Big Bear (16 page)

Dickens’s siege diary ends: “Wednesday, April 15 [Thursday, April 16]: Very cold weather. Travelled.”

Despite churning ice and a blizzard, the police reached Battleford safely. Dickens’s official report offered no alternatives to the fact that McLean’s trust in Big Bear’s word saved both civilians and police from annihilation. Rather, he tried to cover his leaving civilians in the hands of hostiles with this final, self-righteous sentence: “The surrender of the civilians was entirely owing to the pusillanimity of Mr. McLean of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”

During three days of winter the Cree war party feasted, plundering Fort Pitt, but when the sun returned they travelled back to their families on the shore of Frog Lake with captives and booty. The settlement stores, houses, and church had been burned, most of the bodies buried, but Quinn’s lay rotting beside the puddle where it fell. For a month, while spring gathered, they lived well and held councils to consider what was to be done. Wandering Spirit sent messages to numerous reserves, but, as John Pritchard later testified, every chief, including Pakan, refused “to come in and join them.”

Meanwhile, the government inevitabilities moved on with deliberate speed, as Big Bear knew they would. During April soldiers by the thousands arrived on the railroad and marched north in three columns hauling cannons, field artillery, and massive supplies: General Middleton left from Fort Qu’Appelle with the main militia destined for Batoche, Colonel Otter from Swift Current for beleaguered Battleford, and Major General Strange from Calgary to Edmonton, determined to reach Fort Pitt. On April 24, Dumont and his Métis fought Middleton to a standstill at Fish Creek; on May 2, Otter’s attack on Poundmaker’s sleeping camp at Cutknife Hill was beaten into desperate retreat by the brilliant tactics of warriors under war chief
Fine Day. Two days later Wandering Spirit received a letter from Poundmaker’s band written in French promising the Cree generous supplies if they came to help “take Battleford and then go on and join Riel at Batoche.” Big Bear said he would not go, and after two days of fierce disagreement between Plains and Woods Cree, Imasees himself rode for Poundmaker’s to verify the situation. In the meantime, Wandering Spirit began moving the fifteen hundred People toward Fort Pitt, the first leg of a very long possible journey to Poundmaker’s and eventually Batoche.

News came from Pakan at Saddle Lake that an army had reached Edmonton. Wandering Spirit was convinced they were the “thousands of American soldiers” Riel had assured him last summer would march in from Montana to kill Government and offer the Cree a splendid new treaty. But Imasees returned with news that government troops were everywhere, in overwhelming numbers. Poundmaker had driven Otter’s soldiers off, but after Fish Creek, Middleton continued his advance on Batoche. And the troops in Edmonton were not Americans; they were Canadian soldiers heading for Fort Pitt.

Imasees had not heard, and so no one in camp could know, that on May 12, Middleton’s troops had overrun Batoche—thirteen Métis, eleven Canadians killed—and
ended the rebellion with Riel’s surrender. Gabriel Dumont had vanished into the prairie.

But Big Bear recognized clearly what he most feared. The fountain of blood had burst up with nine men killed at Frog Lake. He had almost managed to squash it at Fort Pitt—only one man killed by blunder—but it would surely flow again, and inevitably now among his own People, because they were led by men who hated Whites. Here in Canada no police had ever killed a single Person, yet Wandering Spirit and Imasees and Lucky Man longed for the American Long Knives, who they knew had often attacked and killed sleeping Indian camps. And even if the Cree, now, had thousands of warriors, where could they get enough guns and ammunition to kill any Whites? Only from Whites! Why could he no longer convince his own son that talk was the only power People had? Words, only words.

With words he had saved sixty-eight lives at Fort Pitt, so he would speak once more in council. As McLean recalled Big Bear’s words:

“You have heard the news from Poundmaker. It is alarming to you, what are you going to do about it? You were in a hurry to commence trouble, and
now you have it, the soldiers of the Queen have come to fight you, and very shortly you will likely have to show how you can fight them. You were told that they do not take their women and children with them when they go out to fight, and you will see it now.”

Big Bear’s great council voice would not speak again. Imasees and Wandering Spirit as war chiefs now led all the Cree, including the intimidated Woods Cree.

At Fort Pitt they dug out the last Company flour and rounded up straying cattle. Then, while the buildings burned, they trailed east paralleling the river cliffs, meandering toward Battleford. Mounted scouts guided the long, straggling trek of ox- and horse-drawn carts, burdened women and children trudging with men herding cattle, horses and dogs dragging travois, captives bent under bedding. At the very end, Big Bear walked with his youngest children; he carried a food pack and his sacred bundle.

They could advance only a few miles a day through the boreal landscape, crossing muskegs and streams running with melt water. Beneath the high crest of Frenchman Butte the leaders decided to rest and hold a Thirst Dance to revive everyone’s spirits. No preparation ceremonies had been held, but the centre tree was set and the leafy lodge almost complete
when a scout galloped down from the Butte. Using a spyglass taken at Fort Pitt, he had seen canoes and six scows crowded with men and horses rounding the bend of the North Saskatchewan River above Pitt!

Ceremony dissolved into a flurry of retreat. Wandering Spirit ordered the camp moved from the indefensible clearing to beyond a wooded hill north of the Butte. Scouts rode out to establish the soldiers’ positions and discovered Inspector Sam Steele’s Scouts tracking their trail from Fort Pitt. Shots exploded in the spring dusk, and the warrior Maymenook was hit. Corporal Thomas McClelland threw a rope around Maymenook’s neck and dragged the body in triumphant circles, galloping up a hill. Someone slashed the rope, and they left the warrior’s body to rot.

General Strange’s two hundred infantry, thirty cavalry, and one nine-pounder gun glimpsed Wandering Spirit’s muzzle-loader and Winchester-armed warriors at sunrise on May 28, two miles north of Frenchman Butte. The Dominion Survey later proved that the battleground fit exactly into the never cultivated northeast quarter of Section 35, Township 53, Range 25, west of the third meridian. Trooper Joseph Hicks recorded:

“We had advanced perhaps three miles when the Indians opened fire on our advance guard.

“The Indians had chosen an impregnable position.… On the north side of a muskeg was a small hill or rising ground in big timber right down to near the water. On this [hill] they had dug trenches about four feet deep and had logs placed so that they could fire from under the logs without exposing themselves to our fire. The approach to this position was exposed to a direct fire from the trenches … at least a quarter of a mile long.… The 65th Battalion extended to the muskeg’s edge, indeed a number of them went in up to their necks only to find that they could not even swim because of the tall grass. They then lay down and fired at the trenches, which was all that could be done.”

Big Bear was well behind those expert trenches, with the women and children and captives down in wooded ravines. When Strange’s first nine-pounder cannon ball tore through the aspen overhead, the huddled camp broke into chaos. Big Bear organized the retreat, assuring the terrified People that the gun was aimed too high to be dangerous. Half their carts and animals were left behind in the flight. The cannon continued firing, and they heard explosions behind them—that big gun speaks twice, he explained, once when it fires
and again when the ball lands and explodes. They heard the trees shudder even when they were several miles away.

Big Bear had helped dig the trenches overlooking the bare glacis. He knew the warriors would stop the soldiers there because Wandering Spirit could choose and build a defensive position as brilliantly as he could make a thousand People vanish before the American Army. At war tactics he was superb. But seemingly he could not grasp the strategies of politics, the agreements that words alone can fashion; that People cannot long be led with only a loaded Winchester in your hand.

The distant gun stopped soon after the first warriors left the trenches and caught up with the fleeing camp. The men said the gun had finally gotten range of their trenches with those exploding balls. Five warriors were wounded and another, He Speaks Our Tongue, was dying with his leg blown away. By then the soldiers and gun had retreated as well, so they had time for Tongue’s harrowing death chant and burial. Elizabeth McLean would remember that, during the mourning, she first noticed that Wandering Spirit’s hair was turning white. Pritchard and five half-breed families, together with the two Teresas, had disappeared during the battle. Some men rode back for supplies scattered in flight, and then, while other warriors fought skirmishes with
soldier scouts, for the next four days Wandering Spirit led the People north. Over hills, through intermittent rain and dense forest, a remarkable retreat into wilderness. Cameron, Halpin, and other captives were let go, but the main camp with the McLeans and Simpsons struggled on until one brilliant evening they reached Loon Lake Crossing. Facing the lake, arms high, Big Bear gave thanks for one more day, for the lovely call of the loons across the light on the water that warmed dryness into their sodden clothing.

He found Simpson beside his small fire. They had not talked since Fort Pitt burned, merely plodded on day after day wherever Wandering Spirit led. Simpson was scraping mud from his moccasins and protruding toes.

Big Bear said quietly, Where have gone your horses? Your beautiful horses?

They always hated bush, mud, Simpson muttered. He glanced up. Wandering Spirit sat staring into his fire, his small daughter folded in his arms. Simpson said, He talks with Mrs. McLean. McLean told me he asked her, What would your God do to someone who did what I’ve done?

What did she say?

The Good Book says a man is punished for his evil.

Big Bear said bitterly, Your God has so much practice, punishing.

It was murder.

Quinn said “No!” to the war chief four times.

Yes.

It almost seemed they could be friends again. Simpson asked, Why don’t your men let us go? The soldiers will never stop while we’re captive.

The men think, once you’re gone, nothing would stop the soldiers from killing us all.

But McLean is a powerful White. If he was free, he could maybe persuade the soldiers to stop shooting.

I know, Big Bear said, maybe. But it has, I think, gone too far.

That was the last time they talked. Before dawn Sam Steele’s Police Scout Cavalry emerged under the trees and attacked. The sleeping camp burst into defence and flight, Woods Cree Chief Cut Arm was shot dead as he darted from his lodge. There were captives everywhere, but Steele’s men fired indiscriminately; two shots whistled past Kitty McLean wading with a child through the crossing. In 1975, Horsechild’s wife, Mary PeeMee, told the Cree story of June 3, 1885, the last military battle fought in Canada:

“At Loon Lake the soldiers caught up with them. The people were all afraid, but Big Bear’s medicine
was so strong, he would always be safe. Around his neck he wore a necklace of beads. A bear’s claw rested in the hollow of his throat. As long as he wore that claw there, nothing could hurt him. Big Bear walked out into the open while his people fled. It was as if he placed an invisible wall between his people and the soldiers. The soldiers could not see him either. When his people were far enough away to be safe again, he caught up with them.”

“Safe” for the Cree could only mean north, farther into the maze of muskegs, lakes, forest, stony hills, creeks. But not before they buried the five warriors shot at Loon Lake and aged Sitting-At-The-Door, who, in terror, had hanged herself. The fleeing Cree heard that two huge riverboats full of soldiers had arrived at Fort Pitt from Battleford, that whole battalions were searching for them from three directions. They knew a thousand People could not continue in flight together, and small groups broke away, trekking toward Fort Pitt to surrender. Woods Cree with the McLeans and Simpsons disappeared across the Beaver River, and when Wandering Spirit pursued them, the pursuers joined the pursued. Together they struggled through boreal wilderness and reached Fort Pitt on June 22 to jubilation in the enormous soldier encampment. The Cameron and
Pritchard parties had already arrived. The Woods Cree surrendered, as did Wandering Spirit, who had started the Cree’s eighty-two-day triumph and travail by killing Tom Quinn on April 2.

Big Bear was not puzzled that Wandering Spirit surrendered or surprised that, when taken prisoner, the war chief tried to kill himself with a knife. There had always been a split in Wandering Spirit, a chasm between gentleness and furious pride, between a rage at humiliation and the shame of guilt. Now the White doctors forced him to stay alive until a rope could be cinched around his neck.

There were only a few hundred Plains Cree left free, moving through swampy forest with noisy soldiers blundering about and finding no one. Their supplies were finished, and several leading men decided that only the prairie could save them. While more groups trickled away to surrender at Turtle Lake and Battleford, Big Bear’s sons Imasees and Kingbird, together with Lucky Man, all implicated in the Frog Lake killings, led a hundred People between Canadian patrols on a six-hundred-mile flight south into Montana. As some Onion Lake Cree would remember it, “Imasees commandeered the best horses and many needed supplies and left his tribal kinsmen as a traitor might leave his comrade. [He] left behind disgust and
ill will among those who wanted to join the exodus but were deserted by Imasees.”

The United States held no promise for Big Bear. He mourned his sons who had fled—and Twin Wolverine, who with the Peace Hills bands had remained clear of the conflict—none of whom he would ever meet again. But a few People were still left, including his wife and Horsechild, and so he could not remain in the forest, much as he loved it even without a horse. A soldier camp at Turtle Lake and continuous patrols from Battleford made Jackfish Lake and The Little Hills impossible. But there was Fort Carlton, where his mother and father took him as a little boy, where he first met good Whites who laughed and danced, drank tea and traded honestly, helped you live as free as you pleased, with fine steel needles and axes that never burst in the cold. Carlton was burned rubble, they said; perhaps no soldiers would be there.