Chapter III: When Poundmaker Defied the N.w.m.p

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 earlier that throws a yet more significant light on the attitude of these Indians than the events just recorded. I did not witness this, being a few miles away, and I am indebted to Major Fred A. Bagley, a veteran of the N.W.M.P., and to Mr. William McKay, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, both of whom were active participants on the ground, for the details of what at more than one critical juncture threatened to end in a bloody debacle.

Kahweechetwaymot, a member of Big Bear’s band, went to John Craig, farm instructor on the reserves of Chiefs 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 Kahweechetwaymot did not get any. This was hardly surprising to anyone knowing Craig and the Indian. The one was a phlegmatic easterner; the other a pestiferous and not particularly intelligent savage. 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.

Kahweechetwaymot went off, but he was back in no time. With two aides. One was his brother. The other was a well-seasoned hickory axe-helve.

With these reinforcements, Kahweechetwaymot 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 the top down, inside and out, and gave Kahweechetwaymot a very bad name. Superintendent Crozier of the N.W.M.P., commanding at Battleford, sent Corporal Sleigh to bring in Kahweechetwaymot. 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 there in hundreds, many from distant points. It was a big fête. Kahweechetwaymot 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.

Kahweechetwaymot 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 next day, Crozier appeared with twenty-five men—of whom Bagley, then a sergeant, was one—at Poundmaker’s. They brought with them an Indian, met on the trail, who appeared entirely too ingenuous to be at large. Once they were safely in camp 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 Laronde, 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 Kahweechetwaymot, who had offended the Queen by striking one of her servants with an axe-helve.

Poundmaker temporized. He was a most deliberate and dignified personage. He told the big 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 rawhide thongs reaching to the top of the big centre-pole of the Thirst Dance lodge, flung themselves frenziedly backward in efforts to break their fleshly 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 offence 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 at about noon next day they would produce Kahweechetwaymot for trial if court were held, not at Battleford, but at a plateau some four hundred yards from the position in which the police had made their camp. The selection of this site was a manœuvre engineered by the police officer to bring the negotiations under the guns of the improvised fort he intended throwing up.

Following the parley, Crozier dispatched a courier to Battleford, thirty miles away, with instructions to Inspector Antrobus to come with speed and all available men remaining in 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 loaded ox-teams he started back to his camp at Poundmaker’s.

The Thirst Dance camp straddled the trail, part of the four or five hundred lodges being pitched on either side of it. To avoid the Indians, Crozier detoured to the north 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. The idea of the police marching off with the provisions did not please them. Doubtless they had 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 at Poundmaker’s 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 to be 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. The completed fort was in this form:

A deep slough behind the fort afforded protection from that quarter.

Inspector Antrobus and Sergeant-major Kirk with the reinforcements, totalling some sixty men and including a number of Battleford civilians, reached Poundmaker’s about eleven o’clock next morning and shortly after noon Poundmaker and his fellow chiefs arrived in accordance with their agreement at the plateau. Crozier assigned ten men to each of the bastions and leaving the others to await orders, covered by the twenty rifles and taking with him Interpreter Laronde, Constable Campbell Young and another man, went out to meet the chiefs and try Kahweechetwaymot.

Just a month previous the Crees 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 whole town, or most of it—looked on. Poundmaker, wearing a breechclout and a vest studded with brass nails, his long legs streaked with white mud, on his head a small cap formed from the dried 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 “_meewasin_” (“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 Okemow Peeaysis, sons of Big Bear, bursting suddenly out of the crowd of dancers, 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 at 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 on 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. “Well, I am speaking. Let him stop me! Look at him,” pointing 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. “_’Wus!_”

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 about Kahweechetwaymot’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 a day 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 amid the acclaim of his listeners about the camp fire 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 Bearskin. They were known to every Indian along the Saskatchewan. A Little Bearskin 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. “_N’chawamis_,” 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 Kahweechetwaymot. The three seated themselves on the grass before the fort to smoke and endeavour to find a way of surmounting the difficulty. Crozier sent a messenger 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’s 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 “’Andsome ’Arry,” the solitary remaining horse, Bagley’s trooper.

“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 am 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 pukamakin, at his right leg. Blood welled out and flowed down the 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 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 slighting remark. It was not understood by Poundmaker but he guessed its import. He was infuriated. He had not forgotten the inspector or his threat at the begging dance the month before. He lost for the moment his accustomed restraint. Raising his pukamakin, he rushed upon Antrobus. The three knife-blades in the end glittered above the officer’s helmet.

“Redcoat dog!” he hissed.

But Constable Prior poked his carbine in the tall chief’s face and the deadly pukamakin 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 to-day!” shouted Imasees.

Some minor chiefs, peaceably disposed, appalled by the impending explosion, rode among the mob, 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 round, jeering, whooping, raising their guns threateningly, goading the police with taunts and epithets.

Wandering Spirit, who in the war dance counted thirteen Blackfoot scalps, rushed out and seized McKay by the wrist, endeavouring to drag him over to the Indians’ 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 offence. Little Pine died shortly after the trouble. Rumour had it that poison was responsible; that he paid with his life for the stand he took that day in opposing the more turbulent 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 Wandering 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 John’s going to get it!”

The words said themselves over and over in the sergeant’s mind.

The blood-lust burned in the war chief’s eyes, dull red pools glowing murkily in their sultry sockets. The seconds passed. What was restraining him?

The sullen tide beating against the tough barrier that had so far contained it—the counsel 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 waves of crimson death.

It was as if the war chief 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 the 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 round 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 Wandering 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 then 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 clamour fell and rose once more and once more the threatening rifle of the war chief came up. But again it came down unfired. Why, as will be evident before this narrative is ended, is an eternal riddle.

Crozier turned to Laronde. “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 okemow 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 Kahweechetwaymot surlily.

Twin Wolverine, Big Bear’s eldest son, 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, the 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.

Kahweechetwaymot wheeled to run. “Nab him!” McKay prompted Laronde. The interpreter rushed and seized Kahweechetwaymot. The two policemen followed. Before the Indian realized how it had all happened, Constable Warren Kerr—“Sligo” to the force—had Kahweechetwaymot 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 backward with their carbines ready for instant action.

McKay paced evenly up and down between the two rows of levelled rifles.

Bedlam broke loose. The Indians went wild. “Shoot them, shoot the red coat dogs!” they howled. “Why do we wait? Now—_now_ was the time we agreed on to wipe out the dog _chemoginusuk_!”

But the cooler men among the redskins frantically fought the outcries of the hotheads. “No—_no_! _Be careful! Wait!_ Let the red coats shoot first!” And, referring to McKay, walking coolly up and down between the opposed forces: “Shame! Would you kill a Little Bearskin?”

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 Laronde and, powerful though he was, rushed him off through the poplar bluffs. That he, a half-breed with their own blood in his veins, should have aided the enemy—that, above all, he should have pointed out to the police okemow, and later stopped Kahweechetwaymot—incensed them beyond anything else. Laronde’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 epithets, to the walls. Kahweechetwaymot 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 defences, their breastworks? He could not mean it.

“Throw out the bacon and flour!” There could be no doubt about the command this time. “Look alive, men!” the commandant added.

The heavy sacks went over. The effect was magical. The angry clamour died. The camp was a huge one, its food supply scant. 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 he 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 Indian character.

And while the Indians, unheeding, fought over the spoil, the police bundled a most subdued and crestfallen 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.

Laronde 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 okemow?”

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 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. Three years before he had guided the Marquis of Lorne, Governor-General of Canada, three hundred miles across the plains from Battleford to the Blackfoot Crossing. Poundmaker was an unusual Indian. He was the typical chief as one has 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 parley out there had lasted for three 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 off-saddled half-way out to breathe our labouring horses and enjoy the poplared 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’re on their way in with their man. You might as well go home.”

In this and the preceding chapter I have endeavoured 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 favourable opportunity. How soon that opportunity was to arise the handful of white men who had made their way into that primitive corner of the far North-west beyond the Saskatchewan could then have small conception.