Augusta Evans
Description
Born in 1888 at Soda Creek in the Cariboo, Tappage was the daughter of a Shuswap chief and a Métis woman who had fled the prairies after the defeat of
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Louis Riel during the Riel Rebellion. At age four she was placed in a Roman Catholic mission where she was punished for speaking her Shuswap language. After nine years, she was permitted to live with her grandmother until she was married, at age 15, to George Evans whose father was Welsh and whose mother was Shuswap. Declared non-status, she retained her self-sufficient Aboriginal ways, serving other women as a midwife while raising her own children. The birth of her own first child influenced her choice of vocation. In The Days of Augusta, she recalls, I was out feeding the cattle when I felt my first pain. Well, I kept on feeding the cattle, feeding the calves... I was still sick. When that was over I came back to the house. I had to chop my own wood. Well, I finally fixed my bed and I was getting ready. I made a big fire and I opened the oven so it would be warm in the house. I kept getting worse and worse. Finally my daughter was born. All alone, I got up and fixed her up... I had to clean myself up... Made some more fire. Well, I was there for three days in bed and I got up. Well, in the meantime my husband came home. He had been on a spree for three days and came back drunk. When George Evans died, she decided not to re-marry. Once is enough, she said. As described in her memoir, Tappage made her own clothes, shared her grandmother's stories, delivered babies, attended church and raised several homeless children.
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