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Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry (Heritage House $19.95)
An unparalleled tracker, scout and intrepreter, Jerry Potts participated in the crucial events of his turbulent times and he embodied the two cultures whose conflict marked them. Respected by chiefs of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Potts led the Mounties to the notorious "whisky fort";, Fort Whoop-Up, and was later buried with full military honours. Rodger Touchie begins his biography Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry (Heritage House $19.95) with Pott's father, Andrew Potts, a disaffected medical student, who left Edinburgh for Pennsylvania, then proceeded to the western territories of the American Fur Company.
At Fort McKenzie, in what is now northern Montana, he took a "country wife,"; Namo-Pisi, or "Crooked Back,"; from the Blackfoot tribe, and she gave birth to Jeremiah Potts during the small-pox epidemic of 1837-1838. Andrew Potts was shot to death two years later. Jeremiah Potts was raised by two very different step-fathers; Alexander Harvey, a reputedly villainous man with a deep hatred of native people, and Andrew Dawson, a gentle, well-educated Scot.
From Dawson, Jerry Potts absorbed knowledge of the fur trade and learned English, though one source reported that "his English was weird."; In his travels with Dawson he also learned three Blackfoot dialects as well as Cree, Crow, Assiniboine and Sioux. By his late teens Potts, alone again, sought out his mother's people and immersed himself in their way of life. He was quickly accepted, given the name "Bear Child"; and respected for his skills. In spite of his unimposing stature-Potts was stooped and bowlegged, his growth stunted by periods of starvation and malnutrition-he was a fierce fighter who never let any abuse go unavenged. He was also a capable interpreter and a good marksman. His weakness was a fondness for whiskey. Potts had four wives during his lifetime. The first was a Crow woman who bore him a son, but who grew homesick for her own people. He allowed her to return with their son to the Crow lodges, and took two sisters for his new wives-Panther Woman and Spotted Killer, daughters of a South Piegan chief. When asked about the merits of having two wives, Potts is reported to have answered "One wife fights her husband, but two fight each other."; Like many another person who combines two cultures, Potts never completely belonged to one or the other. He never fully accepted the Blackfoot way of life, refusing to join raids for horses and other booty, decided to return to the White world during his thirties. In doing so, he abandoned his Bear Child persona and indirectly contributed to the decline of his mother's people.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, unscrupulous settlers, whiskey peddlers and traders flooded into the West. Potts adapted to the situation by becoming a horse-trader, a hunting guide, an interpreter and a scout. When the North-West Mounted Police force was formed in 1873, he signed on with the Canadians and became an indispensable ally of Colonel James Macleod. He proved so valuable as an advisor, a gatherer of information and as a go-between in Macleod's meetings with local chiefs that any lapses into irresponsibility caused by inebriation were quickly forgiven. "When whiskey smugglers were arrested,"; Touchie notes, "Jerry had a great affinity for the evidence."; Potts' son and both of his wives died in the late 1880s, so he married the daughter of a Blood chief and returned with her to live among his mother's people on the Blood Reserve. There he became a father for the last time and broadened his spiritual life to include Catholicism along with his other beliefs. Potts died at the age of 56, possibly of cancer or tuberculosis. When he was transferred to the hospital at Fort Macleod, many of his Aboriginal and Mountie friends converged on the hospital for a final visit. After his funeral, six Mounties carried him from the Catholic church at Fort Macleod to their own graveyard on the banks of the Oldman River. There his stone bears the following inscription: Spl/ Const. Intpr-Guide Jerry Potts 13th July 1896. An obituary in the Macleod Gazette read: For years he stood between the police on one side, and his natural friends, the Indians, on the other, and his influence has always made for peace. Had he been other than he was... it is not too much to say that the history of the North West would have been vastly different to what it is....
Rodger Touchie concludes his account by commenting on the regrettable circumstance that someone who chose Canada as his homeland and served it so well should remain largely unrecognized. His only public memorials to date are an informally christened mountain along the Great Divide, and a Calgary school named in his honour. Rodger Touchie, who owns Heritage House press with his wife Pat, became interested in Potts as the subject for a biography from reading accounts of the western frontier in which Potts' name repeatedly recurred among those of better-known figures such as Crowfoot, Red Crow and Sitting Bull, as well as Mounties such as Macleod, Sam Steele and James Walsh. The use of a lesser-known character as a prism to view a historical period has been popular since 1978 when Barbara W. Tuchmann published A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. 1-894384-63-6
--by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2005]
At Fort McKenzie, in what is now northern Montana, he took a "country wife,"; Namo-Pisi, or "Crooked Back,"; from the Blackfoot tribe, and she gave birth to Jeremiah Potts during the small-pox epidemic of 1837-1838. Andrew Potts was shot to death two years later. Jeremiah Potts was raised by two very different step-fathers; Alexander Harvey, a reputedly villainous man with a deep hatred of native people, and Andrew Dawson, a gentle, well-educated Scot.
From Dawson, Jerry Potts absorbed knowledge of the fur trade and learned English, though one source reported that "his English was weird."; In his travels with Dawson he also learned three Blackfoot dialects as well as Cree, Crow, Assiniboine and Sioux. By his late teens Potts, alone again, sought out his mother's people and immersed himself in their way of life. He was quickly accepted, given the name "Bear Child"; and respected for his skills. In spite of his unimposing stature-Potts was stooped and bowlegged, his growth stunted by periods of starvation and malnutrition-he was a fierce fighter who never let any abuse go unavenged. He was also a capable interpreter and a good marksman. His weakness was a fondness for whiskey. Potts had four wives during his lifetime. The first was a Crow woman who bore him a son, but who grew homesick for her own people. He allowed her to return with their son to the Crow lodges, and took two sisters for his new wives-Panther Woman and Spotted Killer, daughters of a South Piegan chief. When asked about the merits of having two wives, Potts is reported to have answered "One wife fights her husband, but two fight each other."; Like many another person who combines two cultures, Potts never completely belonged to one or the other. He never fully accepted the Blackfoot way of life, refusing to join raids for horses and other booty, decided to return to the White world during his thirties. In doing so, he abandoned his Bear Child persona and indirectly contributed to the decline of his mother's people.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, unscrupulous settlers, whiskey peddlers and traders flooded into the West. Potts adapted to the situation by becoming a horse-trader, a hunting guide, an interpreter and a scout. When the North-West Mounted Police force was formed in 1873, he signed on with the Canadians and became an indispensable ally of Colonel James Macleod. He proved so valuable as an advisor, a gatherer of information and as a go-between in Macleod's meetings with local chiefs that any lapses into irresponsibility caused by inebriation were quickly forgiven. "When whiskey smugglers were arrested,"; Touchie notes, "Jerry had a great affinity for the evidence."; Potts' son and both of his wives died in the late 1880s, so he married the daughter of a Blood chief and returned with her to live among his mother's people on the Blood Reserve. There he became a father for the last time and broadened his spiritual life to include Catholicism along with his other beliefs. Potts died at the age of 56, possibly of cancer or tuberculosis. When he was transferred to the hospital at Fort Macleod, many of his Aboriginal and Mountie friends converged on the hospital for a final visit. After his funeral, six Mounties carried him from the Catholic church at Fort Macleod to their own graveyard on the banks of the Oldman River. There his stone bears the following inscription: Spl/ Const. Intpr-Guide Jerry Potts 13th July 1896. An obituary in the Macleod Gazette read: For years he stood between the police on one side, and his natural friends, the Indians, on the other, and his influence has always made for peace. Had he been other than he was... it is not too much to say that the history of the North West would have been vastly different to what it is....
Rodger Touchie concludes his account by commenting on the regrettable circumstance that someone who chose Canada as his homeland and served it so well should remain largely unrecognized. His only public memorials to date are an informally christened mountain along the Great Divide, and a Calgary school named in his honour. Rodger Touchie, who owns Heritage House press with his wife Pat, became interested in Potts as the subject for a biography from reading accounts of the western frontier in which Potts' name repeatedly recurred among those of better-known figures such as Crowfoot, Red Crow and Sitting Bull, as well as Mounties such as Macleod, Sam Steele and James Walsh. The use of a lesser-known character as a prism to view a historical period has been popular since 1978 when Barbara W. Tuchmann published A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. 1-894384-63-6
--by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2005]
Submitted on October 11, 2005 in By David.
