Seven Persons
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 49° 52.762 W 110° 54.413
12U E 506690 N 5525222
Historical marker commemorating the history of the community of Seven Persons.
Waymark Code: WM23KQ
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 08/29/2007
Views: 63
Seven Persons
Named after the nearby creek, the hamlet of Seven Persons began in 1880's
as a siding on the narrow gauge railway built buy the North West Coal and
Navigation Company to move coal to the Canadian Pacific Railway at Dunmore from
"Coal Banks" (Lethbridge). After a wave of homestead settlement after
1908, Seven Persons flourished as a service centre for the surrounding
agricultural community, with 5 grain elevators, a stockyard, a creamery, lumber
yards, stores, churches, a community hall and a hotel. By the 1920's, the
town's role had been usurped by nearby centres like Medicine Hat.
There are two possible explanations for the name. It could be the
translation of the Cree Indian name "Ki-tsuki-a-tapi", given after a band of
Blood Indians led by Calf Shirt killed seven Cree in battle on the banks of the
creek.
An account claims that a band of Blackfoot came upon the long dead, but
undecayed bodies of seven men. They were hairless, but had not been
scalped. Bewildered, the Blackfoot observed the bodies for five days,
concluding that they must have been struck down by the Great Spirit.
Yellow Calf Shirt, their leader, ordered the erection of a burial cairn, but the
following spring, not a trace of the "seven persons" could be found. ~ text
of marker