 The white people are still looked upon as the, you know, as maybe descendants of this sun that went across the water. And the reason why native people are very, are very tolerant and have tolerated a lot of things that this sun, you know, or descendants of this sun have done. But in the long run, they still say, well, maybe there are relatives. There was a kind of contest of cruelty that came to conquer and caught in this war of empires were always the Indians. The Spanish were probably the most savage attempting their own style of war against the Indians. The Spanish succeeded in planting settlements in North America during the 16th century. But the English and the French succeeded only with the help the Indian cures. These are the words of George Seewee. It was just a natural gesture that the Indians made and which they would have towards any, any group of people. They noticed that these people had, they were suffering from some kind of lack of fresh nutrients, fresh food. And they pulled out bark from cedar tree or probably from white spruce tree. And they used up the bark of a big tree in little time and they cured these people. Sir Walter Raleigh founded a colony of Roman oak and it vanished. Smith tried again at Jamestown and then the pilgrims and with them the Europeans brought disease. The righteous Puritans thought of the plague as a sign that God was on their side and one of them still mourned. The bones and skulls made such a spectacle that as I traveled in that forest near Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha. The priests came to harvest souls, the explorers to find wealth. When we refer back to 1609, we can say that the divisions that were opposing the alliance of tribes sided with the French which were the Huron and the Algonquins. And on the other side, the Iroquois was getting intensified, this division. So Champlain knew that he had to play on that division. There was a skirmish. Champlain right at once noticed or commented that the Indians didn't know anything about war, didn't know how to fight because they wouldn't comply with his orders. He said, I'm the commandant here. Why aren't they listening to me? But the Indians were not willing to go and expose themselves and just assault this fortress. And they were mainly fighting by their own modes of warfare which was to hide themselves and try to capture someone. But Champlain urged them and qualified them with being very bad warriors and not knowing anything about war from that point on. And he took other opportunities afterwards to lead battles against the Iroquois. And the Iroquois from that moment on had a very serious grudge against the French. They had a much stronger reason to resist alliance with the French and to turn towards the English or the Dutch which were the people then. We know that the diseases started striking almost at the same instant that the Jesuits came back in force in 1634. So this is more than a coincidence. The Indians themselves made a direct and very quick, quickly made a relation between the presence of the priests and the spreading of epidemics. The supposed innocence of the priests is a little more tarnished because we see that they are rejoicing, openly rejoicing when large numbers of people succumb to the epidemics. They say among the Peter, the harvest is good, the harvest of souls is good. The people are dying in good numbers there. They didn't succeed in converting or baptizing people in good health until very late in the relationship they had with the Wanda. They mostly baptized the dying infants or dying people but they complained themselves very often that they had not yet I think as late as 1641 converted or baptized one adult in good health. The holy passion for conversion would lead the Black Robes as they were called to face any danger as they headed inland to build a frozen paradise in a distant wood. The Huron knew well how to survive in the cruel climate of Canada and the Jesuits in their search for souls built a village for their new Christians at St. Marie. Within its barricades, they were segregated from the Hurons outside the traditional opponents of the Hurons, the Iroquois. The Jesuits thought they had built an unconquerable fortress for Jesus. When you're in this place it's so peaceful now. What do you feel when you see this graveyard here? You know I actually feel that these people are listening to me. That's what I really feel they're hearing. They have something that they want me to say. This is important for me to be here. These are all Huron graves for the most part. They are for the most part the C-21 people so this would account for most of them. So when they talk here about the martyrs they're talking about of course the Jesuits. There's almost no talk of what happened to the native people here. It's correct Harry. Hardly ever mentioned them just like they hadn't been as human as the other people. The Iroquois that came here finally in 1649 to destroy this place they were mainly composed of one dark traditionalist who had fed to the Iroquois or had been incorporated somehow by force or but more by their own will with the Iroquois and were teaching the Iroquois to be aware of what had happened and that the same design was up was in the minds of the missionaries for the Iroquois also. The people that have actually committed the murders if we want to call them murders against those priests were what the priests have termed Huron renegades. That means people who had suffered the loss of their country here that had found some salvation among the Iroquois who were the pagans in the last analysis in the Indians in the Jesuits words and had urged their adopters to come in and destroy because they coming from here they knew that the same destruction was heading out for Iroquois, the Iroquois country. So they they didn't really torture these priests in any honorable way in the mentality or in the context. The one that suffered the longest martyrdom was Father Bribeuf. The others were dispatched by blows of a hatchet. Apparently they ate his heart because he had shown them a lot of courage because this priest had come here with the express intent of dying here, martyrdom. They chose to interpret that God willed all these people to disappear because God had other plans for this land. He wanted to wipe out savagery from this land here and that the conversion would only come when so many people which meant most of the people had died and died about two-thirds of the original population which means at least 20,000 people and it's it's more than catastrophe it's it's death of a people it's genocide. Boom they are scattered but his spirit it lingers on. And so a great nation the Hurons perished. The Iroquois grew strong. The white man moved west and a way of life was destroyed. The battle of empires will be fought also with Indian blood maneuvering crime against tribe. It is September 13th 1759. Two champions will die on the plains of Averham creating three solitudes. The fur traders and settlers head west assuming it to be of course empty space. The living Indian cultures ignored or destroyed. Progress is a kind of punishment for guiding hands. It was convenient to think of all Indians as savages and thus progress. European style was of course an advantage. The settlers working their way west simply ignored the tribes if they could. Going to our land a beautiful land and try to take that you would have to condemn the culture there the language everything they did because we're superior and will replant that and do away with the savages and make a almost a utopia there you know. When possible they used native skills once they had taken their lands in the east and this was the case of Phil Fontaine's family. He's the Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. They had moved westward with the trade they were the canoe. They were the paddlers they were the you know they did the work and so anyone that moved out here moved pretty well in the same way if they didn't come with the church they came with the with the fur trade. This area was noted for its prime stands of birch so it is a place where our people and others would congregate to repair their canoes or build new canoes and during the height of the fur trade of course a good place for because it is a departure point for for pemmican the pemmican supplies that moved out to see with the traders and the Indians that that worked on the on the fur trade. There was fierce competition in our area between the northwest company the Hutton Bay and the free traders and and the churches. He had smallpox and other diseases and I recall reading about some of the epidemics that would move just so quickly you know through the through the lake you know most of our people of course if not all lived by the by water one of Peg River Lake one of Peg and any any waterway as that was their way of traveling. The settlers brought with them the animals that could change the ways of the plains Indians caught in paint by Gerald McMaster a creed. When people think of Indians they think of horses it seems to be just a part of immediately yes we call a mist at them or big dog and I felt that when I was thinking about the term mist at them as you know our least archaeologists inform us that they have actually found skeletons of an animal the size of a dog you know with cloven hooves or a hoof not cloven hoof but rather a hoof which existed in prehistoric times and I think that they felt that the horse obviously disappeared but you know whether or not it actually went back towards Europe that way through the Bering Strait it's unknown but anyhow there was there was an indication by archaeologists that a horse existed so in fact that the horse may have existed here and could be in an old term from way back then but so you have this return of the horse return of the big dog and it completely changed the lifestyle of my ancestors overnight and the Sioux Indian is is the most popular Indian in all the world and so that was the image that I saw and primarily it was it was they that wore this peculiar looking headdress with feathers arranged in the circle and they were on the head and there are numerous native tribes around Canada the United States that have adopted this this feathered headdress format maybe not out of eagle feathers but out of feathers there is a hierarchy of birds and eagle represents the highest on this hierarchy and that because the eagle flies the highest the eagle then in turn represents being the closest to the great spirit or to the spiritual realm and so that's why it becomes important because it's believed that an eagle also is a messenger and carries your your thoughts and that in prayers when the settlers come in the Europeans come in they hunted the buffalo for the hides the hides were worth a hundred dollars back in them days and they were selling them down east to a factory where they're using for belt drives according to what they were telling there was so many buffalo that there was just like a sports uh uh where the white people hunt them for gain some took the heads for trophies but most of it the meat was wasted out on the land they figured if they do away with the buffalo so will they do away with the Indian because that's the Indian's main source of food his main source of clothes his main source of this teepee but the Indian he's still here the Blackfeet Indian is still here to tell the story of the history of his people how he survived from the beginning and right up to the present day today he's still here and I'm proud to talk about my people and how he survived in this buffalo jump what you see here today the Indian he respects the land mother earth is where your body come from