IN THE CRUCIBLE
On Good Friday, the day following the massacre, John Fitzpatrick,
farming instructor at Cold Lake, fifty miles to the north, was brought
into camp by Big Bear’s runners. The Indians had been told by Riel that
the Americans would send troops to assist them in their war against the
Canadian government, and being an American, Fitzpatrick was looked upon
as a friend.
King Bird put his head into Patenaude’s lodge and said he had been sent
by Wandering Spirit to summon me to the council sitting at the upper
end of the camp. I had learned only too well what was likely to happen
to anyone insane enough to disregard the war chief’s wishes; I got up
quickly and followed King Bird. As we walked along I said in Cree, with
a wave of my hand in the direction of the smouldering ruins of Frog
Lake:
“I hope there’s going to be no more of _that_?”
King Bird looked at me with his engaging frankness. “Oh, no,” he
answered. “Wandering Spirit wants only to talk with you.”
It was a beautiful morning—the 4th of April. An atmosphere of peace, a
melting, slumbrous haze, rested over all the virgin loveliness of that
wilderness land—its wooded slopes, its sweeping green expanses, its
soft blue lakes under the wide skies. It was hard to believe that amid
such smiling settings there had been staged just two days before one of
the blackest tragedies in Canadian history.
The council sat on the grass in a circle, a triple row of painted and
befeathered savages. They made a way for me to reach the hollow space
in the centre, and Wandering Spirit, who sat on his heels inside the
inner row, motioned me to a seat beside him on the right. He wore
his war bonnet and a rifle rested across his knees. From the bonnet
depended five broad white eagle plumes, their points jet-tipped, for
each of which I had heard him boast he meant to have a white man’s
life. Until then he had taken just two, those of Quinn and Father
Marchand, so that three were still needed to make good his boast.
Immediately behind Wandering Spirit sat Imasees, half-brother to King
Bird. Imasees was the real instigator of the Frog Lake atrocities,
though clever enough so to manœuvre that upon others should fall the
blame. He was emphatically a dangerous Indian—a cool, commanding figure
in the flush of young manhood, with muscles of spring steel and the
features of a Roman legionary. He wore his hair roached above his
unwinking black eyes, like a horse’s foretop, and he had about him
something of the dominating force which despite his age still remained
to Big Bear. In fact, so striking an example of the pure type of Plains
savage was Imasees that notwithstanding his crafty and treacherous
nature, I could not but confess a degree of secret admiration for him.
John Pritchard sat in the centre of the hollow space, with Mr. Simpson
beside him. I noticed Fitzpatrick sitting with some half-breeds,
including Andre Nault, Louis Goulet and Abram Montour, on the left of
the circle. Louis Patenaude, my guard in camp, and Alexis Crossarms
sat immediately beside Wandering Spirit on the left; William Gladieu
on his right. The Plain Crees completely surrounded us. As I walked to
the place assigned me and glanced over the banked ring of bedaubed and
forbidding faces, a sense of the peril which hemmed us in came upon me.
Should we ever again pass that barrier of sinister faces? I tried to
tell myself that we should, but it was not easy.
[Illustration:
IMASEES
BIG BEAR’S SECOND SON AND INSTIGATOR OF THE FROG LAKE MASSACRE.
_Facing p. 88._
]
Wandering Spirit fixed me with the eyes that always seemed to bore
into one’s very soul and raising a hand as if to impress me with the
importance of what he had to say, he began:
“You are one of them, the big Company. You trade with the Crees for
furs and write everything down in a book. Tell me—you know: The Company
sold this land to the Big Chief Woman; took money for it. Why did they
do that? This land belongs to us. The Company did not own it. But they
are rich because they got much money for something that was not theirs.
We are not rich. We are poor. Often we do not have enough to eat. So we
have taken back the land, and when it is sold again—to the Long-Knives
(Americans)—the money will come to us, not to the Company.
“You saw what happened the other day; how Sioux Speaker and those other
men dropped. It is _iyamun_ when the Crees make war! Plenty blood runs.
This, that began the other day—it will go on until there are no longer
any Canadians here. That was my vow when I fired the first shot. Now,
say: Why did they sell the land? How much did they get?”
I realized the need for carefully-considered replies to any questions
he might put to me. I was in no hurry to answer. Wandering Spirit,
backed no doubt by Imasees, had set a trap for me. I was the only
living white man who had witnessed the butchery at Frog Lake. It gave
him, I think, a sense of uneasiness when he looked at me and recalled
that. It was an omen of bad luck. On the morning of that day of blood
he had intended I should die with the others, planned to that end,
ordering me again and again to join and stay with them. But some
friendly Indian, on one pretext or another, was sure a moment later to
take me aside, so that when the fatal moment arrived with the firing
of the first shot I was in the trading shop, fitting Yellow Bear with
a cap. Wandering Spirit had never forgiven me, I knew, for being still
alive and I had no doubt his mind was made up, notwithstanding his
professions of good will, to remedy the miscarriage of his designs and
dispose of me at the earliest opportunity. That might arise at any
instant with a hasty slip of my tongue.
Wandering Spirit knew no English and our conversation was carried on in
Cree.
“I do not carry all these things in my head,” I said at length, “but
I will try to tell you. The Hudson’s Bay Company did not sell the
country; as you say, it was not theirs to sell. But the Great Mother
thought they had some rights. They had been here two hundred years.
That is a long time. If you had lived for two hundred years on a piece
of land you would be very bitter if somebody took it away. The Queen
made a treaty with the Indians and the Hudson’s Bay Company had to give
up the land—most of it. They could not be driven out—or where would
the Indians have traded their furs?—and they had to live somewhere;
they had to have land for their posts. Now, you ask why the Great
Mother paid money to the Company. I will tell you. The Company had been
good to the Indians, so the Great Mother when she sent her money chiefs
to make the treaty paid the Company three hundred thousand pounds.”
Wandering Spirit clapped his hands over his mouth in the Cree gesture
of astonishment too colossal for expression in words. Then he swung
suddenly upon me and said in his peculiarly penetrative tones:
“You knew about the fighting at Duck Lake—knew before the bad day here.
If you Company men were friends of the Crees, you would have told the
news. You told us nothing.”
The fight, between Riel and the North-West Mounted Police, occurred on
March 26th; we had learned of it five days later. Frog Lake followed
on April 2nd. This was April 4th. We had not thought it wise to say
anything to the Indians about the rising at Duck Lake.
I said: “I overheard something of your talk. You knew all about it—more
than we did. I could not tell you anything.”
“Well, we will see how much you know now,” he persisted. “Tell me all
about it—the half-breed war; how it started, who were killed, how many
soldiers, where they are. Speak with one tongue.”
He had given me a formidable and disturbing task. “Mr. Simpson brought
me a _musinagan_ from Pitt. It tells about Duck Lake—the fighting. I
will get the paper and read it to you.” I rose, but he stopped me with
a gesture.
“If you saw it, you know what it says. You don’t need the paper.”
My position had now reached a point of extreme difficulty and danger. I
could not rely on memory to give him exact details of the battle or of
the movements and numbers of troops—already on their way from the East
to the Saskatchewan. Yet there were half-breeds in the camp able to
read English and I knew that the paper would be taken and read by one
of them following this examination and that any trifling discrepancy
would be seized on by Wandering Spirit to fix upon me a charge of
falsehood and attempt to mislead the band. A pretext to denounce me as
an enemy of the Crees was all that was wanted by Wandering Spirit.
“You must think me very wise, Kahpaypamahchakwayo,” I replied. “I am
not so clever. You do not make it easy for me; you make it hard.” I
looked round at the rows of tense, unsmiling faces. Some of them, I
knew, were my friends.
“Hear—I am speaking to the council—I want to say, I will tell all I
remember! If I leave anything out that is in the paper—if I do not tell
something exactly as it is there—do not say I spoke with two tongues.
That will not be so!” A shout of the approving “_How!_” ran round the
circle. I went on:
“The South Branch half-breeds, misled by Riel and other headmen,
threatened to seize the traders’ stores at Duck Lake. The chief of the
mounted police, with fifty men, on the way from Fort Carlton to Duck
Lake to protect the stores, met the half-breeds under Riel and Dumont
and a battle followed. Eleven of the white men were killed; some
wounded. Some of the half-breeds and a few of Beardy’s Crees, also. A
bullet ploughed through Gabriel Dumont’s scalp; the white chief was
wounded in the face. The police had returned to Carlton. The head chief
of the mounted police had arrived there with one hundred more men, but
he had burned Fort Carlton and moved down to Prince Albert. One of the
Queen’s big soldier chiefs had reached the Touchwood Hills with two
thousand men. More soldiers were following from Red River. An——”
“I don’t believe all this!” Wandering Spirit broke in excitedly. “Liar!”
I looked him in the eye. “You asked me to tell you what the paper says.
I am telling you. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. Some things I
am not very sure about. But about the soldiers—I remember that.”
“You seem to remember everything against us—all this talk of soldiers
coming to fight us,” he sneered. He regarded me darkly for a moment;
then: “I am going to ask another question. A minute ago you wanted
everyone to hear you. Let them hear you now when you answer: Do you
want to see Riel win, or the whites? Whose side are you on?”
I hope never again to find myself in so critical a predicament. I
could not bring myself, in no matter what extremity, to say I sided
with these cut-throats, even though, because the thought of death so
appalled me just then, I had taken the hand held out to me by the
arch-assassin when he promised on the demand of Oneepohayo that I
should not be harmed—that lean, claw-like hand the closing of which
half an hour before had loosed the ball that stretched poor Quinn dead
at his feet.
What I finally did say—and I spoke to the whole council—was:
“The other day you made us—ten white men—prisoners, over yonder. A
little later nine died. I am glad that I am alive—that you saved me—but
I have no life of my own any more. It is yours. I am in your camp. Who
can I side with?”
I was manœuvring to avoid stating a deliberate falsehood, but the
effect to me was startling. I had looked for quick manifestations of
anger over an evasive answer. What I met was a chorus of approval of my
reply. In brief, I had made a hit. But not with Wandering Spirit. Of
that his face was the unspoken evidence.
I took advantage of a temporary lull in events to move, with the air of
regarding my position in the camp as definitely established, to a seat
in the open space near Pritchard, about six feet in front of Wandering
Spirit. But a moment later he turned on me again and said sharply:
“Say that you will stay with the Crees—will help them, not try to get
away!”
I nodded.
I could see his eyes kindle as he looked off to the right for a second;
then he faced me again: “Swear it!” he commanded. “Raise your hand!”
But the sympathy of many in the council had by this swung over to me.
They shouted “He did swear!”
“_Namoya!_” retorted the war chief angrily. “He did not!”
A clamour of virulent dispute arose, my champions asserting loudly
that I had sworn, most of Big Bear’s men as vociferously combating
the statement. The war of words mounted to an uproar, till at length
Wandering Spirit, fearing an actual clash between the two factions,
Wood and Plain Crees, dropped the point and I escaped taking the
hateful oath.
I have many times thought over the occurrence and long ago reached the
conclusion that what followed was just one detail, worked out probably
by Imasees or by Imasees and Wandering Spirit together, in the game
these two master-conspirators had set out to play.
I question if, barring Big Bear himself and his son-in-law, The Lone
Man—perhaps the bravest redskin I ever knew—there was in that whole
camp of two hundred lodges a single Indian who was not afraid of
Wandering Spirit. I do not except even Imasees, truculent by nature
though he was. The Lone Man and the war chief hated each other with
a deadly enmity, but—because of that no doubt—they also avoided one
another, contact spelling danger for both. No brave in his right
mind who wished to continue living would deliberately have provoked
Wandering Spirit.
Oseewoosgwan—Bald Head—was very old and he had the mind of a very old
man. That is why I put him down a tool of Imasees. From his actions and
appearance I am certain no sense of danger entered his shrunken old
brain as, leaning heavily on a stick, he pushed his way into the circle
and bending over, with a finger pointed derisively at the war chief,
piped in a high querulous falsetto:
“For what do you keep these white people here? You did not hold back
the other day.” He waved a hand in the direction of the smoking
desolation. “But now you talk—just talk. You have done bad already. It
beats you to go on with what you started, eh?”
The blood surged to Wandering Spirit’s face, flushing it darkly, as he
sat looking up from beneath his war bonnet at the old man. Suddenly his
right hand shot out, throwing the lever of his Winchester down in the
action of loading and thereby raising the muzzle.
He jumped to his feet. “You will see to-day whether it beats me!” he
shouted.
But rapid as had been his movements, Louis Patenaude and Alexis
Crossarms had anticipated them. They were both on their feet at his
left; in one hand Louis grasped the barrel of the Winchester and held
it above his head; behind, Alexis reinforced his hold with a double
grip of his own on the gun. Any effort by the now infuriated leader to
control the weapon was effectually blocked. In vain he struggled to
lower the barrel, to raise the butt to his shoulder. Alexis and Louis
held the Winchester as in a vice.
I had leaped to my feet at the first move of the war chief and now
stood with muscles tensed, oblivious to everything else, watching with
fascinated interest the drama being played out before me. How would it
end? If the maddened war chief succeeded by any chance in wresting the
gun from my defenders I was ready to throw myself upon him and seize
the rifle before he could level and discharge it at me. At Frog Lake
I had walked along, while rifles cracked and screams and whoops and
war-cries a hundred yards away made a stunning horror of the golden
April morning, weaponless, like a man with hands bound, my eyes on the
ground before me, expecting each instant a bullet in the back. Here
at least there was certainty of action. I would go down, if it was my
fate, fighting—I hoped with a kind of wild joy, bringing others down
with me—not like a dog! I was too engrossed at the moment to feel any
sense of fear.
A long knife stuck in a sheath in Wandering Spirit’s belt. Both the
war chief’s hands were engaged with his gun. Patenaude bent forward
suddenly and with his right hand plucked the knife from the sheath and
raising his arm, held the point poised an inch above Wandering Spirit’s
heart. Then he craned forward until his face almost met that of the
war chief and with eyes that glittered under the black brows like a
snake’s, bent upon the eyes opposing them a look of such calculated
deadliness that in the hush that fell upon the staring council only the
subdued clicking of stealthily-lifted gun-hammers could be heard.
The war chief’s fury died under the menace of those level eyes, and
over the copper features spread a film of dull grey, like dusted ashes.
But he still fought, though without his former desperate recklessness,
for possession of the Winchester.
Gladieu had risen with Wandering Spirit and his gun was now levelled
on the war chief’s head from behind. The hilt of the knife protruded
above Louis’ hand. Imasees, who had also risen and stood at Wandering
Spirit’s back, reached under his shoulder, grasped the protruding
handle and with a sudden jerk drew the knife through, leaving an ugly
gash across Louis’ fingers. Then Imasees, with outstretched arms and
the naked blade in his left hand flashing in the sun, glanced quickly
round the circle and spoke, in low, emotionless tones:
“This is not the way to do! It will make trouble between us. We want to
be all friends!”
The way of retreat had been opened for Wandering Spirit. He seized it
eagerly—no doubt gratefully.
“_Uh-huh!_” he exclaimed, his head nodding to emphasize his agreement.
“_Tapwa!_ (True!) The old man’s talk made my heart bad, but that is
past. We are all Crees here, all brothers!”
Alexis and Louis had kept their hold on the rifle, but when Wandering
Spirit lowered the hammer they released it. Gladieu stepped over,
pushed his shoulder against that of the war chief and his rifle
alongside the Winchester and watched narrowly while the two guns came
down together. The significance of Gladieu’s action lay in the fact
that he distrusted the war chief’s professed change of heart. He was
guarding against a feint—a surprise by Wandering Spirit once control of
his Winchester had passed again into his own hands.
Wandering Spirit was seated once more, but I still stood, absorbed
as ever, awaiting the next development. He looked up presently and
motioned with his hand.
“_Apee!_” he said. “Sit! _Numanando keeah!_” For which there is no
adequate translation. What he meant to convey was that I was not in
danger at the moment. Which was satisfactory as far as it went.
The strain had proved too much for the war chief and as he sat before
me I noted the violent shaking of his hands and knees, which he sought
in vain to control. The depression that had come over him he was
unable to throw off, and in a few minutes he had left the circle and
the council was over.
Big Bear stopped me on my way back to Patenaude’s lodge.
“Okemasis,” said the chief, “you were foolish to stand up just now.
Any could have shot you without danger to the others. Sitting you were
safer.”
I saw the force of Big Bear’s statement. Pritchard said: “How did you
ever get up? I could not have moved to save my life. They could have
knocked me on the head like a rabbit.”
Fitzpatrick had tried to rise, but Big Bear, who sat behind him, pulled
him down. So the old chief not only preached common-sense; he put it
into practice.
It was some time before the war chief made any further attempt to
dispose of me and nothing I experienced later tried me as did the
ordeal I had just successfully weathered.
I was walking through the camp a day or two later. The drummers were
beating the big drum; the war song rose above the assembled braves. I
glanced over at the group and gasped. Two warriors shuffled up and down
in the war dance, over their shoulders the gilt and white vestments of
their most unworldly and inoffensive victims, the dead priests. I was
not a Roman Catholic, but apart from its, for me, poignant personal
significance, the sight so completely outraged those feelings of
reverence I had been brought up to entertain for all things sacred
that I could only stand and stare. It remains among my most vivid
impressions of that terrible two months.