IN THE POWER OF THE HOSTILES
Big Bear, as I learned from him long afterward, went straight to his
lodge when he returned to camp and went to sleep, for he was tired.
Imasees, Wandering Spirit and other of the leaders were in secret
council. At midnight the war chief gave an order and four of those in
the lodge stepped out quietly and vanished in the gloom.
Isadore Mondion was a minor chief of the Wood Crees with a house on the
reservation. He had Iroquois blood in his veins. His father as a young
man had paddled his canoe from the St. Lawrence to the Saskatchewan,
a voyageur in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Mondion was
strong, intelligent and fearless and a friend of the whites. He did not
care for these councils of Big Bear’s band; no good was to be expected
from them, he thought.
Soon after midnight the door of his house opened and four of Big Bear’s
warriors filed silently in. They seated themselves on the floor, and
Mondion rose and extended the usual Indian hospitalities. He blew the
dull coals in the mud chimney into a blaze and hung the copper pail
over it for tea.
“The night is dark,” he said. The visitors nodded. “It is warm.” Yes,
it was warm, Little Bear agreed. There was a long pause. “You visit
late. For what do you come to see me?”
Bare Neck spoke. “Wandering Spirit sent us. You are not a true Cree.
Already the police have gone. He does not wish the other whites to
leave. He does not trust you.”
Mondion’s eyes flashed. “Wandering Spirit is wise; also he is very
brave, and he must think his followers very brave, too, that he sends
four to guard a single man!”
Little Bear lowered his rifle threateningly. Mondion struck it up. They
clinched and rocked back and forth across the room, until they went
down, Little Bear under. The others drew knives and threw themselves on
Mondion. They dragged him away and bound him. Not until near daylight
did they release him.
Meanwhile Wandering Spirit had not slept. Spies lay about the agent’s
house. It was still dark at four o’clock when Imasees and Chaquapocase
entered noiselessly through a window and crept upstairs to Quinn’s
room. His wife was awake and sprang out between the would-be assassins
and her husband. Lone Man and Sitting Horse, her brother, flung into
the room and confronted the others, guns in their hands.
“Dogs!” cried Lone Man. “Is not his wife a Cree woman and my niece? Let
him alone!”
They departed, scowling. “Wandering Spirit will deal with you!”
muttered Imasees.
Lone Man was brave and influential, a son-in-law of Big Bear.
“Who is Wandering Spirit?” he sneered. “Tell him Kapayagwan Napapowit
protects Kapwatamut!” They remained in the agent’s room. Soon daylight
began to filter through the windows. Wandering Spirit forced the front
door and entered the office. He took down the three guns hanging there.
“Kapwatamut!” he called. “Come down!”
“Do not go, Kapwatamut!” Lone Man urged. “We will stay and defend you.”
Quinn laughed mirthlessly. “It is useless,” he said. “And never will
they be able to say Kapwatamut was afraid to face them!”
He reached the foot of the stairs to find himself surrounded. Wandering
Spirit placed a hand on his shoulder. “You are my prisoner,” said the
war chief.
I was sleeping soundly in my room at the Hudson’s Bay post. I awoke
with a start. A hand, clutching my shoulder, was shaking me roughly. It
was just sunrise. I sat up. Walking Horse, a Wood Cree employed about
the post, stood beside the bed. His eyes were ablaze with excitement.
“_Waniska!_ Get up!” he cried in Cree. “I think it will be ‘bad’
to-day!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They have taken the horses from the government stables, already,” he
replied.
“Who has taken the horses?”
“They say, the half-breeds, but I believe it is Big Bear’s men.”
I needed no further urging. I dressed quickly and went down stairs.
Immediately, Imasees entered, followed by twenty of the younger bucks.
Their faces were daubed with vermilion and they carried rifles. Usually
the chief’s son greeted me with some pleasantry, but there was nothing
of friendliness on his unsmiling features this morning. He stopped in
front of me.
“Have you any ammunition?” he asked curtly.
I thought I was fortunate to be able to tell him that I had.
“Well, we want it.”
He knew the regulations as well as I did. “Where is your order from the
agent? You can’t get it without that.”
He leaned forward, his face close to mine. “This is no time for idle
talk! If you don’t give it to us, we’ll break the shop open and take
it.”
My bluff had not worked. “Oh, if that’s how you put it, I’ll open the
shop. If you’re bound to have it I can’t prevent you. I don’t want the
lock broken.”
Opening the shop, I called my friend, Yellow Bear, behind the counter.
“Hand that keg out,” I told him. “I won’t touch it.”
I had, as has been seen, sent the bulk of the powder to Pitt with the
police. They divided what I had kept—perhaps two pounds—among them.
Miserable Man leaped over the counter, elbowed me roughly aside and
gathered up the scattered bullets on the floor. Others reached across
the counter and helped themselves to the long butcher-knives on the
shelves, and files with which they began to sharpen them. Big Bear
pushed his way in.
“Don’t touch anything in here without leave!” he commanded sternly.
“Ask him for it,” indicating me with a wave of his hand. He left the
shop again.
Yellow Bear stepped out among them. The old man scowled at the young
bucks, shouldering them toward the door. “You have got what you wanted.
_Neeuk!_ Go!”
He closed the door and stepped back behind the counter. He picked up a
muskrat spear. “I’ll take this,” he said. “I might want to use it. I
have no gun.” Big Bear’s men had already secured all our weapons.
I was heartily grateful for the old man’s friendship this 2nd of April
morning. “Take anything you wish, Yellow Bear,” I told him. “And
whatever happens, stick to me.”
We had in stock two boxes of Perry Davis’s Painkiller. It contains
alcohol and opium. I feared it might fall into the hands of the Indians
and their ugly mood did not seem to need any stimulating. We took it to
the house and hid it behind the chimney upstairs.
On coming down again, I found a messenger from Wandering Spirit
awaiting me. I was wanted at the agent’s house, he said. I went,
under the guard of young men he had sent. They did not behave in any
unfriendly manner; simply surrounded me.
There were nine white men beside myself in the little settlement, and
when I reached Quinn’s office I found them all seated in it. Quinn
sat at the farther end with the Scotch-half-breed interpreter, John
Pritchard, and Instructor Delaney near him. The Indians crowded round
them and blocked the doorway. Wandering Spirit held the centre of the
floor. He was speaking. His manner aroused in me a distinct feeling of
dismay.
“Who is at the head of the whites in this country?” he demanded,
shaking his fist in Quinn’s face. “Is it the governor, or the Hudson’s
Bay Company, or who?”
Quinn laughed. I think he must already have abandoned any hope that
he would be permitted to see another sunset; the laugh was harsh and
forced. It may have struck him as finely ironical that the men who made
the regulations for the government of these Indians should be free to
walk about securely in their eastern homes while he, an instrument in
carrying them out, was a prisoner of these Indians and in danger of his
life at their hands.
“Sir John Macdonald, a man at Ottawa,” he replied. “He is the chief of
all the white men who deal with the Indians.”
The speech ended with a demand for beef. They were returning to their
old form of attack on the government and the agent. Would he have the
fortitude, now that he was at their mercy, to refuse? Quinn turned to
the instructor.
“Is there an ox on the reservation that has outlived his usefulness?”
he asked carelessly.
Delaney mentioned one so old as to be no longer serviceable. Quinn said
they might kill it and sent a Wood Cree boy to point the animal out.
The office was close, and the menacing attitude of the Indians and
the way in which they hemmed us in no doubt made it seem closer. I
felt extremely thankful, therefore, when upon gaining their point they
permitted us to go outside and get a breath of fresh air. Some of
Big Bear’s men asked me to return to the shop; they wanted tobacco.
Gladieu, a Wood Cree leader and my good friend, approached Wandering
Spirit.
“Leave Cameron there,” he told him. “You will be wanting other things.”
The war chief, I knew against his will, agreed. I hardly need say I was
glad.
I found Yellow Bear at the shop. “Stay close to me, and when they get
what they want order them out,” I said to him in a low voice as I
unlocked the door. “They have the strong hand to-day, and I can’t do
it.”
Afterward I went into the house and charged what they had taken—as I
remember it, chiefly to the government. I know I felt at the time that
the authorities were not without blame for the position in which we
found ourselves. Quinn should have had a strong force of the police at
his back when he was sent to deal with the most intractable band of
Indians in the country.
Some of the Indians passed through the house as I was making these
entries. They looked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing.
When they were told, they laughed. Mrs. Simpson, wife of my chief
at Frog Lake and herself a half-blood, watched me closely while the
Indians were about. Evidently she feared for my safety. But I would
not dwell on the dark possibilities; I could not think that they would
cold-bloodedly injure those who had placed themselves unreservedly in
their power, and I resolved to keep up as long as possible at least the
semblance of authority.
Rev. Felix Marchand, missionary priest at Onion Lake, twenty miles on
the way to Pitt, had arrived at Frog Lake the day before. He, Père
Fafard, Henry Quinn, Yellow Bear and myself had breakfast together
about nine-thirty in the Company’s house. I say breakfast, but we had
little appetite for food. We discussed our position and agreed that it
was indeed grave.
Shortly after the priests left. An Indian woman, greatly agitated,
entered the house. “Little Bear struck Père Fafard in the eye with
the butt of his riding whip,” she whimpered. Pessimism swept over me.
Anything might happen now.
I went back to the shop. George Dill’s store stood on a hill directly
before the Hudson’s Bay post. They had looted it early in the morning,
breaking in the doors and windows.
Wandering Spirit dropped in. Since I had last seen him he had smeared
his eyelids and lips thickly with yellow ochre. He looked hideous.
“Why don’t you go to the church?” he asked in his hard voice. “Your
friends are already there.”
No smile played on the face of the war chief to-day; instead, the worst
passions of his savage nature were depicted there.
I was not a Roman Catholic, but I did not dare disregard what was
in effect an order, and I walked over. On the way I met Four-Sky
Thunder, one of Big Bear’s councillors. He bowed, smiled and said:
“_N’Chawamis!_ (My Little Brother!)” as he passed me. I felt grateful
to the tall, pleasant warrior. The looks that Wandering Spirit had
given me had been black enough.
The door of the church was open. Several armed and painted Indians
stood before it. Father Marchand stepped down to close it, but Father
Fafard stopped him. Big Bear and Miserable Man stood inside at the
back. The chief told me later that he was there to prevent bloodshed
and I believed him; for though outwardly calm, well do I recall the
suppressed feeling and determination on the old warrior’s face. I am
convinced that Big Bear would have flung himself upon the first of his
savage followers to point a gun and fought for our lives.
All the whites were assembled, as well as the half-breeds. The priests
were celebrating mass, for it was a holy day of their church—the day
before Good Friday.
I stepped across to the row of pews opposite the door and took a seat.