Toward Sundown

A warm Chinook wind softened the snow of Central Alberta. Squaws silently folded the tents and tepees. Soon the little band of Ochase Indians would be moving down across the prairie from Whitecourt to the foothills of the Rockies on their last migration--to a Government reservation.

At long last they were conceding that the white man had come to North America to stay. Now that the Ochase and the companion Sunchild tribe, 300 souls in all, were abandoning their nomadic life, there would be no migratory Indians left in Canada south of the subArctic.

Old Chief John Ochase had parleyed time after time with Government men anxious to settle the tribe on a reservation. Always he began: "I want to speak with a straight tongue, not a crooked tongue," ended by firmly refusing.

Last spring one of the tribesmen quarreled with his wife, shot her with his rifle. The squaw, Ocha Ka Kay Nee Noo ("young woman who walks with distinction"), died in the arms of her father, old John Ochase. After that, John Ochase lacked the spirit to stand against the white man. When the bands voted to accept a treaty, he signed it with his mark.

For the Ochase-Sunchild reservation the Government has set aside 47,000 acres 100 miles southwest of Edmonton. There, as wards of the Crown, the Indians will have free schools, free medical care, supplies for the needy. The treaty provides that they may live on their land "as long as the sun shines, the river flows, and the grass grows green."

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