“A Course of R*pine And Bl*odshed: The Cree Indians Begin Their W*r Against The Canadian Government “

1884 Saskatchewan Canada the Cree Indians had signed a treaty with the Canadian governments in 1882 and they had moved near Frog Lake while looking to select a site for their reservation but the buffalo population had dwindled and the Canadian governments provided inadequate rations that left the Indians in a state of near starvation the Crees had also heard from Indians who had traveled north from the Dakotas and Montana that the Indians on American reservations were treated better by their governments all this led to anger and discontentments that appear to be boiling over in this episode we will hear about the beginning of the Northwest Indian Rebellion led by Chiefs Poundmaker Big Bear and Wondering Spirits that took place in Saskatchewan between 1884 and 1886 we will be reading from this book The War Trail of Big Bear History of the 1885 Frog Lake Massacre this book was published all the way back in 1926 by William Bleasedell Cameron who worked for the Hudson Bay Company and witnessed most of the events so here is the story of one of the last major Indian wars on the North American continents between the Cree Indians and the Canadian settlers and mounted police in Saskatchewan.

On a bright morning in October 1884 the Plains Cree Indians of Big Bear’s band were in camp on the high bank of the North Saskatchewan River above Fort Pitt. They were assembled to receive their annuities which would be paid at Pitt on the 20th of that month. Under the treaty the chiefs received $25, counselors $15, and all others men, women, and children $5 in each year while grass grew and water ran. Fort Pitt was an old and important trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 150 miles east of Fort Edmonton and 35 miles southeast of Frog Lake. George Dill and I had made the rounds of the payments at the various reservations with a trading outfit in competition with other traders for a share of the Indians’ crisp new notes. Now our tents were pitched near the Indian lodges in readiness for the business that would follow the last and largest payments, that to Big Bear and his band. The Indian’s day of affluence has soon passed; his money is gone almost as soon as he receives it. A new profit and champion had arrived in the band. I had met Little Poplar a few days before. He had come from Pitt to Frog Lake with an order on John Delaney, farm instructor there, for provisions. I learned later how he had obtained it on the trail. He had met the government inspector of Indian agencies. The following dialogue ensued:

“Little Poplar, who are you?“

“I am an officer of the great white mother and I come from the pile of bones, Regina. Each year I go around all the reserves to see how fast the Indians are learning the white man’s road, how to make things grow on the land so that they will soon have plenty to eat. They should of course also get help when they are sick or in need, flour or whatever. I look into these things. I am an inspector.“

“I am glad to hear that. I am an inspector too, and it is me, Wesson. When we two inspectors meet, I have just come from the company of long knives to see how my people are treated by the officers of the great white mother, and the first thing I see is that they are hungry, some are sick. I think you don’t look very good, your eyes maybe don’t see good. Give me a masanagam to the man at Frog Lake who is teaching them to grow things, a paper writes in it that he will give me kamichi cis, 30 bags of flour, 10 bags of bacon, tea, and sugar for my hungry and ailing people. That will be good medicine.“

The inspector was not accustomed to being addressed in such arrogant fashion by the government’s red wards and he was not pleased. He picked up the reins and spoke to his horses. The Indian put an arresting hand on the reins.

“No, don’t go yet. First give me masanagam and keep a hurry.”

The objection of the inspector to being delayed prevented an immediate eruption of wrath and Little Poplar got the order. I was standing beside farming instructor Delaney at Frog Lake when Little Poplar drove up with his Cree brother-in-law. He was a handsome Indian above medium height with clean square-cut features, full jaw, long-plaited black hair, quick tongue, and cool aggressive manner. His whole appearance stamped him at a glance as a savage with whom a white man to deal successfully must possess exceptional tact and assurance. A fancy blanket belted at the waist draped his erect muscular figure and beneath it he wore profusely beaded leggings and moccasins and a wide leather belt from which he hung a heavy buffalo knife and a Colt revolver. On his head was a broad Stetson hat encircled by a brass band with an eagle plume stuck in the side, and on his wrists brass bands, and in his ears huge brass rings. He made no mention of the order, but stepping up to Delaney he said curtly:

“I want 30 bags of flour, 10 bags of bacon, 10 lb of tea, and 50 lb of sugar.“

Delaney looked at him curiously.

“I don’t know you. Don’t even know whether you are in treaty. We don’t give provisions even to treaty Indians whenever they take a notion to ask for them; to strange Indians and those not in treaty we give none at all.”

Little Poplar’s lower lip stuck out.

“Why doesn’t the great white mother send us agents who are brave enough or strong enough to do things? It is men like you who cause trouble between the Indians and the police, like the near fight at Poundmaker’s last summer.”

He drew from under his blanket the inspector’s order and handed it to Delaney.

“Now do I get the provisions?” he sneered.

Of course he got them. Intensely irritated though he was, Delaney nevertheless was obliged to obey instructions. The supplies were loaded into the carts that had trailed Little Poplar and he returned to Pitt. Thomas Quinn, the Indian agent, followed a day or two later with the cash for the payment to Big Bear’s bands, and here the story is back to the point at which it began. Little Poplar has been introduced thus early in order to show the class of men who led what has long been recognized as the most turbulent and aggressive band of Indians in the Canadian Northwest, and because his influence and that of other chiefs served to foment the discontent and restlessness in their followers which was so soon to culminate in one of the most shocking tragedies in record of the Canadian government’s relations with its Indian wards.

On October 19th Agent Quinn sent word to Big Bear that he would pay the band at the Hudson’s Bay Company post in the morning. The Indians arrived promptly. They filled the office in the big forge building where Quinn was seated, they packed the hall, the stairs, the doors, and the open windows and trailed away into the square between the buildings. Outside all were painted and carried guns concealed under their blankets. Little Poplar was first to speak. He had come, he said, from across the line, come to see his people and do something for them. He had heard that they were hungry; that was so, the Americans treated their Indians better, gave them more to eat, more clothing. He would not speak much now, he would hear the others, after that he would speak.

Wondering Spirit, war chief, spoke next. He lamented the disappearance of the buffalo, the red man’s one friend, and lamented the Indians’ destitution, contrasting it with the abundance of the past. Other leaders followed, speaking in the same strain. Then Little Poplar rose again and walking out in front of Quinn asked loudly:

“Are you Capatamut?“

Quinn raised his eyes.

“That’s what they call me.“

“May I look at you?“

The Indian went on. Quinn got to his feet, 6 and 1/2 ft tall, spare, athletic, broad-shouldered, exceedingly active. Thomas Truman Quinn was a splendid figure of a man, a native of Minnesota. Notwithstanding his mixed Sioux and Irish-French blood, he was well educated, exceptionally intelligent, and had served with distinction in the Wisconsin regiments throughout the American Civil War. Afterward he had seen many exciting adventures while employed as a scout with the regular army in frontier Indian campaigns. It was from his knowledge of the Sioux language that he had received from the Cree his name of Capatamut, or the Sioux speaker. He rose leisurely, turned completely around before Little Poplar and sat down again. He looked at the Indian.

“Seen all you want?” he asked.

The Indian scowled.

“I have heard of you. Away from the other side of the Missouri River I heard of you. I started to come this way and the farther I came the more I heard. You’re the man the government sent up here to say no to everything the Indians asked.“

Little Poplar bent over and shot the last sentence at Quinn like a slug from a catapult. There was intense silence in the room. The agent signed to him to proceed.

“Now I am going to ask you something. I will ask it three times before I sit down. It is long since the buffalo went away. My people are hungry and would like to eat fresh meat again. Will you kill an ox before the treaty money is paid?”

Quinn shook his head.

“The government gives cattle to the Indians for work and milk, but not to kill. There is no beef for you.“

Little Poplar went on:

“I crossed the line and traveled north. After a time I came to where the grass had been torn up and two iron lines had been laid down and stretched away east and west as far as I could see. I said to myself, ‘What is this?’ I thought for a moment, then I said, ‘Ah yes, I know, this is Pwabiscoco Msano, the iron road that the government has made to carry food and clothing in their big wagons to the poor starving Indians.‘ And I went to them to bring money out the same way in the big wagons and to throw it out on both sides of the iron road so that everybody can have plenty of it.”

He turned again to Quinn.

“For the second time I ask: Will you give us beef?”

“I’ve answered that question. You heard what I said,” replied the agent. “Namoya, ito no,” he says, “aquusi Kam.“

“Very well,” Little Poplar raised his voice. “We will have the government make a telegraph line from here to Battleford.“

And he raised the lash in his hands.

“I will whip the wires as they do and we will have him taken away from here. I will have a new man sent in his place before the moon grows old again. I know the government has given orders that beef is to be given to us, but he won’t follow them.“

“I look around me,” he went on, “and of all the leaders who stayed when we went south, how many are left? I see one old man.“

He placed a hand on the white head of Chief Ki-hi-win, then faced the agent for the third and last time.

“I ask, and when you answer, speak loud so that every Indian in this house can hear you: Will you give us beef?“

“No,” came the reply in the deep voice of the agent instantly.

Little Poplar faced about.

“Go!” he shouted, raising his arms. “Let him keep his punta money nuk!“

With yells of defiance the whole band swept out of the house, across the square, and up the hill, firing their guns in the air as they went.

That afternoon the Indians danced the war dance and Big Bear made a speech. He attacked the government and the Hudson’s Bay Company and ignoring the other whites present walked up to Captain Francis J. Dickens, son of the novelist commanding the Northwest Mounted Police at Fort Pitt, and held out his hand.

“You are a man,” cried Big Bear, whom Manitou made to be a chief. “We like you; your heart is good.”

“As for that man,” he pointed at Quinn, “his heart is made of stone. He may go back to Frog Lake. When the governor made the treaty with us we were told we should have beef to eat at every payment.”

He placed his hands, fingers extended, on either side of his head and turned fiercely on the agents.

“You want my head? Take it!” he cried, flinging his open hands in the agent’s face as though delivering it to him. “When I am hungry this winter and ask for food,” the miserable man said to Quinn, “if you don’t give it to me…”

Quinn smiled good-humoredly; he had heard Indians talk before, he did not mind such trifles as their threats. Big Bear apologized later to everyone for his harsh words, but for two days the band danced the war dance and refused to be paid. The mounted police were kept constantly under arms in anticipation of trouble, and Quinn sent his half-breed interpreter to notify the chiefs that unless they came to terms he would return the following afternoon to Frog Lake.

Meanwhile, the Hudson’s Bay Company officer in charge of Pitt, Angus McKay, having made large advances to the band, grew anxious about his debts. He ordered a steer to be slaughtered and sent a gift to the Indian camp. This mollified the Indians, still they objected; the beef had not come from the government. They would compromise matters, they said, by accepting the money at their camp instead of at the fort. Quinn decided to humor them and sent word that he would pay them there the next morning. During these days of strained diplomacy Dill and I had nothing to do but mind our tent store, fry our bacon, watch the Indian youngsters’ deft archery, and try otherwise to kill time while awaiting developments. The Indians did not molest us; they came, talked, examined blankets, knives, print shawls, handkerchiefs, rings, all of our stock, but without money they could not buy.

We were glad to hear a truce declared. At 8:30 the next morning two constables came with a pay tent and pitched it about 100 yards from our quarters. They were followed in 20 minutes by Quinn, who notified Big Bear by messenger that he was ready to begin the payments. The band was in council. After waiting for some time Quinn walked over to our tent.

“In 20 minutes it will be 10:00,” he said, looking at his watch. “If they don’t show up before then they get no money.”

He returned to the pay tent. A little later he passed our place carrying under his arm a box sealed with red wax; it contained the annuity money, $7,000. He had scarcely disappeared in the direction of the fort when Big Bear, Wondering Spirit, Little Poplar, and the other chiefs came rapidly toward our tents. They were talking excitedly and stopped a moment to ask what had become of the agent. We told them he had got tired waiting and probably had gone to dinner. Gesticulating angrily and with exaggerated expressions of amazement, they went on. They overtook him before he reached the fort and persuaded him to return and make the payments.

For the next two days I was busy at the store. The Indians danced and feasted, and I went once or twice at night with Stanley Simpson to the dancing lodge, and I heard Little Poplar count his coups and tell how—using me occasionally, and not altogether to my liking as he swung his heavy Colt’s pistols in my direction as representing the enemy—he had taken Blackfoot scalps. Then Dill went to Battleford, 90 miles away, to deposit our funds and bring back a fresh stock of goods, while I returned to Frog Lake and put up a log building for our winter trading quarters. Soon after Dill’s return by mutual agreement we dissolved partnership; he continued what had been our business and I accepted a position with the Hudson’s Bay Company at Frog Lake.

Let me go back a step to the reservation on the Battle River southeast of Pitt of Chief Poundmaker, where Big Bear was then in camp, and relate a happening there 3 months earlier that throws an even yet more significant light on the attitude of these Indians than the events just recorded. Kawichewaywewin, a member of Big Bear’s band, went to John Craig, farm instructor on the reserves of Chief 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 Kawichewaywewin did not get any. This was hardly surprising to anyone knowing Craig and the Indian: the one was a phlegmatic easterner and the other a fierce and not very intelligent Indian 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. Kawichewaywewin went off, but he was back in no time with two aids; one was his brother, the other was a well-seasoned hickory axe handle. With these reinforcements Kawichewaywewin 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 top to bottom, inside and out, and gave Kawichewaywewin a very bad name. Superintendent Crozier of the Northwest Mounted Police, commanding at Battleford, sent Corporal Sleigh to bring in Kawichewaywewin. 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 in hundreds, many from distant points. It was a big feast. Kawichewaywewin 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. Kawichewaywewin 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 the next day Crozier appeared with 25 men, of whom Bagley then a sergeant was one, at Poundmaker’s. They brought with them an Indian Metis on the trail who appeared entirely too ingenuous to be at large; once they were safely encamped 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 Laferte 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 Kawichewaywewin, who had offended the Queen by striking one of her servants with an axe handle. Poundmaker temporized; he was a most deliberate and dignified personage. He told the 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 to rawhide thongs reaching to the top of the big center pole of the thirst dance lodge, flung themselves frenzily back and forth in efforts to break their fleshy 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 offense 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 about noon the next day they would produce Kawichewaywewin for trial if court were held not at Battleford, but at a plateau some 400 yards from the position in which the police had made their camp. The selection of this site was a maneuver engineered by the police officer to bring the negotiations under the guns of the improvised fort he intended throwing up following the parlay.

Crozier dispatched a courier to Battleford, 30 miles away, with instructions to Inspector Antrobus to come with all speed and all available men remaining in the 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 ox-loaded teams he started back to his camp at Poundmaker’s. The thirst dance camp straddled the trail, part of the two or three hundred lodges being pitched on either side of it. To avoid the Indians Crozier detoured to the south 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—doubtless they 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 of Poundmaker 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 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.

Inspector Antrobus and Sergeant Major Kirk with the reinforcements totaling some 60 men and including a number of Battleford civilians reached Poundmaker’s about 11:00 next morning, and shortly after noon Poundmaker and his fellow chiefs arrived in accordance with their agreement at the plateau. Crozier assigned 10 men to each of the bastions and leaving the others to await orders covered by the 20 rifles and taking with him interpreter Laferte, Constable Campbell, Young, and another man went out to meet the chiefs and try Kawichewaywewin.

Just a month previous 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 town or most of it—looked on. Poundmaker, wearing a breechcloth and a vest studded with brass nails, his long legs streaked with white mud, on his head a small cap formed from the dry 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 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 Okemasis, sons of Big Bear, 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 of 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 at 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. “While I am speaking let him stop me.“

He pointed 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.

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 out about Kawichewaywewin’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 days 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 and acclaim to his listeners about the campfire 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 Bear; they were known to every Indian along the Saskatchewan. A Little Bear skin 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.

“No, my friend,” 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 Kawichewaywewin. The three seated themselves on the grass before the fort to smoke and endeavor to find a way of surmounting the difficulty. Crozier sent a message 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 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 Anomary, the solitary remaining horse.

“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‘m 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 pukamekan at his right leg. Blood welled out and flowed down his 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 that 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 sliding remark. It was not understood by Poundmaker, but he guessed its import. He was infuriated; he had not forgotten the inspector or his threats at the begging dance the month before. He lost for the moment his accustomed restraint. Raising his pukamekan he rushed upon Antrobus, the three knife blades in the end glittering above the officer’s helmet.

“Redcoat dog,” he hissed.

But Constable Prior poked his carbine in the tall chief’s face, and the deadly pukamekan 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 today,” shouted some minor chiefs.

Peaceably disposed, appalled by the impending explosion, rode among the mobs 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 around, jeering, whooping, raising their guns threateningly, goating the police with taunts and epitets. Wondering Spirit, who in the war dance counted 15 Blackfoot scalps, rushed out and seized McKay by the wrist, endeavoring to drag him over to the Indian 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 offense. (Little Pine died shortly after the trouble; rumor had it that poison was responsible, that he paid with his life for the stand he took that day in opposing the more turbulence 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 Wondering 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 Jon’s going to get it.“

The words said themselves over and over in the sergeant’s mind. The bloodlust burned in the warchief’s eyes, dull red pools glowing mercury in their sultry sockets. The seconds passed. What was restraining him? The unseen tide beating against the tough barrier that had so far contained it. The council 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 the waves of crimson death. It was as if the warchief 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 his 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 around 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 Wondering 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 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 clamor fell and rose once more, and once more the threatening rifle of the warchief came up, but again it came down unfired—why, as will be evidenced before this narrative is ended, is an eternal riddle. Crozier turned to Laferte.

“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 okima now 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 Kawichewaywewin.

Twin Wolverine, Big Bear’s eldest cousin, 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, 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.

Kawichewaywewin wheeled to run.

“Nab him!” McKay prompted.

Laurande the interpreter rushed and seized Kawichewaywewin, the two policemen followed. Before the Indian realized how it had all happened, Constable Warren Kerr had Kawichewaywewin 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 backwards with their carbines ready for instant action. McKay paced evenly up and down between the two rows of leveled rifles.

Bedlam broke loose. The Indians went wild.

“Shoot them! Shoot the redcoat dogs!” they howled. “Why do we wait now? Now is the time we agreed upon to wipe out the dog chemuk!“

But the cooler men among the Indians frantically fought the outcries of the hotheads.

“No, no! Be careful! Wait! Let the redcoats shoot first!“

And referring to McKay walking coolly up and down between the opposed forces:

“Shame! Would you kill a Little Bear skin?“

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 Laferte, and powerful though he was, rushed him off through the poplar bluffs. That he, a half-breed with Cree blood in his own veins, should have aided the enemy, that above all he should have pointed out to the police Okimau and later stopped Kawichewaywewin and sensed them—beyond anything else Laferte’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 epitets to the walls. Kawichewaywewin 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 defenses? Their breastworks? He could not mean it.

“Throw out the bacon and the flour.“

There could be no doubt about the command this time.

“Look alive, men!“

The command was added. The heavy sacks went over. The effect was magical. The angry clamor died. The camp was a huge one, its food supply scarce. 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 it 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 the Indian character, and while the Indians unheeding fought over the spoil, the police bundled the most subdued and crustfallen 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.

Laferte 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 okima?“

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 up 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. 3 years before he had guided the Marquess of Lorne, Governor General of Canada, 300 miles across the plains from Battleford to the Blackfoot Crossing. Poundmaker was an unusual Indian. He was the typical chief as one had 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 parlay out there had lasted 3 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 outsettled halfway out to breathe our laboring horses and enjoy the poplar 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 are on their way with their man. You might as well go home.”

In this and the preceding chapter I have endeavored 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 favorable opportunity. How soon that opportunity was to arise, the handful of white men who had made their way into that primitive far corner of the Northwest beyond the Saskatchewan could then have small conception.