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One lonely grave
Boy dies outside Yellowknife by Ric Stryde
NNSL (July 23/97) - Every grave has a story, and this one is no different.
A few kilometres south of Rae-Edzo, where Highway 4 crosses the Stagg River, a young boy's remains are buried. They sit on small island in the river.
"Back then we buried people where they died and then go on with the trapping," said Gabriel Lafferty, through a interpreter. His grandfather was at the original gravesite, when the boy died at the age of about nine.
No one can remember the name of the boy, but through stories told to them by relatives, the people of Rae-Edzo have a good idea of what happened.
In the early 1900s the Dogrib people still depended on the land to maintain their way of life. Each fall a few families would set up a fishing camp at the Stagg River for a couple months before the onset of winter.
This particular fall, the boy went out with his family to the camp.
Nick Zoe, also speaking through an interpreter, said that he stumbled upon the grave while rabbit hunting in about 1930.
He was curious to know who was buried there and what happened, so he asked his mother.
His mother said to him that the boy who died was his uncle's wife's uncle.
Zoe said he was told "the boy was running around with a fish head in his mouth, he choked on it, and it lodged in his throat."
The people at the temporary camp tried to get it out, but failed. The boy eventually died.
They buried the boy, and put up a cross.
That would have been the end of the story if it wasn't for the advent of a road to Yellowknife. But in 1961, when the road was built, "the cats plowed the gravesite," said Zoe.
The people of the village told the crew there was a grave there, but it was too late -- the grave had all ready been disturbed. So the crew took the whole mound of dirt that was around the gravesite, plopped it down a few metres to the right, and replaced the cross on top of it.
Lafferty said that a few years later his dad went over to the island and built the small white picket fence that surrounds it.
The site, which now looks like a small island in the Stagg River, is easily visible from the road.
According to the people of Rae-Edzo there are many small graves like this dotting the countryside around the villages -- Stagg River's is just the easiest one to see from the highway.
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