Chief Piapot
Piapot was born of Cree and Assiniboine parentage in Saskatchewan in 1816. Both parents died of smallpox when he was young, and he lived among the Sioux with his grandmother until age 14, when a Cree war party freed them.
At age twenty-four, he became a chief and led the Cree into battle against the Blackfoot near Fort Whoop-up.
Even so, he believed in negotiating peacefully. Chief Piapot was a signatory to Treaty 5 and became known as a moderate voice. In 1875, he gave conditional approval to Treaty 4 provided that an economic base be provided for the Cree people. Although these promises were not fulfilled, like Chief Crowfoot, Piapot declined to involve his people in the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
Hunters of the buffalo, Piapot and his people resented the Hudson's Bay Company and the Canadian government for taking over the prairies.
In a non-violent protest against the incursion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he and his people pulled up survey stakes and pitched tipis in the path of the railway workers. This protest ended when Piapot got travel concessions for his people. The town of Piapot, in the Cypress Hills of south western Saskatchewan, is named after him.
Piapot also resisted government efforts to suppress native culture and religion. He continued to hold sun dances even after they were made illegal. Although he commanded great respect among his own people, when he died in 1902, the Indian Affairs Department was in the process of trying to have him deposed as Chief.