Continued without preamble from Mrs A. T – Part One.
LOUISE: They did have birth control, Indian medicine, like was for birth control. If you drank it you wouldn’t have any children. And that was the medicine that they were going to give to her, this old lady, this other old lady was going to give her, but she didn’t want it.
KAREN: Did she give it to her while she was pregnant?
LOUISE: No. After birth, she was giving birth, she was giving her sixth birth and this old lady was going to give her this medicine so she wouldn’t have anymore kids and her mother-in-law told her that this was this medicine that she wouldn’t have anymore kids and they just threw it out.
MARYANNE: You mean one drink could stop you from having …
LOUISE (to Mrs T.): One drink!
MARYANNE: And no more kids?
MRS T.: Uh-huh!
LOUISE: Okay, this medicine, this medicine is almost like today when you have an operation so you don’t have, can’t have kids. It’s called…(thinking)
MARYANNE: Tubal ligation.
LOUISE: Yah, that’s what it is. It’s almost like that. This medicine you drank it once after you had the baby and you wouldn’t have kids anymore. But there is a myth behind that and I think that is what she was talking about.
MARYANNE: Please tell us.
LOUISE: Yah, it has something to do with bad medicine, bad Indian medicine. It’s almost like there was, when they drank this medicine according to their beliefs is ah, Indian people are very spiritual, they believe in a lot of spirits, bad spirits and good spirits, and this had a bad spirit and it kind of stayed in the body once you drank it and it kind of grew in there and ah, the belief was this thing stayed in the body of the women and they don’t have children because whatever the spirit is that is staying there is eating the children, I guess that’s what she’s meaning to say. The eggs, it would just kill the eggs and so therefore, whoever drank that medicine didn’t have children. And a lot of the old people, for one instance believed that, and it really worked, like the person who drank that medicine didn’t have kids. She was telling me, she knows a woman, she knew of her aunt who drank the medicine and she drank the medicine on her second kid and she never had kids after that. So that medicine I guess was very powerful, but when she was dying, and this was according to the old people, the old people were saying because she drank the medicine and she had this thing it was almost like saying, killing the, not the fetus, the eggs, and ah, she suffered when she was dying. Some of the old people were saying it was because she drank that medicine and she had killed a lot of her children. And ah, I guess on her bed, when she was dying in her bed, she kept saying, she kept mumbling, that she kept seeing a bunch of kids. She said, “get these kids away from me, these kids are bothering me.” She was just screaming, saying, “get these kids away from me, they’re all over me.” And so the old people were saying that this was bad medicine. Now I don’t know if this is what you call a myth or if that’s what you say is one of the beliefs. It’s a legend of some kind because the Indian medicines are very strong.
KAREN: Do you know how they made the herbs? Would you know the name?
LOUISE: They were gathered.
MARYANNE: Plants, roots, things?
LOUISE: Yah, they still gather them. There’s people that still gather Indian medicines and it’s herbs and roots. They know what to pick out.
MARYANNE: So when you became pregnant were you scared about it or did you feel confident. Yeah, with your first baby?
LOUISE: No! She was happy because she was having a baby, she was not scared!
MARYANNE: You weren’t scared about having a baby at all?
LOUISE: She didn’t have any problem at childbirth. It was not an experience she can say was really hard. It was almost like natural that the child would be born. Sure, she would have pains but ah, you know how it is when you have a child you get these pains, these pushing pains and that’s what she would have and that’s it she would push and the child was born. She never had no problem. Her last four that she had in the hospital, she really didn’t care for the hospital. Okay, when she was at home having her babies, the old people gave her all kinds of medicine, they would give her medicine to help her along, and they knew what kind of medicine they were giving her. There was special kinds of medicine for childbirth. When she went into the hospital that didn’t happen it and she suffered more in the hospital than she did at home. She felt a lot better when she was having her kids at home than when she did in the hospital.
MARYANNE: Mmm huh, tell her I would have liked it better at home too (laughs). I didn’t like it much in the hospital either. If I ever have another one it’s at home.
LOUISE: It’s at home. Are you having another one? (Much laughter.)
MARYANNE: No, no, I don’t think so. Anyway, we are very interested in the beliefs and customs that surround birth in different cultures. Are there any beliefs and customs that were important to you or any special rituals that you followed pregnancy, to prepare for birth and so on?
LOUISE: Okay, there was one belief that a pregnant woman should never eat the fish, the guts, the intestines of the fish. It should never be eaten by a pregnant woman. If they do the cord would just go around the child, around the child’s head it was believed, that was the belief. So a woman wasn’t supposed to eat anything like that. The other thing is a pregnant woman should never eat a fish head or any kind of head, like a rabbit head or a duck head or something like that should never be eaten, because if they are eaten the child’s head would come enlarged and that was a belief, so a pregnant women should never eat. The other thing was if you see a person that was handicapped or something was wrong with them physically, they should not be scared or, you know, make fun of them while you are pregnant. A lot of time the characteristics of that person will fall onto your child. Your child will come with some kind of defect if you laughed. Those kind of things pregnant women had to be very respectful.
KAREN: Were there any special preparations that she would do to prepare for the arrival of the baby? A whole bunch of clothes or paint the bedroom walls or any special preparations like that?
LOUISE: They did keep a few baby things, you know they got ready a little bit, but the belief was you shouldn’t be greedy and have a whole bunch of stuff because that would be bad luck and a lot of times that happened to a lot of women ah, they would have all so many things and the baby died and there they were. And I think the belief was not to be too over greedy, just have enough for your baby and to try and, I don’t know… (She asks Mrs T something.) Belief was that it was not a good thing to keep too many things for the expected child and ah it would be too many things and if you had bad luck you don’t know if the child is going to make it.
MARYANNE: That’s interesting. So she had her babies, so when you had to have your baby you went back home to your mother-in-law’s house?
LOUISE: Yah, she’d go to her mother-in-law’s. They knew when they were going to have the child, like she says herself, “I knew about the date.” They knew about the date they were going to have it so she knew when to go.
MARYANNE: How far about was it from the bush to go to the village and how did they go?
MRS T.: Horses.
LOUISE: Ah, they had a lot of horses so they were traveling by horse.
KAREN: On horseback?
MARYANNE: Or by wagon?
LOUISE: Yeah, ah hah.
MARYANNE: So how were you cared for during pregnancy, obviously you didn’t see a doctor. How did you know how to look after yourself and things like that?
LOUISE: She never went to see the doctor, in fact her kids never went to see a doctor. She used a lot of Indian herbs for illnesses like if the kids got sick. As soon as they got sick she would boil up the medicine, different kinds of medicines. She knew the different kinds of medicines that she had. That’s what she used for her kids and for herself when she was pregnant she did have something that took. Everyday she took something, it’s a herb.
MARYANNE: Does she recall what it is or what name?
LOUISE: She knows what she was drinking, her mother taught her what it was that she took whenever she got pregnant, but she can’t tell you because it’s tradition.
KAREN: What was the medicine doing for her, was it for nutrition?
LOUISE: Everything, I guess. That was for the baby. The medicine was to keep the baby healthy and to keep herself healthy. While she was taking this medicine, even though she was pregnant, she had a lot of energy. She was never tired. She worked all day.
KAREN: Were there some pregnancies where she took the medicine and some pregnancies where she didn’t take the medicine?
LOUISE: Okay, her last four pregnancies she didn’t take any of the Indian herbs and she had a lot of problems. She had one child in Meadow Lake and she lost so much blood that they had to do a blood transfusion and the next one she had in P.A. She had a really bad time to have her. It couldn’t be born, it was just… She was really ill, she figures she almost died with that birth. So then the last one she had, her baby, they had to do a Caesarean, so she didn’t use any Indian medicine or anything during her pregnancies, her last four pregnancies. Her last three pregnancies she had all kinds of problems, but the rest of them that were born at home she had no problems and she did take Indian medicine right through.
MARYANNE: Okay, should we go into detail about the first birth or do you think we have enough about the first birth? Things about the birth, who was there, who caught the baby.
KAREN: Just check, is she alright to go on?
MARYANNE: Are you tired, do you need a drink of water?
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