BIG BEAR SCORES HIS FOLLOWERS
For the first few days after the massacre the Indians gave themselves
up largely to feasting and dancing. Some four hundred head of work
cattle and milk cows, supplied to the Wood Crees in the district, were
rounded up and herded near the camp. Besides the provisions and other
goods obtained from the two posts, they had looted the dwellings of the
missionaries, government officials and settlers at Frog Lake and in the
surrounding territory. Every day for the first few weeks eight or ten
head of cattle were shot, and besides beef there was flour, tea, sugar,
bacon and tobacco in plenty. The Indian revelled in the unaccustomed
abundance and it is not to be wondered at that he grew wasteful. To the
prisoners, on the other hand, these were days of supreme wretchedness
and anxiety.
The oxen had been supplied to the various bands for agricultural
purposes and the cows were intended to form the nucleus of a herd which
it was the plan of the government to distribute among the Indians as
they became sufficiently trustworthy properly to care for them. The
animals before the outbreak had been in the keeping of some of the
more progressive men of the three Wood Cree bands at Frog Lake. These
Indians still asserted a personal property in the cattle and soon bad
blood began to show itself between them and Big Bear’s men, who refused
to recognize any individual interests in the herd and slew the animals
as their whims and appetites dictated.
The two hundred lodges composing the camp were pitched in an oblong
circle enclosing a considerable space. One evening about sundown while
strolling through the camp I noticed two Indians, one armed, the other
not, disputing hotly a short way in front of me. Suddenly the man
with the gun clubbed it and brought it down in a vicious swing on the
other’s head, laying him flat. He then walked off.
In a few minutes the other got up, howling with rage and pain, blood
streaming down his face, and staggered to his lodge. He reappeared
immediately with a gun and, still howling, started in the direction of
the Plain Cree lodges at the upper end of the camp. Two of his friends
stole up behind him, seized his arms and took away his weapon. Had he
reached the other man’s lodge he would of course have been killed. In a
second encounter his assailant would not have hesitated to substitute
the load in his gun for the barrel. I afterward learned that they had
quarrelled over some cattle claimed by the Wood Cree.
There was danger and excitement in the camp when the cattle were
slaughtered each day. It brought back to the Indians old times and the
buffalo hunt. They ran the cattle on horseback and shot them and were
not always careful about the direction of their bullets. If a steer
dodged among the lodges the man on horseback followed and fired at the
first opportunity. Sometimes the bullet hit the steer; sometimes it
went through a lodge—to the consternation of the inmates.
I walked over occasionally to see them dispose of a kill. As soon as
it fell it was bled. Then it was turned on its back and skinned down
either side, the hide being spread out to cover as much ground as
possible and serve as a table on which to lay out the meat. Squaws and
children, interested spectators, crowded about the carcase. The butcher
parcelled out the animal, handed a piece to each and they went away
happy. In the earlier part of my captivity I never wanted for beef.
One bright afternoon, three or four days after the massacre, I was
lying in Patenaude’s lodge when I heard Big Bear speaking. The Indians
had danced and orated daily since the outbreak, but I had kept away
from them, knowing that their talk was only of violence and bloodshed.
When I heard the old chief, however, my curiosity was excited. He had
seemed depressed ever since the rising; he had avoided these dances of
Wandering Spirit and the young men and so far as I knew had not yet
publicly spoken his mind to his band on the outrages. I was anxious to
hear what he had to say.
The warriors to the number of sixty were seated in the form of a
horseshoe on the ground at the upper end of the camp. Big Bear occupied
the centre. At the top sat Wandering Spirit with the other councillors
and I stretched myself at the open end opposite them where I could
observe the war chief, towards whom my eyes were irresistibly drawn
whenever he was in sight. Big Bear spoke in Cree and I caught only the
close of his speech. He said:
“_Kias_ I was a chief. Long ago, when we fought the Blackfeet, not a
man among you could do what I did. All the South Nations—the Bloods,
Peigans, Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux—knew Big Bear; that he was head chief
of all the Crees. At that time if I said anything you listened to
me—you obeyed me. But now I say _one_ thing and _you_ do another!”
He bent over and swept his arm in the faces of Wandering Spirit and
the other councillors, who sat with lowered eyes, and pointed in the
direction of the smouldering ruins of Frog Lake. The old man stood for
a moment in this dramatic pose, his face quivering with emotion; then
he folded his soiled grey blanket about him with an air of impressive
dignity and strode away, a pathetic but still commanding figure. He
entered Mr. Simpson’s tent and I followed. He had noticed me as he
walked off and looking up as I came in said, with a wave of his hand:
“I have got the name of being a bad man, but Missa Jim here, my oldest
friend, can tell you that is not true. In the old days, when the
Company sold rum and I drank it, I did not get ugly and wish to make
trouble like the others. To sit quietly and sing—that was what I liked,
as Missa Jim knows. I have always been the friend of the white man.
I am sorry for what was done. I am more than sorry for my brother,
Delaney. Had I only been near when the shooting began, I should have
saved him, at least.”
The Indians were preparing to go down and attack Fort Pitt. Mr. Simpson
and I thought this a good opportunity to suggest to Big Bear that the
police under Inspector Dickens and the handful of settlers who had
fled to the fort for refuge, be allowed to leave Pitt unmolested,
in consideration of their abandoning the place without a fight. Pitt
was a fort in name only—in reality, a group of unprotected wooden
buildings—and we knew that it would be impossible for the little
garrison of thirty men to hold out for any length of time against the
three hundred armed hostiles. Big Bear readily agreed to call a council
and urge upon his band the adoption of our advice, before they left for
Pitt.