Down in the Valley

I'm a couple of days back from a week camping at Echo Lake campground in the Qu'Appelle Valley. It's one of my favourite places in the world, and Rhonda had to tolerate me insisting we should move there for another week. 

I don't feel that way when I visit the Lumsden, Buffalo Pound or even Manitou part of the valley; it's mostly right around Qu'Appelle, which I suppose makes sense since I was born in Melville. We spent time at Crooked Lake when I was really little, and even after we'd moved away from there, we'd regularly pass through on the way to visiting Melville. Going for ice cream at the DQ still feels like a required stop when I go through town. 

Thanks to non-existent cell service at our campsite and my bonehead forgetting to throw the book I was going to read into my bag, I had a lot of time to meditate and contemplate on the trip. This isn't as disastrous as it seems on the surface. It was a stated goal of mine to get really bored that week, sort of reset the brain box and maybe find a bit of peace in my own mind. And I think I did. I certainly found myself in a few deep meditations and finding peace and rest instead of scrolling. It was very nice.  

A few times I found myself pondering what the valley would have been like for the Indigenous people before Europeans came and took hold of the land. I've heard stories that it was a gathering place and that it was also a place of refuge from severe weather. You could survive a bitter winter or scorching summer in the trees of the valley. Certainly that cool shade was welcome on some of the hotter days last week. 

There is plenty of more modern history written about the area, like the coming of the Hudson Bay, the myth of the naming of Qu'Appelle and most prominently for people who live where I do - the signing of Treaty 4. But I was curious to learn more about that pre-history time. I had some questions. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much of anything online beyond what I've already said. I mean, some of it has a bit more detail, but really what I found could be summed up in a paragraph. I'm curious if perhaps more was happening or about to happen in the valley. Famously, what we call "civilization" was first developed in the Indus Valley, and there are many other examples of civilizations forming in resource-rich valleys all over the world. 

We also know that there were a number of more advanced civilizations in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans, like the Aztecs and Maya. Is it possible that the Cree would have started their own cities in the valley over the next few hundred years if left unmolested by colonialism?

I suppose there's a lot more to it than just having a nice valley and some hard-working people to make something of it. You need things like animal domestication and agriculture. I'm not sure if this area necessarily has the kind of flora and fauna to make something of that, but at the very least, we know people were finding enough to survive here; it's really only a few more steps to building more of that. While we know the bison weren't domesticated, the people in the area of what we call Buffalo Pound built infrastructure to help them harvest the animals. In looking around, I found more modern stories of the people of the valley harvesting berries and roots to sell at the market in Regina. 

So maybe. Obviously, we'll never know. But it seems to me that there was certainly the kind of bounty needed to plant the seeds of civilization, and it was a well-known place of refuge and sustenance. 

But then again, this is me looking at this through a particular lens. Is civilization and modernity really something to be proud of or contemplated? Indigenous people lived in this area for thousands of years in balance with nature. That seems like an enormous success, right up until Europeans came along and stripped away the stories, the culture and the way of life. 

Do you ever contemplate the ancient history of the places you visit? Where is your zen place in the world? I have another visit to the valley scheduled in a few weeks. I'm going to try and take some time to visit the local museums; maybe I can find a book or some other resources to learn a bit more about the valley.