"an All Round Indian Affair": The Native Gatherings at Macleod, 1924 & 1925‪.‬

It was a typical late November week in Macleod in 1924. With the autumn harvest long completed folks began to slowly turn their attention to the approaching holiday season. November 23-25 was an atypical period in one significant way: more than 100 members of the Kainai, Pikuni, and Siksika Nations were in town for a political convention. They were motivated by what leaders of the three nations considered to be the illegal leasing of reserve lands, concerns that had gone largely ignored by Indian Affairs' officials. Mike Mountain Horse, (1) a member of the Kainai nation, together with the local London Life Insurance Company agent Alfred F. Grady (2) decided to hold the "Indian gathering" to raise awareness of leasing problems and to confront the Canadian politicians and bureaucrats responsible. Mountain Horse was a war veteran who had been wounded overseas and was more experienced with life away from the reserve than most of his people. Earlier that spring, the two men had initiated an aggressive lobby effort to convince local Native leaders that a political convention was the best forum to discuss leases and other issues, such as their being charged for beef and wheat rations, and earnings statements being withheld by Indian Agents. Mountain Horse had convinced non-Native sympathizer Grady to become the event organizer; the Macleod man had become certain that local Natives "were charged for all they get, and think the Agent should give an account to each man, like white men do." (3)