The war trail of Big Bear

Four hundred miles east of the great continental backbone of North America, the Rocky Mountains, and six miles north of the North Saskatchewan River, a collection of substantial...

It was October, 1884, and the Plain Crees of Big Bear’s band were camped above the North Saskatchewan River near Fort Pitt. The Indians were assembled to receive their annuities...

Let me go back a step to the reservation, on the Battle River south-east of Pitt, of Chief Poundmaker, where Big Bear was then in camp, and relate a happening there three months...

When in the year 1875 Saskatchewan Indians met the commissioners appointed to treat with them for the cession of their rights, the only chief of importance to refuse the proposa...

On the evening of March 28th I closed the trading shop early and with my skates under arm, walked over to Frog Creek, intending to skate down to Gowanlock’s. Gowanlock lived in...

At nine o’clock I was up again, had had breakfast and gone to the trading shop. It was the first of April. A Big Bear Indian came in. Wandering Spirit was at the farming instruc...

Big Bear, as I learned from him long afterward, went straight to his lodge when he returned to camp and went to sleep, for he was tired. Imasees, Wandering Spirit and other of t...

A moment later Wandering Spirit entered. He wore his lynx-skin war-bonnet, with its five big eagle plumes, and carried a Winchester across his arm. He dropped on one knee in the...

Besides James K. Simpson and myself, there were in the camp two white women, the wives of the murdered Gowanlock and Delaney. These unfortunate ladies were dragged from the bodi...

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 Ind...

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 Wo...

A week later the camp-crier one morning went up and down among the lodges to call the warriors, and Simpson, Fitzpatrick, Halpin—who had arrived from Cold Lake—and myself, to a...

On the morning of April 14th, Corporal Cowan, Constable Loasby and Henry Quinn left Fort Pitt on a scouting trip. A little later Big Bear’s warriors appeared at the top of the h...

Let me now return and follow the fortunes of the three scouts, Cowan, Loasby and Quinn, who left Fort Pitt shortly before Big Bear and his men appeared on the hill behind it the...

The new prisoners were distributed among various members of the different Indian bands. My friend Stanley Simpson was taken in charge by Lone Man, the intrepid savage who had ri...

The heavy snow that came on the night that Fort Pitt fell soon melted and the glory of the North-west spring covered the land. How we joyed in those bright warm days, so full of...

Lone Man was always my friend and one bright afternoon in early May I walked to his tent to smoke and chat with the son-in-law of Big Bear. The usual dance was on, but Lone Man...

The North American Indian is an incorrigible gamester. The passion for play seems to be born with him. Since the advent of the white man he has learned to gamble with cards, but...

Spring came on apace; the days grew warm. About the camp raced the boys, the younger nude, shooting with bow and arrows at gophers and marks or rolling in the dust with wolfish...

“They killed the white people,” we told the Wood Crees, “not you. Let them go. You stop. When the soldiers come we will make peace for you. Big Bear’s men say they will fight. U...

To restore harmony and avert the impending rupture between the factions, Big Bear’s band now proposed a Thirst Dance. This is a fête of propitiation or sacrifice and rejoicing h...

When in the early spring of ’84, on my way down the Saskatchewan with a trading outfit I first happened across Meeminook, he was I thought one of the finest types of the pure In...

It was a dismal note in the ears of the Indians. The day of accounting had arrived. Despite my lacerated lip, I ate breakfast in a state bordering on intoxication—an intoxicatio...

For two more days we travelled, much against our wishes, eastward, living on wild carrots dug by the Indians from the prairie sod, on balls of down—ducklings just out of the she...

Captain Perry next morning outfitted me with a pair of riding breeches and other necessary clothing and assigned a horse for my exclusive use. Major Steele, with a party of scou...

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 S...

My friend Stanley Simpson lay seriously ill in Battleford of fever brought on by exposure and privation in the Indian camp. I was daily at his side, doing what I could to cheer...

A frail little mother with wistful eyes turned toward the West was counting the days until she should once more press to her loving heart a son given back to her from the very v...

In concluding this narrative of my experiences among hostile Indians a few notes concerning the subsequent careers of those prominently connected with it, either as belligerents...