Prompt # 69 - Treasured Possession

Prompt # 69 - Treasured Possession

I have so many inherited treasures. Two diamond rings, one mine, one my mother's, made from an old cocktail ring which belonged to my grandmother. Her brass Buddha in brass bowl on brass serving tray. Books. China. Photographs. My mother's wedding dress. And more stuff seems to arrive every day as my cousin Carol keeps sending me things. My great-uncle Murray's war medals, from the North West Rebellion and the Boer War.

The one object I have treasured since my Grandma gave it to me at her death is a ceinture fleche, a Metis arrow sash, a colourful mainly red wool scarf, over six feet long with four feet of fringe, handmade probably around Red River about 1870. I do not know its true provenance but her husband's family lived in Selkirk, Red River, later Manitoba, from about 1869 to 1891. I think she willed it to me because I lived in Manitoba at the time and she thought it should go “home.”

This fall as I was researching Uncle Murray who was a Mountie in the North West Mounted Police and then the Royal North West Mounted Police, from 1882 to 1906, I learned that some Mounties adopted the Metis sash because it was so functional. The Metis who wove the sashes using their fingers and chairs as looms, used them as a tump line and mainly as a belt, outside the overcoat, to keep out the cold, and to attach useful accessories to, such as knives, tobacco pouches, powder horns, purses. So perhaps the sash belonged to Uncle Murray. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to find out. I also wish I knew how to take better care of it, because I have had it for fifty years and it really needs to be washed, but I do not dare.

Metis means “mixed” in French and is the name given people with both Caucasian and First Nations ancestry. Although I'm unaware of any blood connection, I have always felt of myself as in some way “between,” or spanning. Probably because I am so literal, and I take a symbolic meaning of my surname. I choose to see myself as a link, and the bridge I build between worlds is a bridge of words and story.