatoes, seed grain and plow and other provisions. His brothers Gaspard and Noel Courtepatte had conveyed other provision overland by ox cart afew weeks before, and had a shelter built. As the multitude of Indians looked on with the interest of prospective owners, the raft was unloaded and contents put inside the newly built shelters. 

    Of the following day the young missionary started to plow the land. The women and children flocked behind him, crushing the raw earth with they has into fine particles. A coupled of days after when the ground was prepared, it was the women and children again who cropped the potatoes and vegetable seeds into the rows. The men tacitly objected to taking any active part in the work, so Father Lacombe soon found out. It was not the Metis he was dealing with here, so he put himself to work as energetically as he had at St. Albert, but with less success, because of the half-hearted assistance he was getting. Enfeebled  by his unusual hardship and exertions of the past winter he fell it.
 The third week in May he writes to his Superior, Bishop Taché the following letter because he thought he would never leave St-Paul des Cris alive. "The heat of spring has changed the malady of the winter to a Form of dysentery which carried away whom it attacks, After ten days I am almost overcome by it. All our work has stopped and I can hardly look after the sick. If this sickness carried me off, at least my sacrifice has been made. I will be happy to die among my people, ministering to them as long as I have strength to carry on." But to his surprise he gradually recovered. When the work was done, and the Indians had gone to the prairie for their annual buffalo hunt, he returned to St-Albert to convalesce. 

There is so much to write about Father Lacombe, that I thought to put different articles (blogs) so those who can read both languages could read both stories.