CHAPTER VIII

Our First and Last Indian War

THERE were only fifteen hundred white folk in Manitoba at the time of the trouble in 1870, but around them lived ten thousand people of mixed race. Three-fifths of these owed their white blood to French voyageurs; the rest drew theirs chiefly from Scots higher up in the Hudson’s Bay service.

A small but steady stream of white settlers now began to trickle in, coming from Ontario through the States. The French Métis soon found themselves in a minority. The wilder spirits sold their land and flitted to the banks of the Saskatchewan, four or five hundred miles away to the north-west; but even there the stream of white immigration followed, and the land surveyors again began to map out the country with ruthless regularity. The Métis, living along the river bank, from which their farms ran back in narrow strips, were afraid they might lose their land, especially as the issue of their patents had been delayed and petitions to the Government seemed to fall on deaf ears.

In the fall of 1884, it was plain that a storm was brewing. Louis Riel, after many years of exile, returned from the United States on his kinsmen’s invitation, and put himself at the head of their agitation for the redress of grievances. Chiefly, and naturally, they wanted the same title to their land as had been given to the Métis back on the Red River. Such grievances as actually existed might have been remedied, and the threatening storm prevented, if the Federal Government had given a little attention to the matter. Agitation was allowed to flame up in revolt, and Louis Riel had proclaimed himself “President of the Saskatchewan” before the government machine began to stir.

The Métis began, in the spring of 1885, by seizing the persons and property of their white neighbors at Batoche and Duck Lake. Mounted Police went to the rescue, accompanied by some volunteers from the neighboring town of Prince Albert, but were driven back with a loss of twelve killed, nine being left dead on the snow. The rebels had beaten the white men!

Imagine what that meant, in a country where the little white population of peaceful farmers lay thinly scattered among strong tribes of warlike Indians. The Métis were a mere handful compared to the pure-blooded red-skins; these numbered, even without the tribes of the distant north, some 25,000, including braves who had taken many a scalp in tribal wars, and in fights with white troops south of the frontier. If these tribes had gone on the war-path, the scattered white population of the territories might have been wiped out of existence, and the re-conquest of the country might have involved a long and hard campaign.

Everything depended on the Indians. The Métis knew this perfectly well, and Louis Riel moved heaven and earth to drag in the only allies who could give him a chance of winning. Adopting the name David, and pretending to have supernatural powers, he claimed to be a new Messiah sent to lead the red men and give them victory over the white. He sent his envoys all over the plains to rouse the ancient passion of the tribes for war. Promising impossible gains, and threatening when persuasion failed, they did their very worst.

The strongest tribes, including the Blackfeet, decided to sit still and mind their own business. This was partly owing to the fairness with which as a rule they had been treated by the Canadian Government and the Hudson’s Bay Company, partly to the influence of missionaries and Mounted Police in their midst, and partly to their own good sense. The railway had just arrived; and the spectacle of an army of men constructing at marvellous speed a road of steel across the prairie was a most convincing evidence of the white man’s power. But for a while it was touch and go, even among the Blackfeet. So it was among Piapot’s Crees near Qu’Appelle.

The flaming words of the new “Messiah” and his apostles had more effect on the tribes along the North Saskatchewan. The more intelligent chiefs, like Poundmaker of the Crees, knew well enough what the end of the war must be, sooner or later; but the younger braves, the hot-headed extremists, were shouting for a fight, and carried the tribe with them. An Indian chief will never hang back when his tribe is bent on war, however crazy he may think it; so even Poundmaker, the white man’s friend, fought the white man rather than be called a coward by his own foolish folk.

“The Indians are on the war-path. Battleford is besieged!” That was the news flashed down to the East before we had recovered from the shock of the Duck Lake defeat. The whole white population of Battleford town, with hundreds of refugees from the country-side, crowded into the fort, standing high on a point of land in the fork of the Battle and Saskatchewan Rivers. This fort was simply a log stockade enclosing the Mounted Police barracks, stables and storehouses. The railroad was nearly two hundred miles away to the south, and the road to it was cut off by the enemy. The Government telegraph line, the only means of communicating with the outside world, was cut again and again by an unseen foe. Imagine the feelings of the beleaguered refugees, watching the smoke of their burning farmhouses, and wondering whether they themselves would be slaughtered or starved before any one came to their rescue!

Within a week, the exaggerations of rumor were rivalled by a terrible statement of fact brought in by a scout from Fort Pitt. This Hudson’s Bay post, ninety miles up the Saskatchewan, had been held by twenty-four Mounted Police under Inspector Dickens, a son of the novelist. Five miles farther north, on the picturesque shores of Frog Lake, a smaller Hudson’s Bay post and a Roman Catholic mission had begun to develop into a settlement, possessing even a mill.

The Crees in that neighborhood, headed by a chief named Big Bear, held a war dance on hearing of Riel’s victory, and ordered the white folk into the Indian camp as prisoners. A Government agent, Thomas Quinn, refused to go, and a furious Cree named Wandering Spirit shot him down. The Indians had probably not planned a massacre, but this taste of blood roused their tiger spirit. Nine men in all were shot, including two priests. Only the Hudson’s Bay clerk was spared. There were two white women, but friendly Métis paid three dollars and four ponies ransom for them, and kept them safe.

After the braves had gorged themselves for ten days on stolen victuals, keeping up their war spirit by frenzied dances, they laid siege to Fort Pitt. There was no lack of courage in the garrison. Even the girls, daughters of the Hudson’s Bay factor, William MacLean, shouldered rifles with the men. But when MacLean went out to parley with the Indians, they would not let him return; they only promised to protect the white civilians if the Police cleared out of the fort. MacLean had such confidence in his Company’s favor with the Indians that he sent a letter telling his wife and children to come into camp, with several other white and half-breed families; and he advised the Police to leave, as the Indians had got fire-arrows ready to burn the fort down.

His advice was taken. The civilians put themselves at the Indians’ mercy, and the Police made their way painfully down the river, amid masses of floating ice, in an ancient leaky scow. Battleford welcomed the two dozen extra appetites with self-forgetting heartiness; and two days later, on the 24th of April, this modern Lucknow was relieved by an expedition which had come two thousand miles to save it.

* * * * *

“Would you like to go out as our war correspondent?” the editor of the Montreal _Daily Witness_ asked me when telegrams were pouring in from the West begging the Government to hurry up troops or no one would be left alive to rescue. The editor spoke with hesitation. He had a tender heart and lively conscience, and hated the idea of sending a young fellow off “perhaps to be killed.”

The young fellow laughed, and jumped at the adventure—it was well worth the risk. A few hours later, with a knapsack for baggage, he was rolling along through the States, as that was before the Canadian Pacific was finished and the only railway connection between Eastern and Western Canada was still by way of Chicago.

Canada’s problem, to save the people of the West, was a hard one indeed. We had no regular army, beyond a few companies at Infantry Schools and an occasional battery of artillery. The rescuing must be done by volunteers, who were certainly keen enough, but had little or no experience of war. Moreover, the troops were not allowed to go through the States, as I had done.

The Government apparently thought they would have to send the force up through the Great Lakes by steamer, as there were four unbuilt gaps in the railway north of Lake Superior, and no passenger cars on the three disconnected sections of track between the gaps. But spring navigation was not yet open, and every day’s delay might mean sentence of death to hundreds of peaceable folk in the West. Van Horne, the manager of the Canadian Pacific, went to Sir John Macdonald, the Prime Minister, and offered to take the troops up at once in spite of everything.

“How can you carry the men without a railway?” said Sir John. “It’s impossible.”

“Raise the men, and give me a week’s notice of their arrival, and I pledge myself to do it.”

“What do you pledge?” asked Sir John.

“I pledge my word, and, if necessary, my life,” was the answer.

“Can you do it in a month’s time?” was the next question.

“I will do it in eleven days to Qu’Appelle,” said Van Horne. And he did. Over the longer gaps the troops were carried in sleighs; over the shorter, they marched through the snow. They looked as if they had gone through a campaign already by the time they got to Qu’Appelle—but they got there in eight or nine days instead of eleven, thanks to the vigor and capacity of the railway men.

Within a month, 3,000 men had been transported to the West, some as far as 2,500 miles and the rest about 1,800. With over 1,500 Westerners under arms, a force of 4,500 was collected; though, as it happened, the later arrivals had no chance to share in the fighting.

The prairie section of the railway was already built, but it only ran within about two hundred miles of the rebel centres in the north. From Qu’Appelle one force under General Middleton had to march against the Métis at Batoche, near Duck Lake. Another column, under Colonel Otter, had to go on to Swift Current and thence across the prairie to fight the Indians besieging Battleford. A third force, under General Strange, including the 91st Battalion from Winnipeg and a French-Canadian battalion, the 65th from Montreal, had to march north from Calgary to Edmonton, and thence reach Fort Pitt by trail and river. Some of them marched the soles off their boots, but when I came up with them towards the end of the campaign, doing sentry-go in bare feet near Beaver River, they were cheery as larks and singing the old folk-songs their forefathers had sung in the France of the seventeenth century.

Embarking at Qu’Appelle in a caboose with an advance party of Otter’s Indian-fighters, I landed, one fine April morning, at Swift Current, then consisting of half a dozen shacks. When the rest of the column arrived, we found ourselves 500 strong: the Queen’s Own Rifles of Toronto, in their dark green uniforms; a company of red-coated sharpshooters, picked from the Governor-General’s Foot Guards of Ottawa; a company from the Toronto School of Infantry; a bunch of blue-coated artillery-men from Quebec, with a gatling and two field guns; and forty Mounted Police.

To reach the beleaguered town we knew we should have to cross 180 miles of uninhabited wilderness. We had, therefore, to accumulate a train of farm wagons to carry food for the troops, hay and oats for the horses, and even wood for our camp fires. Many pioneer farmers of Manitoba and the territories let their land lie fallow that year and spent the summer teaming at $10 a day for the Government.

Hour after hour, day after day, the thin line of wagons and horsemen, four miles long from van to rear, rolled northwards up the trail. Not a man did we see, nor sign of life, except for the meadow larks and gophers.

At last we stood on the bank of the Battle River,—and over there we were thankful to see the old Battleford stockade still sheltering the refugees we had come to save.

The Indians vanished on our approach, and pitched their camp on Poundmaker’s reserve, nearly forty miles away in the west. So in the afternoon of the first of May, leaving half our little force to guard the town, but taking with us a company of the beleaguered white men who had organized themselves as a “Battleford Home Guard,” we set out on the enemy’s track, carrying five days’ rations and little else.

All night we rode, and the sun was sending its first rays up behind us when we saw at our feet a little valley where Cutknife Creek wound in and out among bushes through a sandy bottom. From the other side of the creek rose a gentle slope of bare turf, flanked on either side by a gully. This was Cutknife Hill, where Poundmaker and his Crees had defeated Chief Cutknife and his Sarcees, many years before. But since then Poundmaker had distinguished himself as a peacemaker; it was he who brought to an end the age-long feud between the Crees and the Blackfoot confederacy.

A few hundred yards beyond the crest of the hill we knew that Poundmaker was now encamped, and we hoped that he and all his men were still sound asleep.

They were—all but one. Do you ask how I know that? Years afterwards I went over the battlefield with an old Indian named Piacutch, who had been in the fight. When I asked him how the Indians knew we were coming that morning, he told me—“There was an old Indian, named Jacob-with-long-hair, who always got up before anybody else. He went out over the hill, and his horse put up its ears, and then he listened and heard wagons coming; so he galloped back and told us, and we strung out as quick as we could, one by one.”

Scarcely had the head of the column got across the stream when a scout dashed back with the cry “The Nichis are on us!”

The police were flying up the hill in a moment, with the gunners galloping at their heels, and gained the top of the hill in the nick of time, for the Indians were racing for the same point of vantage. Foiled in this, the painted redskins launched a volley of yells and bullets at the police, and fell back into a hollow, beyond which lay the Indian camp. Meanwhile the infantry had leapt from their wagons, and in less time than it takes to tell were lying in skirmishing order all along the edges of the slope.

Puffs of smoke began to rise from the gullies on our left, on our right, and even in our rear. We were completely surrounded by hidden Indians, every one of them a sniper. If a rifleman so much as rose on his elbow to fire, he was the target of a dozen marksmen. Cover we had none. The horses and wagons were just bunched together on the middle of the hill. The air seemed alive with whizzing bullets, and one by one our men were dropping.

Do you wonder what it feels like, to find yourself suddenly for the first time in the middle of a whistling concert of bullets, knowing that any one of them may get you? Well, some are scared for a moment, and a few stay scared. Others are exhilarated by the joy of fighting. On Cutknife Hill that day, I suppose nearly all, though tired with the long night ride, quickly recovered from the shock of surprise, and felt little anxiety except to do their duty as well as they could. Personally, I felt too much interested to be afraid; nor could I be upset by the sight of death in ghastly forms, for my calling had hardened me to that in time of peace. My chief feeling was just a keen desire to see and understand everything that was going on, to gather up all the incidents of the battle into a living and accurate story, so that others could read and realize what I had seen.

The volunteers, whatever they felt, seemed in action cool as veterans; cool of nerve only, for the sun beat down upon them with all its western might. They wasted a monstrous lot of lead at first, but presently settled down to more systematic work, and even imitated a favorite Indian trick—one man holding up a hat as target and his comrade picking off anyone who rose to aim at it. Those clerks from Ottawa and students from Toronto were as steady under the deadly hail as if they had fought through a hundred battles.

A most heroic scene was enacted by a pair of theological students from Toronto. Three of the Battleford Home Guard, trying to clear out the enemy from the creek-bed in our rear, were cut off by a bunch of Indians. Their only way of escape was by reaching and climbing a perpendicular earthen cut-bank. Two of the University Company in the Queen’s Own, Acheson and Lloyd, who had themselves got separated from their comrades, caught sight of the Battleford men from the top of the bank and realized their desperate strait. Acheson stretched himself over the edge and hauled up the refugees by main force as soon as they reached the foot of the cut-bank, while Lloyd took aim in turn at every Indian that rose to fire at the rescuer—took aim, but dared not let fly, for he had only one cartridge left.

So hot was the Indian fire that every one of the three Battleford men was shot as soon as he reached the top of the bank. One of them got a second bullet in him while Acheson was carrying him back, and they rolled over together. Acheson was picking the man up again, when a Métis scrambled up out of the gully and levelled his musket at the rescuer’s back. Lloyd fired his last cartridge and knocked over the Métis, whose body carried down with it half a dozen Indians climbing up behind him. A moment after, a bullet pierced Lloyd’s side, took off a piece of a vertebra, and stretched him helpless on the turf. Acheson, all his ammunition gone, sprang to Lloyd’s defence, and stood over him with clubbed rifle; but neither of them would have lived another minute if a handful of their comrades had not come up in the nick of time and driven back their assailants.

It is that same Lloyd, now Bishop of Saskatchewan, whose name is immortalized by the town of Lloydminster. Acheson is a bishop too, in Connecticut.

Desperately grave as the situation was, it had its moments of humor. A bullet scraped the skin off Sergeant McKell’s temple. “Another good Irishman gone!” he cried as he fell—but picked himself up next minute on discovering that he was not killed at all.

“What on earth have you been wearing that red tuque for?” a rifleman asked when he met one of the Battleford men at the end of the fight,—“I heard there was a halfbreed with a red tuque on, and I’ve been firing at you all the morning.”

The guns were the grimmest joke of all. The gatling sprayed the prairie with a vast quantity of lead, and a machine gun is all very well when your enemy stands in front of it in a crowd; but that is not the Indians’ way. They had a wholesome respect for the seven-pounders—which was more than the gunners themselves had, for the wooden trails were rotten and gave way under the recoil, so that one of the guns fell to the ground after every shot and the other had to be tied to its carriage with a rope.

At last our men were allowed to charge down the slopes and clear out the gullies. The Indians fled before them, and prepared to defend their camp. But we were not allowed to follow up our advantage. Instead, the order was given to retire. The teams were hitched up in a hurry, and the retreat began. We had lost eight killed and fourteen wounded.

Imagine the Indians’ astonishment. We were leaving them masters of the field. Before half of us had re-crossed the creek, they were pouring down the hill after us like a swarm of angry ants. Now, however, they were in the open, and a well-planted shell from our rope-swathed seven-pounder (its companion had been put to bed in a wagon), with the cool musketry of our rear-guard, held the pursuers in check till the last of our wagons had struggled through the creek.

The Indians might have turned our defeat into disaster if they had circled round and picked us off piecemeal as the long-drawn-out line of sleepy soldiers wound its way home through the woods. And that is exactly what they would have done if their chief had let them, as an Indian explained to me afterwards.

“The young men wanted to,” he said, “but Poundmaker held them back out of pity for you.” Another old Indian added that the chief brandished his whip and threatened to flog any Indian who dared to go after the white man.

We were comforted by the assurance that we had taught the Indians a lesson; but it was exactly the opposite of the lesson we had meant to teach them. Up to that time Poundmaker had resisted all Riel’s persuasions to bring the tribes down and join forces with the Métis fighting further east, but now he could no longer resist the war spirit of his elated braves.

The bad news burst upon us with dramatic suddenness one day, when a big train of nearly thirty wagons, bringing food from Swift Current, ran into the middle of the Indian army streaming away to the east. It was a great haul for the red men.

* * * * *

That was “the darkest hour before the dawn.” As hot a reception as we got from the Indians, the other column got from the Métis farther east. General Middleton had under his command about 850 men—two militia battalions, the 90th Rifles of Winnipeg and the Royal Grenadiers of Toronto, with two batteries of artillery, and two bands of mounted men raised for the occasion, under Major Boulton and Captain French.

On the 24th of April the force was marching down the valley of the South Saskatchewan, half on one side of the river, half on the other. They were bound for Batoche’s Ferry, where the Métis had their stronghold, defended with many rifle pits. One party of rebels, however, under their “general,” an old buffalo hunter named Gabriel Dumont, came up the valley a dozen miles on the south side, to meet the white men and if possible check their advance. Skilfully choosing the best spot for this purpose, they took cover amongst the trees and boulders just below the edge of a gully which the soldiers would have to cross. The rebels were hard to dislodge, and in that skirmishing fight of Fish Creek ten of our men were killed and forty wounded.

This checked the advance for a fortnight, till reinforcements arrived—half the Midland Battalion of Ontarians, and a gatling gun, brought down the river by the same steamboat which had ferried our column across on the way to Battleford—one of those stern-wheelers which are said to “float in a heavy dew.” A corps of surveyors under Captain J. S. Dennis came up in time to join in the final attack. Arriving at Batoche on May 9, the troops for four days peppered the hidden foe, who held their ground and fired back with equal courage.

At last the soldiers were allowed to charge, and they cleared out the rifle pits at a rush. The battle was won, with a loss of eight killed, including four officers, and forty-six wounded. Riel escaped, but a few days afterwards he was caught not far away by a party of scouts. Dumont fled to the States, and the rank and file of the misguided rebels laid down their arms.

The news travelled swiftly to the west, and Poundmaker saw that the game was up. One afternoon, therefore, when I had crossed over to the south shore of the river at Battleford, I met the most pathetic and picturesque procession I have ever seen: the Indian chiefs riding in to surrender.

Here was Poundmaker at their head—tall and gaunt, with a strong hooked nose, his long black hair hanging down his back in a score of tight little plaits, each bound round at intervals of an inch or two with brass wire. His clothing was far from royal; a pair of shapeless blanket trousers or shaps, a colored cotton shirt, an old tweed waistcoat and no coat at all. But his keen and dignified face was that of a king, and though he was too thorough an Indian to show the least sign of his feelings, I could not help pitying the fallen leader in his deep humiliation.

_On the Battlefield—_ _Friends Again_

_A Horse Ranch_

_Where no Trees Grew—Forestry_ _Station, Indian Head_

_Quality Raising Quality—_ _School Fair Prize Winners_

Around him rode his allies and lieutenants. No two of them were dressed alike. One gentleman wore a black “wide-awake” hat and a long blue naval frock-coat with brass buttons, hanging over the usual dirty blanket breeches. Another wore on his head the whole skin of a big otter, its teeth grinning in front and its tail hanging down behind. Still another had stuck feathers in his topknot, and a fourth wore a hard felt Derby hat adorned with fluttering ribbons of many colors. All of them had washed the yellow war-paint off their faces, discarded their guns, and rode on, silent and impassive as statues, to meet any dreadful fate that might be in store for them.

General Middleton, newly arrived from his victory at Batoche, held his court in the open air, sitting on a campstool for bench, with an interpreter by his side. Poundmaker sat before him on the ground, the rest of the prisoners squatting around in a semi-circle at a more respectful distance.

Poundmaker, being severely questioned by the General, denied having any intention of fighting; nor had he ever promised to help Riel. He did not know what Indians had committed murder or robbery.

A very gay young Stoney came forward and squatted right at the General’s feet,—a regular Indian dandy, covered with bead-work, and wearing a woman’s black straw hat with a bright green plume. With the utmost coolness, he confessed to a perfectly unprovoked murder. He and a few comrades had come across an inoffensive farmer greasing his wagon wheels, and had shot him down like a rabbit. “I told my people I would give myself up to save them,” the murderer said.

Another speaker, an old and ragged man, had also a murder to confess. This was Ikta, the slayer of the farm instructor on Red Pheasant’s reserve. Ikta wound up by offering to be cut into little pieces, if only the white men would spare his wife and children and give them food.

At last a woman rose to speak. “Tell her we don’t listen to women,” said the General to the interpreter. “Then why does your Queen send her word for us to obey?” asked an Indian. The General muttered that the Queen had men for her advisers; but the woman was allowed to speak, and put in a pathetic plea for mercy to the conquered red men.

Then the murderers, and Poundmaker, and three other chiefs, were locked up in the fort, while the rest of the red men were sent off to repent on their reserves.

The war was not over yet, though the fighting was. Big Bear was still at large. To rescue the twenty-six prisoners he had been dragging about with him since his capture of Fort Pitt, flying columns were sent off to scour the maze of wood and river and lake in the north. It seemed like hunting through a haystack for a needle; but it gave promise of fresh adventures in a country very different from any we had so far seen, and I attached myself to a troop of Mounted Police and Scouts who seemed more likely than the rest to catch the runaways.

Our experiences on that wild chase were varied and even entertaining, to those of us who had a spice of the Mark Tapley in our dispositions. For hardship, this proved the worst part of the whole campaign.

Leaving the sunlit prairie behind, we plunged into a forest broken by glades and lakes and sloughs and muskegs. If a lake was shallow and had a reasonably firm bottom, we waded through; if not, we squeezed our way along the boggy edge between wood and water. One day we covered only twelve miles. The mosquitoes had no trouble keeping up with us. They had never had such a feast in their lives. We ourselves had to feast on hard tack and salt pork, washed down with sugarless and milkless tea.

Spurred on by the hot pursuit, the Indians fled faster and faster, till they reached Beaver River, which they crossed in hastily built coracles of hide stretched on willow frames. We, too, reached Beaver River, a fine stream flowing through a deep valley between steep, thickly wooded hillsides. Some of us got across, in a derelict canoe, and struck away north as far as Cold Lake; but Big Bear had clearly given us the slip. Great was our rejoicing when a messenger from Fort Pitt came after us with the news that all the prisoners had been saved.

It turned out that a band of friendly Indians, whom Big Bear had forced to go on the war path, and who had all along protected the prisoners from the wilder Crees, had one day lagged behind on pretence of mending their harness, and set the last of the white folk free as soon as the other Indians were out of sight.

Big Bear soon afterwards came down to Prince Albert and gave himself up. He and Poundmaker were sent to prison for a few months, while Riel and eight Indian murderers were hanged. The Métis were now assured of their rights, on the time-honored principle of locking the stable door after all the horses have been stolen. Even before receiving this assurance, the rebels had settled down, quite as glad as we were to be done fighting. I wandered about among them alone for a time without meeting the slightest trace of ill will. The earth was still fresh in the rifle pits of Batoche, and the bullet scars raw on the trees of Duck Lake, but the rebellion was dead as a camp fire after a rain storm.

THE NEW TIMES