Told by John York.
In the days gone by when an old man or woman got helpless they used to
be killed outright.
One time while two families, one of which had an old woman, were out
camping, they decided to kill the old woman. They told her that they
were going to move to some other place. They took her by the hand and
led her to the bush some distance away where they stopped in a lonely
place and told her to sit there till they got ready to build a camp.
Instead of making a camp they went back home and left her to die. The
old woman was left on a river bank, and it happened that one of the
boys was out hunting that way and when he was coming back home he saw
his grandmother sitting by the river side. He wondered how she got
there, but told her to get in the canoe and took her back to camp. He
left her near the camp telling her to come in after dark. The hunter
then went into the camp and after a while the old woman came in.
Everybody sat still, they did not know what to say, as they had thought
that she would have died that night out on the river bank. She never
told how she came back, neither did her grandson, so it was never known
to the rest. The people quit killing the old people from that time.
They never did it again. The Indians used to do this; when people got
too old they were killed to be got out of the way.