Saskatchewan Sky
Saskatchewan
sky,
just a preview of
love,
chip off
an edge of
prairie
chip an edge off
winter -
and opening
multiple eyes
toward spring.
They - lovers, find
themselves
near evening bush
fire -
great seal fish and
open lake,
cuddle together -
so wonderful there -
where she comes from,
where did she go to
from here.
North Saskatchewan River, September -- Lorna Russell
Saskatchewan was part of what The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.called Rupert's Land, the Hudson Bay drainage area named its 1st president after English king Charles I's nephew duke Rupert of Cumberland, one of the company's founders in 1670. The Cree called the Saskatchewan river "kisiskaciwani-sipiy" (swift flowing river) when Henry Kelsey arrived in 1690, on a trade mission for the Hudson Bay Company "through Gods assistance to discover & bring to a Commerce the nayatame poets." ("Poet" seems to have been the way he heard the Cree "pwat," which meant the Dakota tribe -- in this case probably the Siouan-speaking Hidatsa.) Lacking writing materials, he committed the details of his journey to memory, using rhymed doggerel as a mnemonic device:
ReplyDeleteI took possession on the tenth instant July
And for my masters I speaking for them all
This neck of land I Deering’s Point did call.
But it was not until 1774 that Samuel Hearn established Cumberland House on the river, the 2nd Hudson's Bay inland settlement. The firm's lands (15% of North America) were ceded to Canada in 1870 as the North-West Territories. Saskatchewan became a province in 1905.