Frank Royal cradled a delicate wooden pipe in his hands while recounting how, after 135 years, the sacred item belonging to Chief Whitecap has returned home to Whitecap Dakota First Nation.

Chief Whitecap himself gave the pipe to a Saskatoon doctor, Royal said during a recent interview.

“The Riel Rebellion was on and Chief Whitecap was arrested and charged with treason and he was put on trial and Gerald Willoughby from Saskatoon testified on his behalf,” Royal said.

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The chief was acquitted, “and so to pay [Willoughby] back on his deathbed in 1889, he asked Willoughby to come see him and gave him this pipe … Nobody knew where it went and nobody knew where the family lived until last year,” he said.

[Whitecap Dakota First Nation

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