Payepot and His People

Textured card covers, saddle stitched with staples, 66 pages, 4.25x6.50 - 11.5x16.5 cm, B&W illustrations. Illustrations by Bill Perehudoff.

Covers sunned along spine. Front cover bumped at top. Back cover sunned at edges, lightly soiled near bottom, with closed tears at top and bottom near spine. Spine sunned, bumped at head and heel. Staples beginning to rust. Front cover verso, title page, and unpaginated Foreword page stamped by previous owner.

“Payepot and His People” contains stories told by Cree Chief Payepot (1816-1908, a later signatory to Treaty 4) of his life on the Canadian prairies to his acquaintance Abel Watetch. The stories were initially serialized in the “Western Producer” (a weekly publication printed in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), and appear here as the first volume published by the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society. While the stories center on Payepot, they move beyond personal biography to describe the customs, rites of passage, and beliefs of the Cree and Sioux peoples that he lived with. Watetch also comments on Indigenous-settler relations, including interactions with missionaries and treaty-signings in Saskatchewan. Features illustrations by acclaimed Canadian artist (and spouse to Dorothy Knowles) Bill Perehudoff – the volume’s drawings stand in contrast to his color field paintings.