WAR
Commissioner Irvine sat in his office at headquarters in the little town
of Regina, the capital of the North West Territories of the Dominion. A
number of telegrams lay before him on the table. A look of grave anxiety
was on his face. The cause of his anxiety was to be found in the news
contained in the telegrams. An orderly stood behind his chair.
“Send Inspector Sanders to me!” commanded the Commissioner.
The orderly saluted and retired.
In a few moments Inspector Sanders made his appearance, a tall,
soldierlike man, trim in appearance, prompt in movement and somewhat
formal in speech.
“Well, the thing has come,” said the Commissioner, handing Inspector
Sanders one of the telegrams before him. Inspector Sanders took the
wire, read it and stood very erect.
“Looks like it, sir,” he replied. “You always said it would.”
“It is just eight months since I first warned the government that
trouble would come. Superintendent Crozier knows the situation
thoroughly and would not have sent this wire if outbreak were not
imminent. Then here is one from Superintendent Gagnon at Carlton. He
also is a careful man.”
Inspector Sanders gravely read the second telegram.
“We ought to have five hundred men on the spot this minute,” he said.
“I have asked that a hundred men be sent up at once,” said the
Commissioner, “but I am doubtful if we can get the Government to agree.
It seems almost impossible to make the authorities feel the gravity
of the situation. They cannot realize, for one thing, the enormous
distances that separate points that look comparatively near together
upon the map.” He spread a map out upon the table. “And yet,” he
continued, “they have these maps before them, and the figures, but
somehow the facts do not impress them. Look at this vast area lying
between these four posts that form an almost perfect quadrilateral.
Here is the north line running from Edmonton at the northwest corner
to Prince Albert at the northeast, nearly four hundred miles away;
then here is the south line running from Macleod at the southwest four
hundred and fifty miles to Regina at the southeast; while the sides of
this quadrilateral are nearly three hundred miles long. Thus the four
posts forming our quadrilateral are four hundred miles apart one way by
three hundred another, and, if we run the lines down to the boundary and
to the limit of the territory which we patrol, the disturbed area may
come to be about five hundred miles by six hundred; and we have some
five hundred men available.”
“It is a good thing we have established the new post at Carlton,”
suggested Inspector Sanders.
“Ah, yes, there is Carlton. It is true we have strengthened up that
district recently with two hundred men distributed between Battleford,
Prince Albert, Fort Pitt and Fort Carlton. But Carlton is naturally a
very weak post and is practically of little use to us. True, it guards
us against those Willow Crees and acts as a check upon old Beardy.”
“A troublesome man, that Kah-me-yes-too-waegs--old Beardy, I mean. It
took me some time to master that one,” said Inspector Sanders, “but then
I have studied German. He always has been a nuisance,” continued the
Inspector. “He was a groucher when the treaty was made in '76 and he has
been a groucher ever since.”
“If we only had the men, just another five hundred,” replied the
Commissioner, tapping the map before him with his finger, “we should
hold this country safe. But what with these restless half-breeds led by
this crack-brained Riel, and these ten thousand Indians--”
“Not to speak of a couple of thousand non-treaty Indians roaming the
country and stirring up trouble,” interjected the Inspector.
“True enough,” replied the Commissioner, “but I would have no fear
of the Indians were it not for these half-breeds. They have real
grievances, remember, Sanders, real grievances, and that gives force to
their quarrel and cohesion to the movement. Men who have a conviction
that they are suffering injustice are not easily turned aside. And
these men can fight. They ride hard and shoot straight and are afraid of
nothing. I confess frankly it looks very serious to me.”
“For my part,” said Inspector Sanders, “it is the Indians I fear most.”
“The Indians?” said the Commissioner. “Yes, if once they rise. Really,
one wonders at the docility of the Indians, and their response to fair
and decent treatment. Why, just think of it! Twenty years ago, no,
fifteen years ago, less than fifteen years ago, these Indians whom we
have been holding in our hand so quietly were roaming these plains,
living like lords on the buffalo and fighting like fiends with each
other, free from all control. Little wonder if, now feeling the pinch of
famine, fretting under the monotony of pastoral life, and being
incited to war by the hot-blooded half-breeds, they should break out
in rebellion. And what is there to hold them back? Just this, a feeling
that they have been justly treated, fairly and justly dealt with by the
Government, and a wholesome respect for Her Majesty's North West Mounted
Police, if I do say it myself. But the thing is on, and we must be
ready.”
“What is to be done, sir?” inquired Sanders.
“Well, thank God, there is not much to be done in the way of
preparation,” replied the Commissioner. “Our fellows are ready to a man.
For the past six months we have been on the alert for this emergency,
but we must strike promptly. When I think of these settlers about Prince
Albert and Battleford at the mercy of Beardy and that restless and
treacherous Salteaux, Big Bear, I confess to a terrible anxiety.”
“Then there is the West, sir, as well,” said Sanders, “the Blackfeet and
the Bloods.”
“Ah, yes, Sanders! You know them well. So do I. It is a great matter
that Crowfoot is well disposed toward us, that he has confidence in our
officers and that he is a shrewd old party as well. But Crowfoot is an
Indian and the head of a great tribe with warlike traditions and with
ambitions, and he will find it difficult to maintain his own loyalty,
and much more that of his young men, in the face of any conspicuous
successes by his Indian rivals, the Crees. But,” added the Commissioner,
rolling up the map, “I called you in principally to say that I wish you
to have every available man and gun ready for a march at a day's notice.
Further, I wish you to wire Superintendent Herchmer at Calgary to
send at the earliest possible moment twenty-five men at least, fully
equipped. We shall need every man we can spare from every post in the
West to send North.”
“Very good, sir. They will be ready,” said Inspector Sanders, and,
saluting, he left the room.
Two days later, on the 18th of March, long before the break of day, the
Commissioner set out on his famous march to Prince Albert, nearly three
hundred miles away. And the great game was on. They were but a small
company of ninety men, but every man was thoroughly fit for the part
he was expected to play in the momentous struggle before him; brave, of
course, trained in prompt initiative, skilled in plaincraft, inured to
hardship, oblivious of danger, quick of eye, sure of hand and rejoicing
in fight. Commissioner Irvine knew he could depend upon them to see
through to a finish, to their last ounce of strength and their last
blood-drop, any bit of work given them to do. Past Pie-a-pot's Reserve
and down the Qu'Appelle Valley to Misquopetong's, through the Touchwood
Hills and across the great Salt Plain, where he had word by wire from
Crozier of the first blow being struck at the south branch of the
Saskatchewan where some of Beardy's men gave promise of their future
conduct by looting a store, Irvine pressed his march. Onward along the
Saskatchewan, he avoided the trap laid by four hundred half-breeds at
Batoche's Crossing, and, making the crossing at Agnew's, further down,
arrived at Prince Albert all fit and sound on the eve of the 24th,
completing his two hundred and ninety-one miles in just seven days; and
that in the teeth of the bitter weather of a rejuvenated winter, without
loss of man or horse, a feat worthy of the traditions of the Force of
which he was the head, and of the Empire whose most northern frontier it
was his task to guard.
Twenty-four hours to sharpen their horses' calks and tighten up their
cinches, and Irvine was on the trail again en route for Fort Carlton,
where he learned serious disturbances were threatening. Arrived at Fort
Carlton in the afternoon of the same day, the Commissioner found there a
company of men, sad, grim and gloomy. In the fort a dozen of the gallant
volunteers from Prince Albert and Crozier's Mounted Police lay groaning,
some of them dying, with wounds. Others lay with their faces covered,
quiet enough; while far down on the Duck Lake trail still others lay
with the white snow red about them. The story was told the Commissioner
with soldierlike brevity by Superintendent Crozier. The previous day a
storekeeper from Duck Lake, Mitchell by name, had ridden in to report
that his stock of provisions and ammunition was about to be seized by
the rebels. Immediately early next morning a Sergeant of the Police with
some seventeen constables had driven off to prevent these provisions and
ammunition falling into the hands of the enemy. At ten o'clock a scout
came pounding down the trail with the announcement that Sergeant Stewart
was in trouble and that a hundred rebels had disputed his advance.
Hard upon the heels of the scout came the Sergeant himself with his
constables to tell their tale to a body of men whose wrath grew as
they listened. More and more furious waxed their rage as they heard
the constables tell of the threats and insults heaped upon them by the
half-breeds and Indians. The Prince Albert volunteers more especially
were filled with indignant rage. To think that half-breeds and
Indians--Indians, mark you!--whom they had been accustomed to regard
with contempt, should have dared to turn back upon the open trail a
company of men wearing the Queen's uniform! The insult was intolerable.
The Police officers received the news with philosophic calm. It was
merely an incident in the day's work to them. Sooner or later they would
bring these bullying half-breeds and yelling Indians to task for their
temerity.
But the volunteers were undisciplined in the business of receiving
insults. Hence they were for an immediate attack. The Superintendent
pointed out that the Commissioner was within touch bringing
reinforcements. It might be wise to delay matters a few hours till his
arrival. But meantime the provisions and ammunition would be looted
and distributed among the enemy, and that was a serious matter. The
impetuous spirit of the volunteers prevailed. Within an hour a hundred
men with a seven-pr. gun, eager to exact punishment for the insults
they had suffered, took the Duck Lake trail. Ambushed by a foe who,
regardless of the conventions of war, made treacherous use of the white
flag, overwhelmed by more than twice their number, hampered in their
evolutions by the deep crusted snow, the little company, after a
half-hour's sharp engagement with the strongly posted enemy, were forced
to retire, bearing their wounded and some of their dead with them,
leaving others of their dead lying in the snow behind them.
And now the question was what was to be done? The events of the day
had taught them their lesson, a lesson that experience has taught all
soldiers, the lesson, namely, that it is never safe to despise a foe.
A few miles away from them were between three hundred and four hundred
half-breeds and Indians who, having tasted blood, were eager for more.
The fort at Carlton was almost impossible of defense. The whole South
country was in the hands of rebels. Companies of half-breeds breathing
blood and fire, bands of Indians, marauding and terrorizing, were
roaming the country, wrecking homesteads, looting stores, threatening
destruction to all loyal settlers and direst vengeance upon all who
should dare to oppose them. The situation called for quick thought and
quick action. Every hour added to the number of the enemy. Whole tribes
of Indians were wavering in their allegiance. Another victory such as
Duck Lake and they would swing to the side of the rebels. The strategic
center of the English settlements in all this country was undoubtedly
Prince Albert. Fort Carlton stood close to the border of the half-breed
section and was difficult of defense.
After a short council of war it was decided to abandon Fort Carlton.
Thereupon Irvine led his troops, together with the gallant survivors of
the bloody fight at Duck Lake, bearing their dead and wounded with
them, to Prince Albert, there to hold that post with its hundreds of
defenseless women and children gathered in from the country round about,
against hostile half-breeds without and treacherous half-breeds within
the stockade, and against swarming bands of Indians hungry for loot and
thirsting for blood. And there Irvine, chafing against inactivity, eager
for the joyous privilege of attack, spent the weary anxious days of the
next six weeks, held at his post by the orders of his superior officer
and by the stern necessities of the case, and meantime finding some
slight satisfaction in scouting and scouring the country for miles on
every side, thus preventing any massing of the enemy's forces.
The affair at Duck Lake put an end to all parley. Riel had been
clamoring for “blood! blood! blood!” At Duck Lake he received his first
taste, but before many days were over he was to find that for every drop
of blood that reddened the crusted snow at Duck Lake a thousand Canadian
voices would indignantly demand vengeance. The rifle-shots that rang out
that winter day from the bluffs that lined the Duck Lake trail echoed
throughout Canada from ocean to ocean, and everywhere men sprang to
offer themselves in defense of their country. But echoes of these
rifle-shots rang, too, in the teepees on the Western plains where the
Piegans, the Bloods and the Blackfeet lay crouching and listening.
By some mysterious system of telegraphy known only to themselves old
Crowfoot and his braves heard them almost as soon as the Superintendent
at Fort Macleod. Instantly every teepee was pulsing with the fever of
war. The young braves dug up their rifles from their bedding, gathered
together their ammunition, sharpened their knives and tomahawks in eager
anticipation of the call that would set them on the war-path against the
white man who had robbed them of their ancient patrimony and who held
them in such close leash. The great day had come, the day they had been
dreaming of in their hearts, talking over at their council-fires and
singing about in their sun dances during the past year, the day promised
by the many runners from their brother Crees of the North, the day
foretold by the great Sioux orator and leader, Onawata. The war of
extermination had begun and the first blood had gone to the Indian and
to his brother half-breed.
Two days after Duck Lake came the word that Fort Carlton had been
abandoned and Battleford sacked. Five days later the news of the bloody
massacre of Frog Lake cast over every English settlement the shadow of
a horrible fear. From the Crow's Nest to the Blackfoot Crossing bands of
braves broke loose from the reserves and began to “drive cattle” for the
making of pemmican in preparation for the coming campaign.
It was a day of testing for all Canadians, but especially a day of
testing for the gallant little force of six or seven hundred riders who,
distributed in small groups over a vast area of over two hundred and
fifty thousand square miles, were entrusted with the responsibility of
guarding the lives and property of Her Majesty's subjects scattered in
lonely and distant settlements over these wide plains.
And the testing found them ready. For while the Ottawa authorities with
late but frantic haste were hustling their regiments from all parts of
Canada to the scene of war, the Mounted Police had gripped the situation
with a grip so stern that the Indian allies of the half-breed rebels
paused in their leap, took a second thought and decided to wait till
events should indicate the path of discretion.
And, to the blood-lusting Riel, Irvine's swift thrust Northward to
Prince Albert suggested caution, while his resolute stand at that
distant fort drove hard down in the North country a post of Empire that
stuck fast and sure while all else seemed to be sliding to destruction.
Inspector Dickens, too, another of that fearless band of Police
officers, holding with his heroic little company of twenty-two
constables Fort Pitt in the far North, stayed the panic consequent upon
the Frog Lake massacre and furnished food for serious thought to the
cunning Chief, Little Pine, and his four hundred and fifty Crees, as
well as to the sullen Salteaux, Big Bear, with his three hundred braves.
And to the lasting credit of Inspector Dickens it stands that he brought
his little company of twenty-two safe through a hostile country
overrun with excited Indians and half-breeds to the post of Battleford,
ninety-eight miles away.
At Battleford, also, after the sacking of the town, Inspector Morris
with two hundred constables behind his hastily-constructed barricade
kept guard over four hundred women and children and held at bay a horde
of savages yelling for loot and blood.
Griesbach, in like manner, with his little handful, at Fort
Saskatchewan, held the trail to Edmonton, and materially helped to bar
the way against Big Bear and his marauding band.
And similarly at other points the promptness, resource, wisdom and
dauntless resolution of the gallant officers of the Mounted Police
and of the men they commanded saved Western Canada from the complete
subversion of law and order in the whole Northern part of the
territories and from the unspeakable horrors of a general Indian
uprising.
But while in the Northern and Eastern part of the Territories the Police
officers rendered such signal service in the face of open rebellion, it
was in the foothill country in the far West that perhaps even greater
service was rendered to Canada and the Empire in this time of peril by
the officers and men of the Mounted Police.
It was due to the influence of such men as the Superintendents and
Inspectors of the Police in charge of the various posts throughout
the foothill country more than to anything else that the Chiefs of
the “great, warlike, intelligent and untractable tribes” of Blackfeet,
Blood, Piegan, Sarcee and Stony Indians were prevented from breaking
their treaties and joining with the rebel Crees, Salteaux and
Assiniboines of the North and East. For fifteen years the Chiefs of
these tribes had lived under the firm and just rule of the Police, had
been protected from the rapacity of unscrupulous traders and saved from
the ravages of whisky-runners. It was the proud boast of a Blood Chief
that the Police never broke a promise to the Indian and never failed to
exact justice either for his punishment or for his protection.
Hence when the reserves were being overrun by emissaries from the
turbulent Crees and from the plotting half-breeds, in the face of the
impetuous demands of their own young men and of their minor Chiefs to
join in the Great Adventure, the great Chiefs, Red Crow and Rainy Chief
of the Bloods, Bull's Head of the Sarcees, Trotting Wolf of the Piegans,
and more than all, Crowfoot, the able, astute, wise old head of
the entire Blackfeet confederacy, held these young braves back from
rebellion and thus gave time and opportunity to Her Majesty's Forces
operating in the East and North to deal with the rebels.
And during those days of strain, strain beyond the estimate of all
not immediately involved, it was the record of such men as the
Superintendents and Inspectors in charge at Fort Macleod, at Fort
Calgary and on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway construction
in the mountains, and their steady bearing that more than anything else
weighed with the great Chiefs and determined for them their attitude.
For with calm, cool courage the Police patrols rode in and out of the
reserves, quietly reasoning with the big Chiefs, smiling indulgently
upon the turbulent minor Chiefs, checking up with swift, firm, but
tactful justice the many outbreaks against law and order, presenting
even in their most desperate moments such a front of resolute
self-confidence to the Indians, and refusing to give any sign by look
or word or act of the terrific anxiety they carried beneath their gay
scarlet coats. And the big Chiefs, reading the faces of these cool,
careless, resolute, smiling men who had a trick of appearing at
unexpected times in their camps and refused to be hurried or worried,
finally decided to wait a little longer. And they waited till the fatal
moment of danger was past and the time for striking--and in the heart
of every Chief of them the desire to strike for larger freedom and
independence lay deep--was gone. To these guardians of Empire who fought
no fight, who endured no siege, who witnessed no massacre, the Dominion
and the Empire owe more than none but the most observing will ever know.
Paralleling these prompt measures of the North West Mounted Police, the
Government dispatched from both East and West of Canada regiments of
militia to relieve the beleaguered posts held by the Police, to prevent
the spread of rebellion and to hold the great tribes of the Indians of
the far West true to their allegiance.
Already on the 27th of March, before Irvine had decided to abandon Fort
Carlton and to make his stand at Prince Albert, General Middleton had
passed through Winnipeg on his way to take command of the Canadian
Forces operating in the West; and before two weeks more had gone the
General was in command of a considerable body of troops at Qu'Appelle,
his temporary headquarters. From all parts of Canada these men gathered,
from Quebec and Montreal, from the midland counties of Ontario, from
the city of Toronto and from the city of Winnipeg, till some five or six
thousand citizen-soldiers were under arms. They were needed, too, every
man, not so much because of the possible weight of numbers of the enemy
opposing them, nor because of the tactical skill of those leading the
hostile forces, but because of the enemy's advantage of position, owing
to the nature of the country which formed the scene of the Rebellion,
and because of the character of the warfare adopted by their cunning
foe.
The record of the brief six weeks' campaign constitutes a creditable
page in Canadian history, a page which no Canadian need blush to read
aloud in the presence of any company of men who know how to estimate at
their highest value those qualities of courage and endurance that are
the characteristics of the British soldier the world over.