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Tasunke Nupawin
(Owns Two Horses - Emma Lecaine)
1868 -
When the Lakota came to Wood Mountain in 1877 Tasunke Nupawin was only nine years old. At first buffalo were plentiful but as they were commercially slaughtered for their hides and meat, the Lakota found it hard to get enough to eat. When Tasunke Nupawin was thirteen years old, her father Zuya Tehedin persuaded her to live with a member of the Mounted Police, Archibald Lecaine who, in turn, supported her family. When Lecaine was transferred to Regina, she went with him, but when he was moved to Winnipeg her father would not let her go. She and her daughter Alice stayed with the Lakota band.
In 1888 Tasunke Nupawin took a second husband, a Lakota man named Okute Sica. They raised five children - John, Charles, |
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Tasunke Nupawin
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Elizabeth, George and Walter. Tasunke Nupawin often worked as a domestic servant in the city of Moose Jaw, earning enough
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money to feed and clothe her family. Her two oldest children, Alice and John attended the industrial school near Regina.
The family camped with the Lakota in Moose Jaw during the winter. Nearly every summer they travelled to Poplar, Montana to visit relatives and friends, but always returned to Willow Bunch or Wood Mountain in time for the summer races. Tasunke Nupawin loved to ride horses and often she won first prize in the Indian Pony Race at the Wood Mountain Stampede.
In the fall the family usually went to Medicine Lodge Creek (Rice Creek) to hunt antelope, dry the meat and sometimes tan the hides. In 1907 the family moved to Wood Mountain, so they would have a place for their horses to graze. Their son John homesteaded at Wood Mountain in 1910 and they lived nearby.
Tasunke Nupawin was buried in the family cemetery on the homestead. |
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BIOGRAPHIES
Fort Berthold | Okanagan | Wood Mountain
Introduction | Early Ranching | Ranching Life | Contemporary Ranching Life | Community Stories | Transition to Rodeo
SACRED BEINGS | RANCHING | ENTERTAINMENT | RODEO | ARTS AND INDUSTRIES
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