Researcher searching for lost sacred site

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Posted By Kevin Rushworth, Reporter

Posted 1 month ago

Submitted photoUniversity of Alberta researcher Gabriel Yanicki is following in the footsteps of a 300 year-old Hudson s Bay Company surveyor in an attempt to find the Old Man s Playing Ground. He is using a combination of historic and ethnographical resources to find the site.

In order to find a lost sacred site significant to First Nations people, University of Alberta graduate anthropology student Gabriel Yanicki is following in the footsteps of 300-year-old fur trader and surveyor, Peter Fidler

It would be a 1792 journal entry written by a man who laid the framework for nearly all of Western Canada's early maps that sent Yanicki, 31, on an anthropological journey into Alberta's prehistory.

As they camped on the Highwood River, a band of scouts had spotted a group of Kutenai in the Gap region — known today to be where the Old Man River flows from the Livingstone mountain range.

According to Yanicki, the Old Man's Playing Ground — where they met to trade — is the namesake of the Old Man River. The river received its name from a Piikani myth about their creator figure, Napi or Old Man who went on a journey to create the world.

Yanicki said the site he is looking for is prominent in the founding myths and origin stories for the Blackfoot or Niitsitapiisinni people.

"The site has tremendous sacred significance," he said. "You also get some sense of the time depth and the age of the site through the story, not being associated with a particular ancestor, (but through) a deity."

He said the Piikani have a story of how Napi stayed at the Old Man's Playing Ground at the river's headwaters. There, he played an ancient game with either another god or the Kutenai people.

The game — which came to be played throughout North America — consisted of rolling a hoop along the ground while two men would chase after it, trying to throw an arrow through its middle as it rolled. Such a game was used for gambling, trading and negotiating access to hunting territory according to Yanicki.

Fidler sketched the playing ground into his diary in 1792. George Dawson — who was surveying routes for the train through the Rockies — was shown the site by Cree and Stony guides and told the same origin story in the 1880s.

However, due to the small pox epidemics that raged across North America and changing forms of traditional exchange, the site fell into disuse.

Yanicki said the Kutenai people of southeastern British Columbia once inhabited the Crowsnest Pass and Waterton areas. Small pox epidemics caused them to abandon southwestern Alberta and evidence shows they were absorbed into other bands, according to Yanicki.

"It's possible that half of the equation, one of the groups of people who traditionally met at Old Man's Playing Ground didn't even exist anymore," he said.

In the 1960s, the site could no longer be found and stories said it had been washed away during the flooding of the Old Man River.

Unlike others who have come before him, Yanicki believes he knows where to look.

Part of the fascination for him is that according to the journal, the site is right in his childhood stomping grounds of southwestern Alberta.

"I especially like knowing that there's a place right there in my own backyard that has a lot more history to it than you get at first glance," he said.

Yanicki said Fidler's journal is very precise in its location and that he is using a combination of modern technology and both historical and ethnographical records to verify the landform he believes the site to be on.

Due to its origins as a founding myth, Yanicki said First Nations people are well versed in the origin story of Napi or Old Man.

"I'm really interested in recording stories among First Nations people of the tradition of gaming at Old Man's Playing Ground," he said. "Some of those stories are still being told and it would be great to record them."

Although he has reached out to both Piikani and Kanai elders, he is still in the process of filling out his ethics proposals forms — a necessity for human based anthropology studies.

Despite the Old Man River being prone to flooding, Yanicki said he has matched the landform with both Fidler and Dawson's records. He believes the site to be buried under sediment.

Radio and carbon samples taken on the river terrace show evidence of a prehistoric buried site below according to Yanicki. For him, the next step involves digging a trench and beginning the archeological process.

Although areas in the Gap region are known as archeological sites, the site where Yanicki believes Old Man's Playing Ground lies is not yet labeled as such.

"What I'm trying to do with my masters degree is a very small piece of the puzzle," Yanicki said. "I'm setting out to demonstrate that the site is present and portions of it still remain intact."

He said he will be happy if people know the site exists and the old stories are still being respected and told.