WHEN POUNDMAKER DEFIED THE N.W.M.P.
Let me go back a step to the reservation, on the Battle River
south-east of Pitt, of Chief Poundmaker, where Big Bear was then in
camp, and relate a happening there three months earlier that throws a
yet more significant light on the attitude of these Indians than the
events just recorded. I did not witness this, being a few miles away,
and I am indebted to Major Fred A. Bagley, a veteran of the N.W.M.P.,
and to Mr. William McKay, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, both of whom
were active participants on the ground, for the details of what at more
than one critical juncture threatened to end in a bloody debacle.
Kahweechetwaymot, a member of Big Bear’s band, went to John Craig,
farm instructor on the reserves of Chiefs Poundmaker and Little
Pine, and asked for provisions for a sick child. The government
furnished supplies to be issued when the need was evident to sick
and destitute Indians, but Kahweechetwaymot did not get any. This
was hardly surprising to anyone knowing Craig and the Indian. The
one was a phlegmatic easterner; the other a pestiferous and not
particularly intelligent savage. Anyway, Craig was doubtless following
instructions—the Indian did not belong on Poundmaker’s reserve—though
some of the more politic of the government’s agents were wise enough on
occasion to forget them.
Kahweechetwaymot went off, but he was back in no time. With two aides.
One was his brother. The other was a well-seasoned hickory axe-helve.
With these reinforcements, Kahweechetwaymot had no difficulty in
obtaining all the provisions he required, which was considerably more
than he would have been satisfied with in the first place. Craig
arrived at the police barracks in Battleford some hours later, sore
from the top down, inside and out, and gave Kahweechetwaymot a very bad
name. Superintendent Crozier of the N.W.M.P., commanding at Battleford,
sent Corporal Sleigh to bring in Kahweechetwaymot. He wanted to explain
to him that the Queen felt much annoyed because of his course in
instituting a self-administered code of rewards and punishments.
The Indians were holding their annual Thirst Dance on Little Pine’s
reserve—making braves. They were there in hundreds, many from distant
points. It was a big fête. Kahweechetwaymot was taking a prominent
part. His prestige was high. On the strength of his recent disciplining
of a white farming instructor, he was by way of being regarded
admiringly by the young men at the dance as an example of the real
thing in braves.
Kahweechetwaymot scoffed at Sleigh. In fact, backed by public opinion
in the form of the assembled tribesmen, he affected an indignant
astonishment. How, he asked, was it that a policeman had the nerve to
come there thinking to put him under arrest? “Go back,” said he to
Sleigh, “and tell the Big Police Chief what I said.”
Sleigh sent a man to town to report and Crozier realized that the
situation was one demanding the personal attention of the Big Police
Chief. It was beneath the dignity of Poundmaker and his fellow chiefs,
he concluded, at such a time to discuss matters of any moment with his
subordinates.
So at an early hour next day, Crozier appeared with twenty-five men—of
whom Bagley, then a sergeant, was one—at Poundmaker’s. They brought
with them an Indian, met on the trail, who appeared entirely too
ingenuous to be at large. Once they were safely in camp on the reserve,
he was liberated. As a matter of fact, he was a spy, sent out by
Poundmaker to learn what the police were doing, as Crozier had guessed.
The tents up, Crozier took the police half-breed interpreter, Louis
Laronde, and one or two troopers and went to the Thirst Dance camp,
three miles away, demanding to know why Poundmaker and the other chiefs
had refused to deliver up to his men Kahweechetwaymot, who had offended
the Queen by striking one of her servants with an axe-helve.
Poundmaker temporized. He was a most deliberate and dignified
personage. He told the big police chief not to be hasty. The sun would
not go out; it was still high. It was best that matters of this sort be
dealt with in calm discussion.
So all day long, while the big drum boomed and ambitious young braves
skewered through loops cut in their chests rawhide thongs reaching
to the top of the big centre-pole of the Thirst Dance lodge, flung
themselves frenziedly backward in efforts to break their fleshly bonds
and prove worthy to be counted warriors, and while other young men
capered round on horseback, singing and shouting war-cries, Poundmaker
and his brother chiefs gravely discussed the offence and the offender,
while the police chief fumed and fought to control his temper.
The outcome of the deliberations was a compromise, the chiefs agreeing
that at about noon next day they would produce Kahweechetwaymot for
trial if court were held, not at Battleford, but at a plateau some
four hundred yards from the position in which the police had made
their camp. The selection of this site was a manœuvre engineered by
the police officer to bring the negotiations under the guns of the
improvised fort he intended throwing up.
Following the parley, Crozier dispatched a courier to Battleford,
thirty miles away, with instructions to Inspector Antrobus to come with
speed and all available men remaining in barracks to Poundmaker’s.
A little later Crozier and his force departed for the government
warehouses on Little Pine’s reserve, adjoining Poundmaker’s six or
seven miles to the west.
These warehouses contained all the stores, bacon and flour chiefly, on
the two reserves. Crozier was decidedly against these stores falling by
any chance into the hands of the Indians in their present mood. With
four loaded ox-teams he started back to his camp at Poundmaker’s.
The Thirst Dance camp straddled the trail, part of the four or five
hundred lodges being pitched on either side of it. To avoid the
Indians, Crozier detoured to the north of the trail with the wagons.
The Indians were watching him. When opposite the camp a hundred young
bucks, mounted and singing, burst suddenly upon him, circling the
wagons and firing their guns over the heads of the little force. The
idea of the police marching off with the provisions did not please
them. Doubtless they had had these in mind themselves. The position was
an uncomfortable one, but the police ignored the warlike demonstration
staged for their benefit and marched on. At dusk they reached the camp
at Poundmaker’s with their loads.
Here were some old log buildings. The men were tired, the night was
suffocating, the mosquitoes were a plague and the commissary had
fallen down on its job—without the wagons they would have had little
to eat—but there was to be no rest for the little company. Crozier
ordered all buildings but one to be torn down. Of the logs so obtained
he directed the construction of two rough bastions, abutting on the
remaining building. The night dragged but toward morning the job was
finished, the sacks of bacon and flour had been piled in tiers behind
the log walls to serve as breastworks and the weary men stretched
themselves on the ground for a few minutes’ sleep. The completed fort
was in this form:
[Illustration]
A deep slough behind the fort afforded protection from that quarter.
Inspector Antrobus and Sergeant-major Kirk with the reinforcements,
totalling some sixty men and including a number of Battleford
civilians, reached Poundmaker’s about eleven o’clock next morning
and shortly after noon Poundmaker and his fellow chiefs arrived in
accordance with their agreement at the plateau. Crozier assigned ten
men to each of the bastions and leaving the others to await orders,
covered by the twenty rifles and taking with him Interpreter Laronde,
Constable Campbell Young and another man, went out to meet the chiefs
and try Kahweechetwaymot.
Just a month previous the Crees had held a begging dance in the town
of Battleford. Those old aboriginal dances were novel and spectacular;
they interested us and we all—the whole town, or most of it—looked
on. Poundmaker, wearing a breechclout and a vest studded with brass
nails, his long legs streaked with white mud, on his head a small cap
formed from the dried skin of a bird, was there. Big Bear was there,
mounted on a white horse, a rusty black coat on his back and a battered
black soft felt hat on his head. The old chief rode up and down before
the stores, proclaiming loudly to the world at large that it was
“_meewasin_” (“good”) here, at Battle River; that it was not “hard”
here, when the traders brought out sacks of flour, sides of bacon,
packages of tea and sugar and thick plugs of tobacco and piled the
gifts on the ground beside the dancing warriors.
Inspector Antrobus came past, riding a tall police horse. Imasees
and Okemow Peeaysis, sons of Big Bear, bursting suddenly out of the
crowd of dancers, galloped furiously across the prairie directly at
the inspector. They carried in their hands folded umbrellas. As they
reached Antrobus they jerked their ponies to a stand and the umbrellas
flashed open. The police horse snorted, swerved violently, the
officer’s pith helmet rose in the air and sailed away over the grass
and his startled mount bolted wildly with him for the barracks.
The Indians, looking on, grinned delightedly. Evidently they regarded
the incident as a rattling fine joke. The inspector on the contrary
could see nothing at all humorous in it.
An hour later the dance was over and the Indians had gone to their
camp on the hill south of the Battle River, when Inspector Antrobus,
accompanied by William McKay, manager for the Hudson’s Bay Company
at Battleford, appeared among the lodges asking for the head chief.
Poundmaker indicated Big Bear. The inspector was intensely angry; he
trembled with rage.
“I have not much to say,” he announced wrathfully, “and my message is
for the head chief alone. Let no one else speak.” He turned to Big
Bear. “What are you doing here? You have no business in town. Unless
you are packed and on the trail back to the reserves in half an hour, I
will put you chiefs under arrest and lock you up.”
Amazement for the moment held the Indians. Then Poundmaker, his dark
face flushing, jumped to his feet.
“There will be a bullet here,” he declared loudly, a hand on his
throat, “before you arrest one of us! When we are ready we will leave;
not sooner.”
An old man got up. “He says no one must speak but Big Bear!” he cried.
“Well, I am speaking. Let him stop me! Look at him,” pointing at the
officer’s legs. Their unsoldierly shaking must have been mortifying in
the extreme to Antrobus, who was anything but a timid man, but he could
not stop it. Rage exacts its penalties. “And he tells us this!” The old
man snorted contemptuously. “_’Wus!_”
The Indians looked and once more they laughed at the inspector.
Antrobus was beside himself. He could not trust his tongue to further
words. He climbed into his buckboard and clattered off.
Two hours passed. The Cree camp was still on the hill south of the
Battle, but no arrest had been made.
* * * * *
When Crozier went out to meet the chiefs, there was still some
difficulty he found about Kahweechetwaymot’s trial. The Indian, backed
by the young men, declined to give himself up. They were all wild, said
Poundmaker, and it was hard to do anything with them. At another time
it might be done, but, Poundmaker pointed out, their pride revolted
against a surrender in the face of such a great gathering of their
people, many from distant reserves. So the unending talk went on. The
police seemed to be getting nowhere. The prestige of the scarlet-coated
upholders of the law was at stake. If they gave way it would be many
a day before it could be completely regained. The last would never be
heard of it. So long as an Indian present remained alive, he would
boast amid the acclaim of his listeners about the camp fire at night of
the time they bluffed the police.
Crozier’s patience was exhausted. He quitted the council abruptly and
returned to the fort.
William McKay had arrived from Battleford about noon. The McKays had
been Hudson’s Bay Company officers for generations. They had been given
by the Indians the family name of Little Bearskin. They were known to
every Indian along the Saskatchewan. A Little Bearskin to these Indians
was a man to be trusted. The McKays possessed their confidence.
Poundmaker rose. “I am going to the fort,” he said. “If I can prevent
it there will be no bloodshed. Since this man will not give himself up,
I will offer to take his place.”
Big Bear ran after Poundmaker. “_N’chawamis_,” he cried, “you will not
be left to face the danger alone. If you go, Big Bear goes also.”
Together the chiefs entered the fort, but came out a moment later.
Crozier would not accept a substitute, they told McKay; he would take
only Kahweechetwaymot. The three seated themselves on the grass before
the fort to smoke and endeavour to find a way of surmounting the
difficulty. Crozier sent a messenger to McKay, asking him to detain the
chiefs.
“Tell Major Crozier I’m no policeman. If he wants the chiefs let him
hold them himself,” was the Hudson’s Bay man’s answer. He was not
pleased.
Big Bear was taking little part in the discussion. He watched the fort.
Suddenly he exclaimed: “Something is going to happen. Look!”
The police had emerged. They were buckling on their sidearms and
saddling their horses. Poundmaker rose hurriedly.
“If there is to be trouble, my place is with my men,” he declared, and
followed by Big Bear he ran back up the slope.
The police advanced slowly, the sun flashing on their polished
carbines, their scarlet coats aglow. They lined up before the Indians,
a soldierly and formidable-looking company. That they could be relied
on to give a good account of themselves was not to be doubted.
Sergeant Bagley had been assigned to one of the bastions. He glanced
over at the corral, and saw “’Andsome ’Arry,” the solitary remaining
horse, Bagley’s trooper.
“You’re in command here,” he told the corporal beside him; “I’m
resigning,” and disregarding orders he slipped over to the corral,
mounted and joined the line out in front.
Crozier confronted the tall chief, to whom the Indians were looking as
their spokesman. This was his land; Big Bear was taking no prominent
part. At the officer’s request, McKay acted as interpreter.
“Poundmaker,” he announced, “I came out for this man and I am going to
take him.”
The Indian thrust out his long face. His black eyes kindled, passion
shook him and Bagley, watching, saw him strike, seemingly unconscious
of what he did, with the sharp points of the knife-blades in his
pukamakin, at his right leg. Blood welled out and flowed down the
legging. His cloak of friendliness, for apparently it was a cloak, fell
away and he stood revealed, a hostile among the hostiles.
“He won’t be given up!” he declared vehemently, stamping his foot. “You
say you are going to take him?” He lifted a tapering forefinger and
tapped his chest. “Take me first—if you dare!”
Antrobus stood near. He glanced at the chief and passed a slighting
remark. It was not understood by Poundmaker but he guessed its import.
He was infuriated. He had not forgotten the inspector or his threat
at the begging dance the month before. He lost for the moment his
accustomed restraint. Raising his pukamakin, he rushed upon Antrobus.
The three knife-blades in the end glittered above the officer’s helmet.
“Redcoat dog!” he hissed.
But Constable Prior poked his carbine in the tall chief’s face and the
deadly pukamakin dropped slowly to his side.
Suspense gripped the Indians. A deep hush had fallen. Now the reaction
came. The excitement rose to an uproar.
“Plenty blood will be spilled on the banks of the Cut Knife to-day!”
shouted Imasees.
Some minor chiefs, peaceably disposed, appalled by the impending
explosion, rode among the mob, waving green branches, imploring the
aggressors to be reasonable, to consider before it was too late. Their
example had some effect; the storm sank to a murmurous undercurrent.
But in a moment it rose again, more violently than ever. The hostiles
surged round, jeering, whooping, raising their guns threateningly,
goading the police with taunts and epithets.
Wandering Spirit, who in the war dance counted thirteen Blackfoot
scalps, rushed out and seized McKay by the wrist, endeavouring to drag
him over to the Indians’ side.
“Come!” he urged frenziedly. “You are crazy. You will be killed!”
McKay pulled away.
Little Pine, amiable and friendly always, sitting his horse, addressed
the mob. They were wrong, he told his people, to defy the police. He
was a notable chief, a warrior as well as an orator of parts, and he
spoke forcibly and at some length. But they heard him with impatience.
They had reached the stage where pacific words were almost an offence.
Little Pine died shortly after the trouble. Rumour had it that poison
was responsible; that he paid with his life for the stand he took that
day in opposing the more turbulent among the bands.
Sergeant-major Kirk sat like a statue on his horse in front of the
line, gazing stonily ahead. At his horse’s muzzle stood Wandering
Spirit, muscles tense, dark eyes agleam, thin lips working, his lean
claw-like hands gripping a Winchester. When the din was at its peak,
Bagley saw the Indian strain and lift as though struggling under some
ponderous weight and the rifle came up. Bagley held his breath.
“Now it’s coming! Now old John’s going to get it!”
The words said themselves over and over in the sergeant’s mind.
The blood-lust burned in the war chief’s eyes, dull red pools glowing
murkily in their sultry sockets. The seconds passed. What was
restraining him?
The sullen tide beating against the tough barrier that had so far
contained it—the counsel of leaders able and tried, accustomed to
being deferred to—might at any moment burst through. The pressure of a
finger, red or white, against a trigger and a flood would descend that
would drench that sunlit slope in waves of crimson death.
It was as if the war chief were stretched on a rack of conflicting
emotions—the hunger to kill that was his consuming passion and a
foreboding that made him pause. Should he be the one? Dare he take upon
himself that sinister responsibility? Did he see confronting him the
vision of a day of reckoning some time to come, a day when the white
man would exact the ultimate price?
The old police warrior never flickered an eyelash. And when the lull
came the rifle was lowered again. Bagley breathed once more. Then came
the renewed uproar and again the menacing rifle lifted.
Miserable Man rode round behind Kirk. “I will fight with the police!”
he declared loudly. But he had no intention of fighting on the side of
the police. Miserable Man was a dissembler. His purpose was to make
sure that, between himself and Wandering Spirit, the sergeant-major
should not escape. To take the scalp of an officer would be greater
glory than to tuck under his belt that of an ordinary policeman.
An Indian rode over to the depression on the left of the police line.
“Keep quiet, there!” Bagley heard him say. And it came to the sergeant
then that all along he had been conscious of a droning murmur of
women’s and youthful voices and he sensed the grim menace that lurked
in the wooded hollow.
The clamour fell and rose once more and once more the threatening rifle
of the war chief came up. But again it came down unfired. Why, as will
be evident before this narrative is ended, is an eternal riddle.
Crozier turned to Laronde. “Which is him—the man we want?” he asked.
A tall Indian, a sneer on his evil face, Cree words of contempt on
his lips, danced and cavorted in the van of the mob. The interpreter
pointed.
“That’s him.” And as the Indian, noticing, dived suddenly among the
others: “There he goes!” he added.
McKay called to him and the Indian came out. Said the Hudson’s Bay
Company officer:
“Tell the police okemow you will surrender. You will get a fair trial.
You may be punished but they can’t hang you. If trouble starts the
police will not be the only ones to suffer. Many of you will die also.
Do you want to see that? Be a man! Give yourself up!”
“I won’t!” returned Kahweechetwaymot surlily.
Twin Wolverine, Big Bear’s eldest son, pushed his horse into the police
line beside Constable Campbell Young. “I am going to fight against
you!” he shouted to his fellow-tribesmen. Unlike Miserable Man, the
Twin Wolverine meant what he said.
McKay turned to Crozier. “Arrest your man,” he advised.
“Think we’d better do it now?” queried the officer.
“Yes. The longer it is put off, the greater the danger. There has been
too much talk already.”
“The two men afoot on the right, fall out and seize that fellow!” came
the command.
Kahweechetwaymot wheeled to run. “Nab him!” McKay prompted Laronde.
The interpreter rushed and seized Kahweechetwaymot. The two policemen
followed. Before the Indian realized how it had all happened, Constable
Warren Kerr—“Sligo” to the force—had Kahweechetwaymot by the long
plaits of his black hair and had landed him with a swing that had
nothing gentle about it among the policemen on foot. They closed about
the prisoner and his captors. The horsemen quickly encircled them and
the whole body began to move off, the men in the rear facing backward
with their carbines ready for instant action.
McKay paced evenly up and down between the two rows of levelled rifles.
Bedlam broke loose. The Indians went wild. “Shoot them, shoot the red
coat dogs!” they howled. “Why do we wait? Now—_now_ was the time we
agreed on to wipe out the dog _chemoginusuk_!”
But the cooler men among the redskins frantically fought the outcries
of the hotheads. “No—_no_! _Be careful! Wait!_ Let the red coats shoot
first!” And, referring to McKay, walking coolly up and down between the
opposed forces: “Shame! Would you kill a Little Bearskin?”
They brushed past the Hudson’s Bay official and charged the retreating
ranks, jostling the men, snatching at their clothing, stabbing their
horses with the points of their knives, hoping to stampede them. One
man, cut off from the others, was stripped, his tunic and sidearms
forcibly appropriated. Poundmaker himself wrested away his carbine.
But the horses, like their riders, held firm. And no Indian fired.
Neither did a policeman. Because the police, disciplined and obedient
to orders, could not and would not under no matter how aggravated
provocation, be first to breach the peace. But if, even by accident
under the tension, a single shot had sounded——! What would have
followed, no man present during those pregnant moments cares to
contemplate.
Maddened over the successful coup of the police, a dozen of the most
truculent braves seized Laronde and, powerful though he was, rushed
him off through the poplar bluffs. That he, a half-breed with their
own blood in his veins, should have aided the enemy—that, above all,
he should have pointed out to the police okemow, and later stopped
Kahweechetwaymot—incensed them beyond anything else. Laronde’s chances
of living seemed exceedingly remote.
The police flung their horses against the ring of passion-distorted
faces and at length pushed through and reached the fort. The Indians
crowded them, with jeers and epithets, to the walls. Kahweechetwaymot
was shoved through an opening into the waiting hands of the men inside
and the police followed. The Indians stormed about outside.
McKay drew Major Crozier aside and spoke to him in an undertone.
“Throw out the bacon and the flour!”
The men doubted whether they had heard aright. Pull down their
defences, their breastworks? He could not mean it.
“Throw out the bacon and flour!” There could be no doubt about the
command this time. “Look alive, men!” the commandant added.
The heavy sacks went over. The effect was magical. The angry clamour
died. The camp was a huge one, its food supply scant. The Indians were
hungry. In the surprise of sudden abundance they forgot their quarrel
with the redcoats. They pounced upon the sacks, each struggling to
secure a share before he was too late. The women and boys came from
their place of concealment and joined their men in the raid. They
lugged the stuff off through the bluffs to their lodges. The suggestion
had been McKay’s and his strategy was a winner. He knew Indian
character.
And while the Indians, unheeding, fought over the spoil, the police
bundled a most subdued and crestfallen brave into a wagon and in half
an hour were on their road with him to Battleford.
After all an Indian, take him by and large, is nothing but a grown-up
child.
Laronde turned up as they were leaving. Again McKay had intervened.
“Let him go!” he had insisted. “Don’t blame him; he’s paid to do this
work. That’s how he makes his living. If you want a prisoner, why don’t
you take the police okemow?”
McKay knew that he was safe in making what at this stage was a
perfectly impractical suggestion.
Before the police left, McKay hunted up Poundmaker.
“You must surrender the rifle you took from the policeman,” he told him.
Poundmaker’s quick temper flared again. “I will not!” he exploded. “He
was going to use it against us!”
“Now, see here.” McKay talked patiently to the handsome red man as he
might have done had he been explaining some puzzling matter to an angry
boy. “You must not look at this thing in that way. The gun did not
belong to the policeman. It does not belong to the police at all. It
belongs to the Queen.”
Poundmaker pondered this. Three years before he had guided the Marquis
of Lorne, Governor-General of Canada, three hundred miles across the
plains from Battleford to the Blackfoot Crossing. Poundmaker was an
unusual Indian. He was the typical chief as one has been accustomed
to picture him from the literature of his youth—tall, dignified,
deliberate in speech and manner, his striking face framed in a setting
of raven-black hair hanging in two immense plaits far below his waist,
with a certain native air of courtliness and distinction that impressed
all who met him. No wonder that Lord Lorne had made much of the stately
red man. Perhaps that was why Poundmaker held the governor-general
in some respect. He did not wish to displease the noble lord’s
mother-in-law, the Queen. So in the end the gun was surrendered.
Half a dozen of us, civilians, were on our way from Battleford to
Poundmaker’s reserve. The parley out there had lasted for three days.
We had heard in Battleford that the situation was critical. The
addition of a few rifles might be acceptable to the police, we thought.
The afternoon was intensely hot. We had off-saddled half-way out to
breathe our labouring horses and enjoy the poplared shade and clear
cold water of Medicine Drum Creek. A horseman hove in sight, coming
from the direction of Poundmaker’s. He came up.
“The fun’s all over, fellows,” he told us. “They’re on their way in
with their man. You might as well go home.”
In this and the preceding chapter I have endeavoured to show Big Bear’s
band in a characteristic attitude of hostility to the government.
The leaven of mischief was already at work; they were prepared to
start, with all the inherent cruelty of the savage, on a course of
rapine and bloodshed at the first favourable opportunity. How soon
that opportunity was to arise the handful of white men who had made
their way into that primitive corner of the far North-west beyond the
Saskatchewan could then have small conception.