Photo Courtesy Glenbow Institute File # NA-403-4
A tepee located on the Medicine Hat flats, late 1800s.
Before the railway, before the cottonwood log shanties (from Gaelic “sean taigh” old house) of the first squatters, the only man-made structures in the Medicine Hat coulee and its tributary creek valleys were stone circles and cairns erected by Indigenous peoples. The most common stone circles were for tepee rings and these can still be found on heights overlooking the coulees.
Is it tipi, teepee or tepee? The first recorded use was in 1743 derived from a Dakota (Sioux) word for “dwelling.” All three spellings seem to be derived phonetically but tepee appears first in most dictionaries.
A tepee is a tent, traditionally made of animal skins upon wooden poles, distinguished from other conical tents by the smoke flaps at the top of the structure. Heavy stones were collected on the prairie and used to weight down the bottom of the tepee. These stones were left behind for a future visit which could be in the next year, decade or century. The tepee itself could be knocked down and packed on two poles tied at one end as a frame, dragged by a dog and later a horse. Called a travois (from French Canadian word for a frame for restraining horses), this was the original mobile home!
Medicine Hat’s most visible landmark is the Saamis Tepee, a reminder of these early structures.
Saamis (SA-AH-UMP-SIN) is derived from a saam, the Blackfoot word for eagle tail feather headdress (hat worn by a medicine man). So Saamis Tepee is derived from two native languages and means the “dwelling of the place of the eagle feather headdress.”
This project was the dream of Rick (Amerigo) Filanti, a businessman and developer who immigrated to Canada in 1949 at age 21 and settled in Medicine Hat in 1974. He wanted something to commemorate the First Nations of the prairies and conceived of moving the Olympic Tepee, used in ceremonies in the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Mr. Filanti worked tirelessly to make this happen and took huge financial risks. When the city stepped in to advance a loan, he pledged his private art collection as security, which he eventually redeemed.
In the end, the only original elements from the Olympic tepee include the two steel masts and they represent less than 10% of the 200 metric tons of steel that make up the structure. About 800 tons of concrete went into the foundation and the structure is held together with 960 bolts. Completed in 1991, the tepee is ringed with 10 large circular storyboards depicting aspects of native culture and history and painted in symbolic colours: white for purity, red for the rising and setting sun, and blue for the flowing waters of the river.
The main masts of the Tepee measure 65 m high (equivalent to a 20-storey building!) and the diameter at the base is 49 m. Structural repairs were required after a 2007 windstorm, and the Tepee was shortened by 4.6 m. This huge monument is easily visible from the air and from many parts of the city. Located adjacent to an important First Nations historic site, it connects our past to our present. Rick Filanti died in 2013 but left a lasting legacy for the City and First Nations.
Malcolm Sissons is the Chair of the Heritage Resources Committee.
Editor’s Note: All spellings of “teepee” mentioned in the column are acceptable, but the Canadian Press Style Guide, which the Medicine Hat News uses, is to use “teepee.” For the purposes of this column though it has been left as submitted by the writer.
