The history of the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage
Global News
On Tuesday, Pope Francis will accept a longstanding invitation to take part in an annual pilgrimage to Lac Ste. Anne which has a history dating back to before 1889.
On Tuesday, Pope Francis will accept a longstanding invitation to take part in an annual pilgrimage to Lac Ste. Anne.
While he is only attending now, the pilgrimage has occurred for more than 130 years.
It began when a chief from what is now North Dakota followed a vision and the sound of drumming all the way to the lake.
“When they got here, they thought that this would be the place because in the treetops you could hear the drumming,” Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation Chief Tony Alexis told Global News.
Alexis says the chief and his grandson crafted a raft so they could go out on the lake. The story goes it was misty and the water was rough, but it cleared as they neared a small island.
“As they approached, in the middle of the island was this beautiful woman with her hair down. There was feathers in her hair. She had a full buckskin,” Alexis explained.
“And all around the perimeter of this island were children who were the ones hitting the drum. And then it went into one beat. And they say that after that, they all went into her hand and that was the last they heard of it.”
The Nakota people settled on the land. They came to know the lake as Wakamne, or God’s Lake.
