May 24, 1924 - Chief Peguis - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Chief Peguis honoured with monument erected in Winnipeg’s Kildonan Park. Chief Peguis was born in 1774 near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. At age 16, the young leader resettled his Saulteaux tribe where the Red River flows into Lake Winnipeg. (Today, it’s called Netley Creek, Manitoba.) When a man named Lord Selkirk and his group of Scottish settlers showed up there in 1812, Peguis helped them settle and offered them protection. He also sided with the Hudson’s Bay Company against its rival, the North West Company, due to concerns about the latter’s intentions for his people. Lord Selkirk rewarded Peguis for his support by signing a treaty that gave his people priority over other bands that had lived in the area longer. After Peguis and his band moved to St. Peters, north of Winnipeg, Peguis often visited Kildonan to celebrate Scottish festivities. He became friends with Anglican missionary Reverend William Cochrane, but when he asked to join Cochrane’s church, the minister refused on the basis that Peguis had four wives and drank liquor. In 1838, after Peguis had left three of his wives and abstained from liquor for two years, Cochrane accepted Peguis into the church. The chief died on September 28, 1864, at the age of 90. He was buried in St. Peter's graveyard near Selkirk, Manitoba. In memory of his time in Kildonan, on May 24, 1924, a sculpture of the chief was erected at Kildonan, now a prominent park in the city of Winnipeg. Descendants of Peguis’s Saulteaux tribe comprise Manitoba’s largest First Nations community.

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