Big Bear (8 page)

He clenched his fist, and power gathered in him hard and tight as his heart hammering. He could not believe what had been given him, but he had to. He was hiding it in his hand. He glanced at his men; they had all remounted, even Imasees, vigilant and alert to the water—the immense valley and the two river lines of horizon lying empty along the sky. He need explain nothing.

They fanned out on the high prairie, avoiding ridges so as not to appear on the skyline. But while they rode, Big Bear recognized that the highest hill, which in the deceptive level light at first seemed to be a distant butte, was actually a very close, massive rock cairn.

Thousands of stones mounded into a dome, its centre level with a mounted man’s waist. Most of the stones were the size of a human head, and lines of them radiated out like the roof rafters of a Blackfoot sundance lodge from its
centre pole. The lines ended at his horse’s hooves, in a necklace of single stones that circled around the central cairn. Sky and land cut deep to the shining river: every offered rock a prayer.

Slowly he rode around the west curve, and his men followed, riding wide, not a horse stepping inside the stones. There were small cairns in the outer ring, creating lines across the centre that pointed east and west, and then the ring opened south: two lines of large stones widening out over the prairie until they disappeared, as if marking the drive lanes for herding and chasing the stampeding buffalo into a pound or over a cliff. For generations People had acted their prayers here, petitioning the Buffalo Spirit to come, come, pity us, help us live, help us kill your animals.

Imasees was signalling: his son did not want them clustered together on the skyline. Big Bear signalled back and his hunters scattered, searching again.

Suddenly Big Bear could not endure the height of his horse; he had to slip off, fold his legs and sit, feel the ground where the driving lane opened the circle. The glacial stones piled together by People for millennia mounded up before him as if resting on the horizon, the prairie dimpled by knobs and hollows, and he felt the weight of the dead in his lifetime, dead by disease and guns and starvation and whisky
and raids and attacks and war—the Cree had made war at the Oldman River, and White police had marched in and built their fort within half a day’s ride of the battle place—he had helped make war, too often, and left the dead of his People mutilated and rotting in the sun like buffalo slaughtered for nothing but hides. The buffalo stone burned in his hand, all the dead, the dead, and now the Whites an unstoppable flood and he stared at the magnificent cairn floating on the horizon before him while his body simmered with
Buffalo … trust the buffalo.

Imasees rode up the driving lane, and Big Bear looked at him. His son said, We found them, on our side of the river. A small herd.

Ahhhhh, Big Bear said and lifted himself to his feet. He walked between the lanes to the cairn and offered up the buffalo stone,
Iniskim,
between rocks level with his eye. Then he and his son together rode down a ravine dusted white as snow by saskatoons blooming and across the river, back to the buffalo.

Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris required two weeks to haul himself and a large party up the Carlton Trail from Red River to the North Saskatchewan. On Friday, August 18, 1876, the scarlet-coated police band with their tootling trumpets surrounded the royal blue and gold uniforms of the commissioners riding over the river hills above Carlton, where the huge Grandmother flag flipped open in the gentle wind. After half an hour of Cree drumming and dancing and singing, their full-feathered chiefs approached Morris with their pipe presentation. The pipe was, as he later wrote, “… stroked by our hands. After the stroking had been completed, the Indians sat down in front of the council tent, satisfied that in accordance with their custom we had accepted the friendship of the Cree nation.” Morris did not comprehend that the pipe had initiated him into a sacred peace ceremony.

The treaty lay ready, English words on parchment, but it had to be spoken into Cree so the People could hear what it said and talk about it. An uneasiness arose about
translators—regarding Peter Erasmus, whom the Cree trusted and had themselves hired, and government men Peter Ballendine and John McKay; the complex tongues of Plains Cree, Woods Cree, and Saulteaux needed to be carefully spoken. But finally Morris could repeat what every missionary had already told them: “My Indian brothers … you are, like me, children of the Queen. We are of the same blood, the same God made us, and the same Queen rules over us. I am her Governor of all these territories, and I am here to speak from her to you … face to face.”

He then explained, through the translators, that Treaty Six was exactly the same as Treaty Four, which had already been accepted by the southern plains chiefs last year at Qu’Appelle. To summarize:

• Every band could pick the land they wanted, one square mile per family of five.
  
• They were promised schools, specific farming and carpentry tools, cattle, $1,500 a year for ammunition and twine, liquor prohibition, and uniforms and medals and flags for chiefs.
  
• Upon signing, a $12 bonus would be paid to every man, woman, and child.
  
• Payments of $25 per chief, $15 per headman, and $5 to every Person would be made annually, forever.
  

In four days of discussion with Morris at Carlton, the leading area chiefs followed the Cree tradition of having younger councillors speak for them first, so that the chiefs could speak later without being embarrassed by having their comments rejected. In his report Morris said nothing about young Poundmaker’s speech concerning land, but Peter Erasmus recorded Poundmaker’s words in his memoirs:

“‘The governor mentions how much land is to be given us. He says one square mile for each family, he will give us.’ And in a loud voice [the councillor] shouted, ‘
All
this is our land! It isn’t a piece of pemmican to be cut off and given in little pieces back to us. It is ours and we will take what we want!’”

The Saulteaux leader Badger had come from Treaty Four and again expressed the concerns he had raised the year before about the huge problems of learning to live by farming. Joseph Thoma spoke for Red Pheasant’s band: “In the list of articles [needed to farm], there are many things overlooked. I want to ask for as much as will cover the skin of the people … what you have offered is too little. And when you spoke you mentioned ammunition, I did not hear
mention of a gun; we will not be able to kill anything simply by setting fire to powder. I want a gun for each chief and headman and I want ten miles all around the reserve where I may be settled.”

To which Morris responded with a curt threat: “What I have offered to you has been accepted before by others more in number than you are. I hold out a full hand to you, and it will be a bad day for you and your children if I have to return and say that the Indians threw away my hand.”

And then he added a—perhaps ignorant, certainly deceiving—lie: “I want the Indians to understand that all that has been offered is a gift, and they still have the same mode of living as before.”

His “same mode of living” comment was not discussed, though every hunter knew the buffalo herds were shrinking south. Threatened, Red Pheasant repudiated the statement of his councillor. He agreed with senior chiefs Mista-wasis and Ahtah-kakoop (Star Blanket), who, having been influenced by Anglican missionaries for a decade now and having long cultivated gardens, had already decided that their future must be with the treaty. Erasmus recorded that Mista-wasis said nothing during Morris’s treaty explanations or in the debate the Cree held among themselves—which lasted all of
one day. But toward the evening of that day he did at last rise to his feet:

“I speak directly to Poundmaker and Badger and those others who object to signing the treaty. Have you anything better to offer our people? I for one think that the Great White Queen Mother has offered us a way of life when the buffalo are no more. Gone they will be before many snows have come to cover our heads or graves if such should be. When the Red Coats came, why did the American traders flee in fear, when before they had shot Blackfoot warriors down like dogs and dragged them to the open plains to rot or be eaten by wolves? It was the [Queen’s] power that stands behind those few Red Coats … and I for one look to the Queen’s law to protect our people against the evils of firewater and to stop the senseless wars among our people, and against the Blackfoot. We have been in darkness; the Blackfoot and the others are people as we are. They will starve as we will starve when the buffalo are gone. We will be brothers in misery.… We speak of glory, and our memories are all that is left to feed the widows and
orphans of those who died to attain it.… I for one will take the hand that is offered.”

Ahtah-kakoop spoke immediately after Mista-wasis:

“Yes, I have carried the dripping scalps of the Blackfoot on my belt.… We killed each other in continuous wars and in horse stealing, all for the glory we all speak of so freely.… But with the buffalo gone, we will have only the vacant prairie which none of us have learned to use.… Let us show our wisdom by choosing the right path now while we yet have a choice. For my part, I think the Queen Mother has offered us a new way. I will accept her hand for my people.”

And next day they both signed, the first Cree chiefs to make their X marks on an English Treaty Six they could not read; they trusted what the translators told them Morris had said was in it. In this way, at Carlton on August 23, 1876, Mista-wasis, Ahtah-kakoop, and seven other chiefs and thirty-six councillors did, in the name of their 1,787 band members then present and the hundreds more hunting on the plains, “cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada for Her Majesty the Queen and her
successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges to the lands … embracing an area of one hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles [312,000 sq. km], be the same more or less.…”

Land two and a half times larger than England.

Then, “deeply satisfied,” Morris and his party made the money payments and trekked on to present Treaty Six to the second group of Cree bands at Fort Pitt.

Big Bear’s band had lived in the Great Sand Hills all summer, hunting as near the American border as Old Man On His Back; despite all the messages they had previously received, in 1876 they heard not a word from Morris. When they did hear, via a message from James Simpson, that the governor was at Pitt with the treaty, Big Bear and several councillors galloped north on their fastest horses with alternates running beside them. They arrived opposite Fort Pitt at dusk on September 12, the day after Indian Commissioner William Christie of Edmonton had finished making treaty payments to all the People assembled there. Sweetgrass, Pakan, and seven other chiefs, with their twenty councillors, had already added their X marks to Treaty Six on September 9, the day before Simpsons frantic messenger had finally found Big Bear’s camp and gave him the message: Where are you? Sweetgrass is at Fort Pitt talking treaty!

How could it happen so fast? Big Bear asked Simpson, who was sitting beside him at his night fire. They were under poplars in an east coulee; Big Bear could not yet face crossing the river and meeting those new “treaty-promise chiefs” camped beside Pitt. Sweetgrass was out on the prairie near us just eight days ago.

Simpson said, Morris himself sent for Sweetgrass. And the chief met Morris in his ceremonial suit, took him in his arms, and kissed him on both cheeks.

What!

The other chiefs did that too, and the councillors.

Kiss the governor?

Like Christians after their feast ceremony.… Priests call it drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Jesus, but Methodists say it’s just wine and bread—they always kiss afterward.

Ahhhhh.

Simpson said, The governor talked all next day, explaining payment and general starvation rations and such things. Then the Cree held council for one day, and the day after that they made short speeches and signed. On Sunday they had church, and on Monday Christie finished paying the treaty money—everybody, even babies, got twelve dollars for signing—and today Morris packed up; he’s leaving.

Lone Man sat studying the fire, but Twin Wolverine glanced at his father for an instant and Big Bear had to look away, through the golden aspen to the bright stars.

Simpson added, The Cree are giving their paper money to the traders. Lots of traders, there’s lots of stuff to buy.

Lone Man said, not quite able to believe it, After one day of council … every chief agreed, about everything?

Yes. Because of Chief Little Hunter and Erasmus, Simpson explained. They reported about Carlton, how Poundmaker and Badger objected to the treaty, and then what Mista-wasis and Ahtah-kakoop advised, why they would sign. And then Sweetgrass said to this council, “I consider those chiefs far wiser than I am. If they have accepted this treaty for their people, after many days of talk and careful thought, then I am ready to accept it for my people.”

Big Bear murmured, Many days of talk. The good Sweetgrass, he’s almost all Abraham now.

Simpson nodded, Pakan too. He praised Little Hunter and Erasmus by saying, “They would never tell us something that was not for our good. So, if those other chiefs who are greater in number than we are have found this treaty good, I and my headmen will sign.”

He’s no longer a hard Cree pakan (nut), he’s a soft Christian Seenum.

That’s how he signed the treaty, James Seenum.

Ahhhhh, said Big Bear. And Sweetgrass?

Weekas-kookee-pay-yin.

Yes, he would give his Cree name away.

So … English, Cree … which name should they use?

No name! Big Bear growled. Not to give away the land!

They were all so silent then that they heard the aspen shiver, the river gurgle beyond the willows. And then the splash of paddles, the rasp of a canoe over sand. In a moment Imasees stepped into the firelight with another Young Man, who nodded to the circle.