TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Small caps in the text is denoted by UPPERCASE.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
THE WAR TRAIL OF BIG BEAR
[Illustration:
BIG BEAR.
CHIEF OF THE PLAINS CREES.
_Frontispiece._
]
THE WAR TRAIL
OF BIG BEAR
_Being the Story of the connection of
Big Bear and other Cree Indian
Chiefs and their followers with the
Canadian North-West Rebellion of
1885, the Frog Lake Massacre and
events leading up to and following it,
and of Two Months’ Imprisonment
in the Camp of the Hostiles_
BY
WILLIAM BLEASDELL CAMERON
[Illustration]
SMALL MAYNARD & COMPANY
BOSTON, MASS.
1927
_Printed in Great Britain_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FROG LAKE SETTLEMENT 9
II. THE ANNUITY PAYMENTS AT FORT PITT 15
III. WHEN POUNDMAKER DEFIED THE N.W.M.P. 24
IV. THE WINTER OF 1884-5 43
V. BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 47
VI. BIG-LIE DAY 52
VII. IN THE POWER OF THE HOSTILES 57
VIII. THE MASSACRE 66
IX. OUT OF THE GLOOM 77
X. IN THE CRUCIBLE 87
XI. BIG BEAR SCORES HIS FOLLOWERS 100
XII. A COUNCIL OF WAR 105
XIII. THE FALL OF FORT PITT 111
XIV. THREE SCOUTS 120
XV. PERILOUS MOMENTS 127
XVI. DAYS IN CAMP 132
XVII. AN INDIAN CANNIBAL 144
XVIII. IN THE RED MAN’S BOOK 147
XIX. MORE DAYS IN CAMP 153
XX. THE TURNING OF THE TIDE 162
XXI. THE THIRST DANCE 169
XXII. MEEMINOOK 178
XXIII. THE BATTLE OF FRENCHMAN’S BUTTE 182
XXIV. SAFE! 194
XXV. WITH THE ALBERTA FIELD FORCE 200
XXVI. FORT PITT ONCE MORE 211
XXVII. THE INDIAN TRIALS 220
XXVIII. THE EXECUTIONS 231
XXIX. CONCLUSION 242
THE FROG LAKE MEMORIAL 254
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BIG BEAR _Frontispiece_
BIG BEAR TRADING AT FORT PITT _facing page_ 22
QUINN’S LAST WRITING ” 68
FOUR SKY THUNDER AND OKEMOW PEEAYSIS ” 80
IMASEES ” 88
GROUP AT FORT PITT ” 110
THE THIRST DANCE ” 169
KAHNEEPOTAYTAYO ” 252
FINE DAY ” 252
CHAPTER I
_It fell in the quiet night,
There was never a sound to ken;
But all of the woods to the right and the left
Lay filled with the painted men._
STEVENSON
THE FROG LAKE SETTLEMENT
Four hundred miles east of the great continental backbone of North
America, the Rocky Mountains, and six miles north of the North
Saskatchewan River, a collection of substantial log buildings in the
year 1885 had reached the dignity of a small civilized community known
as the Frog Lake Settlement.
The Saskatchewan is the grand river of the old Canadian North-west
Territories. Rising in the Rockies, it flows east, draining most of
that immense sweep of hill and plain, forest, lake and muskeg through
its connections into the broad Arctic reservoir of Hudson Bay. Like
Mississippi, Saskatchewan is a Cree or Algonquin word and means
“Swift-running.” During many years steamboats sweated their way fifteen
hundred miles up the tortuous channels of the main stream and its two
chief branches, the North and South Saskatchewans, with merchandise for
Fort Edmonton, then a trading centre of the Hudson’s Bay Company, now
the capital city of Alberta, and slipped back on its hurrying flood
with peltries in rich packs on their way to the world’s fur market at
London.
Frog Lake, for many years following 1885, as a place of human abode no
longer existed. It fell back into the embrace of that wilderness from
which it was once in part wrested. The mystery of silence brooded over
it. The pilots of its first feeble steps toward an ordered progress
slept beneath its grass-topped hillsides, and ashes covered the ground
whereon stood their habitations. The traveller passed quickly along
the trail leading through it and camped at night away from its sombre
associations. Even the savage author of its desolation shunned a spot
where in the dark his unquiet fancy conjured up the accusing shades of
stunned and martyred victims. For on the morning of April 2nd in that
year of 1885 the red man whose home this wilderness was arose with his
fierce blood galloping in his ears and casting aside his dissembled
amity, struck to the earth the intruder upon his heritage.
That paleskinned stranger had come boldly upon the land as though it
had belonged to him. True, a treaty had been made, but he did not
regard the gods, the traditions or the customs of its people. He
scoffed at the wisdom of its chiefs and prophets. He treated them not
as equals and brothers but as children, foolish, untaught. He would
have shown them a new manner of life. They cared nothing about any new
manner of life; they were satisfied with life as they knew it. Except
that they had thought that life would have been easier, somehow, after
the treaty was signed.
At first had they made him welcome, sharing their meat and camp fire
according to the ancient usages of the red peoples. Then for a time
they had marvelled and endured and spoken in secret council. And at
length when the opportunity arose they had thrown off the mask of
submission to the new order of things that had come uninvited upon
them and rifle and torch in hand sped to the work of vengeance and
destruction.
It is the story of the Frog Lake Massacre I have to tell. There is
nothing pretty about it. A stain dark and bloody on the page of
Canadian history, that is all it is. Yet as history it is worth
preserving. I lived at Frog Lake, was present at that massacre and
narrowly escaped the fate that overtook my luckless fellows. For months
afterward the unexpected report of a gun put my heart in my mouth. In
my dreams painted savages raced yelling after me at early dawn through
belts of dark firs, over knolls, across valleys; bullets sang in my
ears or buried themselves in my flesh; and I awoke gasping and unable
in the first seconds of consciousness to convince myself that it was
not all a horrible reality. Even after all these years I do not often
care to dwell in memory upon that dreadful time. But always I have felt
that it would one day be my part to set down faithfully what I knew and
saw and it is in that feeling that this is being written.
Fortunately I am not dependent on memory alone, which might prove
fickle. Copious notes concerning the events, preserved from the time
of their occurrence, afford a basis for confidence and make the work
comparatively easy. The story is a plain one and I shall endeavour
to tell it plainly. Neither is there place in it for much play of
imagination, and if the dramatic setting, the romantic atmosphere of
a wild and lonely land, the smoke of tepees and the native eloquence
of men naked and brown as leaves in autumn, which are inseparable
from the bald and simple narrative, do not invite the devourer of the
sensational and melodramatic in literature the tale is not for him.
A few words at the outset respecting the country and the various bands
of Indians inhabiting it will simplify my work and anticipate the
necessity for hindering explanations in the body of the narrative.
The settlement of Frog Lake consisted of three main groups of
buildings—government, Hudson’s Bay Company and Roman Catholic mission;
the store of a trader named George Dill, and a small grist mill
in course of construction. There were the dwellings of the Indian
agent, farming instructor, interpreter, the North-west Mounted Police
barracks, stores, blacksmith shop, stables and outhouses; the Hudson’s
Bay Company’s trading shop, store, dwelling and stable; the mission
church and dwelling. The mill and residence of its builder, John C.
Gowanlock, lay some two miles nearer the Saskatchewan than the main
settlement, located at the foot of Frog Lake, a beautiful sheet of
water fifteen miles in length, connected with the Saskatchewan through
a creek bearing the same name.
The settlement was in the centre of a reservation of several square
miles belonging to three bands of Wood Cree Indians. On this
reservation, within a radius of three miles, were scattered the houses
of the Wood Crees. The region is rolling and diversified. Small lakes
sleep in the hollows between the hills; the prairies are interspersed
with bluffs of poplar, willow, birch and spruce. Feathered game,
rabbits and fish abound; deer, moose and fur-bearing animals are also
plentiful in the vicinity. It was due to these natural advantages,
combined with the rich soil, that the land had been chosen by the Wood
Crees as a home for themselves and their families.
The Cree nation is divided into two branches which, speaking
practically the same language, differ widely in character and mode of
life. The Plain Crees are better orators, more active, warlike, crafty
and savage than their Wood Cree brethren. Big Bear and Poundmaker were
both Plain Crees, though Poundmaker was elected a chief only a few
years before the rebellion, while Big Bear was an hereditary chief and
bore the reputation of having as a young man been the bravest warrior
among the Crees. Big Bear was rather short of stature for an Indian and
of stronger and more compact build than the ordinary red man. His chest
was enormous. He had a large head, thick neck, broad forehead and small
cunning deep-set twinkling black eyes. His nose was long and prominent,
the nostrils thick and strong, his lips thin and straight and his chin
and jaw square and powerful. His general appearance was that of a
resolute politic savage and born leader of men.
The Plain Crees were the hereditary enemies of the Blackfeet.
Their territory was the great plains between the North and South
Saskatchewans, where in bands and mounted they hunted buffalo, fought
their battles and whence they made predatory excursions into the
countries of neighbouring tribes.
The Wood Crees, on the other hand, were a race of solitary hunters
and trappers afoot. They lived in the wooded country north of the
North Saskatchewan and seldom ventured on the plains among their
more warlike brethren. They were the backbone of the fur trade in
the Saskatchewan country and had for years lived at peace with white
traders and missionaries. They had acquired some skill in agriculture,
which they followed when not engaged in their regular business of
trapping furs. The Indian is always a beggar and the Wood Crees
possessed this characteristic along with the other tribes.
Still farther to the north, stretching well down toward the Arctic
Ocean, lay the territory of another race of fur hunters, the Chippewyan
or Athabascan family of tribes.
Having now distinguished the different nations having a place in this
narrative, I may begin my story.