FORT PITT ONCE MORE
I had left Fort Pitt for Battleford only a day or two when the Wood
Crees came in from Lac des Isles and surrendered. It was dark when they
arrived, that strange man Wandering Spirit with them. Evidently the
war chief saw only death ahead of him. Their lodges were pitched, the
evening meal was over. Wandering Spirit came to the door of his lodge
and called:
“All who wish to look on me once more, come now!”
He went back, dropped on a blanket, and sat staring gloomily into the
fire. Half an hour passed. He jumped to his feet, his hand snatched
at his waist and flung out clutching his long sheath-knife, the blade
struck deep into his side and he fell to the ground.
The war chief’s aim was bad. He missed his heart, but cut the lung so
that a lobe protruded. His time was not yet.
Yes, a strange man, this war chief; suspicious yet no coward; capable
of any devilry when the passions of the savage held sway, yet kind
and gentle to his family and to others in calmer moods; a slayer of
defenceless men, yet daring to recklessness on the battlefield, with a
record of many Blackfoot scalps. And in the end sacrificing himself as
an atonement for the rest of his band. That he did not succeed was an
accident.
“Once a priest always a priest, once a Mason always a Mason, but once a
journalist always and for ever a journalist,” says Rudyard Kipling. For
journalist, he might have substituted trader. No sooner was I well out
of the clutches of the savages, vowing I never again wanted to see an
Indian, than I was ready to go back among them. There is a charm about
the red man, with his paint, his feathers, his simplicity, his native
eloquence, his irresponsibility—even his dirt, and in the smoke of his
camp fires; the crossed and blackened poles of his shifting habitation,
the sweep and majesty of his virgin land—something in all this that
gets into the blood of his white-skinned brother and sticks there.
It lures him away from the conventionalities, the set and fretting
boundaries of civilized life, back toward the beginning of things when
Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord and all men were shepherds.
There were dollars and furs, bead, silk and feather work, among the
Indians who had come in and surrendered at Pitt and I wanted a share of
it all. Besides, there was the pay of the troops themselves left at the
old fort. Therefore—I think before I was actually altogether aware of
it—I found myself absorbed in the business of selecting an outfit.
This is not quite so easy as it sounds, unless you know Indians—their
likes, their dislikes, their needs, what will interest them and what
won’t. These things I happened to know. There were blankets and print,
syrup, tobacco, vermilion in little deerskin bags, butter, canned
fruits, many other articles dear to the aboriginal heart and stomach,
including ginger ale and cigars. I met Poirier and engaged him with his
team to haul the stuff to Pitt, and I took Henry Quinn to help me deal
it out. Then we hit the trail and in four days from Battleford were in
Pitt again. We crossed the broad Saskatchewan with some difficulty,
pitched our tents near the headquarters of the commanding officer
on the hill above the ruins of the old fort and spread our wares in
readiness for business. Sentries about the Indian camp a few hundred
yards back guarded the surrendered hostiles.
I had been told by a trader who had preceded us to Pitt, having come
up-river by steamer, that I might as well return without unpacking.
He had been there a week and had sold practically nothing. I did not
accept his advice.
Only a few of the Indians were permitted to leave their camp at a time,
yet during the first two days I picked up both furs and fancy work
and paper dollars as well. They came with their valuables concealed
under their blankets, for the soldiers had a way of accepting anything
portable belonging to their charges without exchanging the formalities
of yea and nay.
The third morning after our arrival Colonel Osborne Smith, who had been
left by General Middleton to receive the surrender of the hostiles,
sent word to the Indian camp that all the men were to march with their
arms to the open space between the two camps, as he had something to
say to them. An hour later they arrived in a body. The Winnipeg Light
Infantry in scarlet tunics were drawn up in line to receive them. The
Indians were told to pile their guns at a spot designated and to take
seats in a half-circle on the ground some distance off.
Colonel Smith spoke. He told them they had been guilty of grave wrong
in taking up arms against the Great Mother, but that the heart of the
Great Mother was kind and most of them would be forgiven. There were
some, however, who had killed defenceless white men, burned buildings
and committed other serious offences. These the Great Mother had
ordered him to take with him to Battleford. The Great Mother would say
later what should be done with them. He would call out the names of
those who were wanted and they must step out and take seats together,
apart from the others.
He read my deposition and the interpreter called the names of the
murderers—Walking the Sky, Manichoos, Napaise—with those of minor
offenders between. He called the name of Apischiskoos. I saw the face
of the man who had struck the priest in the eye with the butt of his
riding-whip and chased on horseback and shot down a poor fugitive, take
on a ghastly smile as he rose and walked to the doomed group of his
fellows.
When the chief criminals had been taken the redcoats stepped between
them and the remainder and they were marched down to the old fort to
await the departure of the boat which should carry them to Battleford
and judgment. Then the others were told not to forget the mercy of the
Great Mother, for many were almost equally guilty. They could return to
their reservations but they would not be trusted with their arms. They
would be cared for if they were good for the future, as they had been
looked after before the trouble, and now they might return to their
lodges.
Wandering Spirit was ill in the camp, Miserable Man a fugitive,
Kaweechetwaymot dead.
Trade was not so brisk as I wished, for many of the Indians whom I knew
possessed barterable effects would not leave their camp at all. Late in
the afternoon, therefore, I secured from Colonel Smith to the sentry on
duty at the bridge between the camps an order, pass me with a wagon,
into the Indian encampment. It was stipulated that I was to remain not
longer than an hour. However, that did not matter.
Loading the remaining stock into the wagon, we drove over. In a few
minutes our open-air shop was surrounded. Men, women and children
handed up dollar notes, beaver skins and fancy moccasins at such a rate
that I was kept busy receiving them and had to call to my assistance in
dealing out the goods a couple of the more intelligent of the Indians.
Notwithstanding the time limit, I was in no hurry to leave, and when
darkness came, as it soon did, I drove over among the lodges, put up a
small tent and stowed what little stock remained away in it. I had got
most of the Indians’ saleable property, but up until eleven o’clock
that night an odd one dropped in with another dollar bill to make a
small purchase and we smoked and talked about “the things that was” and
those that were to come.
I was leaving these poor people, these children of the wilderness, with
all their good and bad traits—their ready and generous hospitality for
long years to the white man wherever met, until evil counsels and the
white man’s own cupidity and looseness and contempt brought disease and
destitution into their midst and turned their hands against himself.
Many of them had been my companions on lonely trails. Some had faced
danger and death to defend me. Most of them had been my friends when
God knows if ever I had need of friends. I was leaving them probably
never to come again amongst them, and I was truly sad.
Before turning into my blankets I walked over to the lodge of an
Indian whom I had known well. He had been arrested that day for some
minor offence, but his wife and brother-in-law were there. She was a
woman who would have been thought pretty even among civilized peoples.
She had a face like one of Gibson’s women—a rather thin face with
graceful lines and deep intelligent eyes. Her black hair was fine and
lustrous and she had the bright coquettish ways of those women always
so dangerous to men. Once a white man had fallen in love with her and
her husband had gone to the white man’s house in the night and tried to
kill him. The white man had been sent out by the government to teach
the Indians how to farm and raise stock. That weakness—for a tawny oval
face—was a failing of too many of the white men whom the government
employed to show the ignorant red man how to live.
I talked to the woman, telling her that her husband would soon be free
again. In comparison with what others had done, he was unspotted. It
had grown very still, except that in a lodge near by some women wailed
dismally. I asked her whose it was.
“Apischiskoos’s,” she replied. His wife and his three pretty daughters,
just budding into the hopeless Indian womanhood, would never see him
again.
Next morning the Indians still discovered means to buy and I stayed on
in the camp. With the exception of Wandering Spirit the chief culprits
had all been taken and later in the day those remaining at liberty
would move out to Onion Lake. About nine o’clock I walked over to see
Wandering Spirit.
The war chief was a very sick man. He lay outside his lodge, screened
from the sun by a blanket on poles above his head, his long curling
hair resting on a pillow, his arms and chest bare except for the
encircling bandage hiding his wound.
He turned his deep black eyes as I came up—and listless they looked
now, but as soon as he saw me the old fire flashed into them, the
fierce blood surged to his face and made it dark as I had so often seen
it do before when he was roused. Did he hate me to the last? I have
often wondered. The excitement upset him in his weakness; he turned
away in distress. I, his enemy, had come to taunt him he thought,
perhaps. I stood looking down at him for some moments.
“Have you anything to trade?” I asked at length. “I am here with goods,
but to-day I go again. Anything you want you must get now.”
He shook his head slightly. “No,” he answered wearily, “I want nothing.
Anyway I have nothing with which to buy.” He looked toward the lodge.
“_N’Tanis!_” His daughter came. He spoke with her in a low voice, then
stretched out his hand to me with a ten-cent piece in it. “At least I
have this. She will spend it with you.”
I looked at the wasted figure with its weak voice. Could this be
the terrible man I had shrunk from on that appalling day at Frog
Lake?—whom I had heard boast in the Grass Dance of the scalps he had
taken?—who had ruled a camp of savages by the might and dread of his
single arm and will? My heart was touched with a strange unreasoning
pity for him. I knew that this was a sentiment I had no imaginable
excuse for entertaining, yet there it was, uninvited.
“What are you living on?” I asked.
“Nothing, almost nothing. The soldiers are good; they give us bacon and
flour every day. But I do not care to eat.”
“Fat bacon and mouldy flour are no food for a sick man,” I said. “Let
your daughter come with me and I will send you things better for you.
Where is the knife—the one you did this with?” I pointed to his wound.
He sent and got it. His blood was still upon the blade. “I will keep
this to remember you by,” I said.
He nodded assent and I went back to my camp. I gave his daughter
jam, canned meat, tea, sugar, butter, biscuit for my old enemy. He
was carried on a stretcher to the steamboat, put aboard with the
other prisoners and that afternoon they went down the Saskatchewan to
Battleford.
The Indians struck their lodges and moved at noon for Onion Lake.
Another boat was expected in a day or two from Edmonton and I decided
to wait and return by her to Battleford. I sent Poirier back by trail
and toward evening said to Quinn:
“Let’s go out and camp one more night among them. It will probably be
the last. And I want to get Kahneepotaytayo’s dancing dress.”
A half-breed hired us horses and sitting that night with the Indians in
their lodges we imagined ourselves once more out of the world we knew.
I looked up the head dancer of Big Bear’s band and gave him a fancy
blanket for his dress. It was a silver-fox pelt, slit down the back and
decorated with military brass buttons, plumes, bells and ribbons. He
wore it thrown over his shoulders, the head resting on his chest and
the splendid tail hanging down behind him. He had kept it carefully
rolled up and hidden away so that the troops should not get it, but he
thought he would not require it any more.
Next morning we rode back to Pitt, the steamer arrived in a day or two
and we returned to Battleford.