Big Bear

by Big Bear (retail) (epub)

  (For well over a century, Old Man Buffalo survived in Ontario, but in 2008 he is on display in the Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. As you approach, the gleaming black, pockmarked shape shifts into a conical human head; a great eagle-beaked nose with deep nostrils and mouth emerge. After a moment you recognize that the civilized steel that holds the head on its stand is clamped precisely through that open mouth, so it cannot utter a sound.)

  So, while Old Man Buffalo was being dragged east, an army of Whites was marching west: was this the new order of protection under which People must now somehow live?

  Big Bear contemplated the smoke drifting from his pipe. Then he stood up, walked between the lodges and evening fires and women and men and dogs and children chasing one another for happiness—there were more than five hundred in his band now, because Lucky Man and his followers had just come—and went onto the silent prairie, where prayer was possible. And, perhaps, if the Spirits were compassionate, vision. He remembered the McDougall log church, and how the Iron Stone had been fixed in humiliation beside it for twice four years. He could not count the times he had brought thank offerings when the Stone rested on the hill, where the dust of buffalo lay beyond every horizon.

  Did the Spirits have no power once the Stone was torn from its sacred hilltop? Fenced into that little churchyard in the valley, forced to hear those Christian songs? How could Chief Pakan and his band walk past into that square building when they, too, had once left offerings on the hill? It must be the land; even Old Man Buffalo had no power without it.

  And yet … despite the violation, Big Bear felt a certain respect for McDougall father and son. Sometimes he felt he could forgive them because they were so generous, their word so trustworthy. One autumn, when Big Bear’s band was starving, they dug up acres of Methodist potatoes, and the McDougalls, when they found out, just said, Fine, you needed food. They suffered too when buffalo couldn’t be found, but also from the silent enemy smallpox: John’s wife and two children were in the Victoria cemetery with many Cree. But strangely, Maskepetoon had been more committed to peace than these contradictory Whites; their God seemed very violent at times, and, they preached, Only we know how to deal with Him, so listen to us!

  The immense land remained. Big Bear stood, listening. No one could drag it away in a cart. The land grew grass, grass fed buffalo, buffalo fed People. They were all land. They would remain; he prayed.

  The North West Mounted Police hauled themselves west over the prairie along the Medicine Line border. At La Roche Percée, one column rode north for Edmonton via Carlton while the other continued west. Big Bear’s band heard of both columns’ slow progress throughout the summer. The cart treks the Métis and traders and missionaries made routinely every year became overwhelming sagas of drought and mud and dying horses for these Whites who were supposed to guard the country for Canada. The western contingent got lost between the Bow and Oldman rivers; they could not find Fort Whoop-Up to arrest the illegal Americans there, though they searched for two weeks. Finally, worn and starving, they trekked south into Montana, where they met the half-Blood Jerry Potts in Fort Benton, who led them back into Canada on the wide Whoop-Up wagon trail two hundred and thirty miles to the fort. They found neither trader nor whisky inside its palisade, only one crippled White man and four Blood women. No shot was fired nor voice raised. The women cooked the exhausted Canadians all the buffalo they could eat.

  While the Mounted Police were getting lost, Company trader William McKay visited the Cree on the plains in the name, he said, of the Great Mother. He explained that the police would “mark out the line between Her territories and those of the United States so that Her Indian and White subjects might know where the lands of the Queen begin.” The police had no military purpose but had come to “preserve the Queen’s law and order,” especially now that crews were surveying routes for railroad and telegraph lines to be built across the prairie. Big Bear and his council were disturbed. The Queen’s land? The Queen’s law? A railroad? McKay could only repeat the words he had been told—someone else would come to explain more—then he gave them tea, sugar, tobacco, and, oddly, fifteen scalping knives and left for the next band.

  During the summer of 1874, the Plains Cree began to comprehend what a mass of Whites was pouring in upon them. Police troops, surveyors for railroad and telegraph lines, land speculators, settlers trekking their carts along the Carlton Trail from Red River to Pitt and Victoria and Edmonton. The first sternwheeler steamer on the Saskatchewan River crawled over shoals and rapids from Lake Winnipeg to Carlton filled with passengers and three hundred cartloads of Company freight.

  And, after two years of talk, the Lake of the Woods–Red River People settled with the government commissioners on agreements they called Treaty One and Treaty Two. In 1874, new commissioners then called the central Qu’Appelle Cree and Assiniboine People together to enact a similar treaty for their prairie lands. Big Bear heard how the Saulteaux speaker Gambler had tried to negotiate a list of conditions with Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris, arguing, “The Company has stolen our land.… The earth, trees, grass, stones, everything I see with my eyes.” The Cree speaker Pis-qua pointed at Company Factor McDonald and declared, “You told me you had sold your land for 300,000 pounds. We want that money.” But the talking went nowhere; Morris stubbornly repeated he had no authority to make major changes for them to the treaty already negotiated at Lake of the Woods, and after barely six days of meetings that would determine their lives forever, the Qu’Appelle chiefs signed Treaty Four. An excellent treaty, Morris said in congratulation, which gave them “the full breadth and width of the Queen’s goodness”—five dollars per person per year forever.

  It was now four years after Sweetgrass’s Edmonton letter, and still no commissioner had come to talk with the North Saskatchewan Plains Cree. Then, during the summer of 1875, after the SS Northcote had burned its way two thousand river miles from Lake Winnipeg to Edmonton and back, three Cree warriors stopped a telegraph crew hanging their endless wire in the air approaching Pitt. The leader spoke for Mista-wasis (Big Child), head of the Carlton People, who declared that the crew would not cut down one more Cree tree to hang up its wire, which would certainly frighten their animals away, until a treaty was made. The contractor “could do nothing but put all the wire, insulators, brackets, etc., in one large pile” and return to Carlton. Lieutenant-Governor Morris at Red River heard his report that same day, by telegraph, and within two weeks a messenger was driving to visit every Cree band in the Saskatchewan district and the plains. The government messenger was missionary George McDougall, who had stolen Old Man Buffalo and shipped him away.

  Considering McDougall’s hairy face—not smooth like the Catholic Lacombe’s—Big Bear tried to remember why he respected him. McDougall sat in the band’s place of honour, on the chief’s left in the council circle, with his wagonload of presents piled behind him, and spoke about the Queen who loved all her children so much, her Red as much as her White. Thousands of her Red children had already taken her hand, through her commissioners, in five great treaties, and next summer the same commissioners would come and make treaty with them too. Big Bear was thinking, If the Queen—wherever and whoever she might be—was indeed their Great Mother who cared for them so overwhelmingly, why did she not visit them? What mother never visited her children, only sent messengers with rigid instructions: this bit can be yours, but the rest is mine forever? She had paid her Hudson’s Bay Company “child” money for rights the Company didn’t have, but how could she claim the land was hers when his People knew the Creator had given it to them?

  Since before the story memory of their oldest Elders, People had lived and hunted on this earth. They belonged here; it was their home, they were this earth’s family. It was impossible to give away the Creator’s gift by making “treaty,” especially with someone whom no one, not even her commissioners, had ever seen. Just because she said it was her land and, if you sa
id it wasn’t, she would send thousands of her Young Men with guns and take it? That was no mother. That was a war chief.

  McDougall explained none of this. He simply repeated, “You are, like me, children of the Queen. We are all of the same blood; the same God made us and the same Queen rules over us. And these are the presents she sends you. Don’t worry, her commissioners will come next summer.”

  Finally McDougall seemed to be finished. Every eye in Big Bear’s council circle met his, and everyone agreed. Elderly and dignified as he was, respected by many Plains Cree and Saulteaux and Assiniboine and Siksika and Blood and Peigan, the Reverend George McDougall could explain nothing because he was simply carrying a message. No one debates with a messenger; you give him a message to carry back. So Big Bear did that:

  “We have heard your words, now here are ours. We want none of the Queen’s presents. When we set a fox-trap we scatter pieces of meat all around, but when the fox gets into the trap, we knock him on the head. We want no bait. Let your chiefs come like men and talk to us.”

  McDougall’s expression changed when Big Bear shifted so sharply from Queen to fox-trap; but what could he do? He reported to Morris that one senior Cree chief, Mista-wasis, had said, “My heart is full of gratitude” for the government message and that Sweetgrass’s son had happily accepted all the presents for his father, who was away hunting. But Big Bear was not “reasonable in his demands” and “for years has been regarded as a troublesome fellow.” After quoting the chief’s exact words in response, he explained that the man was actually a Saulteaux. The Saulteaux were known as “shrewd men” and “mischief makers” and, he added, “the Cree would have driven them out of camp long ago, but were afraid of their medicine, as they are noted conjurors.”

  If Big Bear had heard this report, he would have pointed out that the Cree wanted to drive him out so badly that he now had the largest Plains Cree following, larger than the senior Sweetgrass. McDougall visited twenty-two bands and estimated their population as 3,976; he did not mention that 600 of them called Big Bear chief.

  Vast numbers of buffalo had to give their bodies for such a large band to live, and it was the respectful skill of Big Bear’s hunters that provided food from the scattered herds. The police had arrested or chased the whisky traders and wolfers back to Montana, which helped everyone not to waste their hunts on liquor. But the herds were so small now, and skittish, that Big Bear sometimes could only pray for mercy, especially for the little children trusting their parents for the happy life they lived so unawares. And he loved them all, particularly his grandchildren and baby son Horsechild, when they gathered in his lodge and he told them winter stories until they laughed for happiness with him. But it was impossible to listen to a story when hunger tore at them, when their beautiful faces were pulled gaunt like aged spectres. O Great Spirit, pity us. O Buffalo Spirit, be merciful.

  That winter (1875–76) they did not take the long trail north to Jackfish Lake, nor even to Fort Pitt. For the first time they wintered in the south among the willows and cottonwoods of The Forks valleys, where they hunted with great care the buffalo, deer, antelope, and other animals sheltering along the two rivers. They traded as little pemmican as possible for ammunition and tea, keeping everything for their own food and clothing, and then, as winter blizzards swept over them, they were safe in their circled lodges with plenty of wood for fires. And they heard again about George McDougall.

  He and his son John were building a mission on the Bow River and, needing food, the men rode out along Nose Creek. On a snow-whipped day, they killed six buffalo. The older McDougall rode back alone to their camp, but when John and the others arrived later, his father was not there. Everyone in the area, Blackfoot and Métis and police at Fort Calgary, helped search; first they found his horse and, after thirteen days, his body. As John told the story: “I saw the position in which he had frozen and I thought, Just like him; thoughtful of others even at his last moment. Feeling death was upon him, he had picked a spot as level as he could and laid himself out straight upon it, and crossing his hands, prepared himself to die. His face was perfectly natural.” The mourners carried him back to the mission and buried him dressed in his buffalo-hunting clothes above the frozen Bow River.

  When he heard, Big Bear remembered why he respected the missionary: he lived what he was, a true, bearded White. Sadly, he had not been born a Person.

  About the time McDougall died, Big Bear and a few of his band were at Pitt trading for winter ammunition when they met their first Queen’s police. Inspector Paddy Crozier had bristles sticking out wide under his beaked nose. He explained he had been sent to give presents to the Plains Cree and to tell them not to interfere with workers surveying for telegraph and railroad lines, that commissioners were coming this summer (1876) to talk treaty. Big Bear answered, as Crozier reported to Ottawa, that all the Plains People had already heard this, several times, and that “they wished to take nothing from government until the treaty was made.”

  Crozier peered at him sharply, his whiskers lifting as though he could not quite understand what James Simpson translated. Then he said, The Blackfoot complain to us you Cree are squeezing them off their buffalo lands, back against the mountains and Montana.

  Big Bear laughed. We have made peace with the Blackfoot, everyone just wants to live. The Blackfoot should thank you for making their rivers flow faster, dumping all that whisky into the water.

  Crozier laughed too. They do thank us, and they’re getting fat, eating better.

  Big Bear said, But there are still Americans with long Sharps rifles coming north. When they find buffalo, they sit all day on a hill shooting, then they rip off the hides and leave good meat to rot. Why don’t police stop them?

  There’s no law against shooting buffalo and taking hides.

  What is “law” for?

  To protect everyone.

  Then there should be a law stopping sharp-shooters. How many hides went to Montana last season?

  Crozier pondered. Maybe two hundred thousand. You Cree sent plenty of them.

  Every hide we trade, we eat all the meat.

  But soon, Crozier said carefully, there will never be enough buffalo again. Some chiefs are growing food, out of the ground, and maybe more Cree should do that. There is very good food in the ground.

  Yes, grass for animals to grow and give their meat to People. If Pakan and Mista-wasis want missionary potatoes and wheat, good, but my People, Little Pine’s People, are hunters. We don’t sit in one place waiting for food to poke out of the ground.

  Crozier nodded as Simpson finished, looking over the log walls of Fort Pitt at the high banks across the North Saskatchewan folded into snow. He said, Sweetgrass, this winter, he’s thinking about potatoes too.

  When Big Bear did not respond, Crozier continued, My assignment is to tell all Plains People about treaty.

  I know … but we need to talk with commissioners.

  Crozier remained stubborn; he would travel everywhere in such a hard winter. There was in him something beyond McDougall, a rigidity of orders, eyes fixed as if seeing only one spot at a great distance—where he would go.

  Crozier is bull-headed Irish, Simpson told Big Bear over a last cup of tea. A trained soldier, he obeys orders even if they are stupid.

  They say these are police, not soldiers.

  Yes, but about orders they’re the same. They do what they’re told.

  If all police are like Crozier, Big Bear thought, what will happen to them on the blazing winter prairie?

  At sunrise the Cree left Pitt for The Forks. The sun burned blue in the sky, light falling like ice in the fierce cold, and they were forced to shield themselves from blindness by cutting slits in buffalo hide for eye patches. Next day the Neutral Hills emerged in the west, with The Nose a hump on the horizon beyond them, sacred places, Ribstone Creek and Battle River and Iron Creek and the high hill where once the Iron Stone had rested—land everywhere as familiar to Big Bear as the palm of the hand n
earest his heart. He rode, continuing his prayer for guidance.

  They crossed Eye Hill Creek and set their night camp beside the ice of Sounding Lake. When the fire burned in their travelling lodge, Horsechild crawled into his father’s lap. The chief folded him in his arms and told him the story of that place, so the little boy would remember it from before he could speak.

  “When the Creator made the world, he showed People food for every season. The sweet sap inside poplar bark in spring. Turnip roots to cook in summer. Prairie-rose hips for chewing after their sweet petals fall. And berries, from early summer to late fall, buffalo beans, strawberries, blueberries, saskatoons, choke, and pincherries—that was very good. But the Creator knew winter snow was coming, and People would starve unless they had meat.

  “So, hidden deep under water in the ground, the Creator made herds of buffalo. He said to them, ‘People living on earth are hungry. If you are kind and give them your meat to eat, I promise that you will always have many strong calves.’

  “And the buffalo cried, ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ and they began to run, charging upward to the light and air. It was here by this lake they came up for us, bursting out of the ground from under the water. And the sound of their coming was like the mighty thunder of Thunderbird, rolling. That is why we call this water Sounding Lake.”

  And next morning there were tracks in the snow past their lodge. No one had heard a sound, not a dog had barked nor a horse whinnied, but the huge tracks with their five great claws came up from the ice of the lake and went south over the hills in the rising light. Bear had visited them, but had not stopped.

  As they travelled south along Sounding Creek, Big Bear sensed he should vow to give a Thirst Dance, asking for guidance. The Queen’s commissioners were coming to talk treaty, and he had heard that so far all five treaties said exactly the same things. Was it possible to live with such agreements into a better future than these relentless cycles of disease and hunger and suffering and endless desperation about buffalo? Every spring there were fewer little calves on the prairie bunting their gaunt mothers. The great bulls wandered alone, as if longing to hide in some crevice where there were no bone piles to stumble over, no horned skulls with ridged eye-holes staring at them. Bear, can I dare to make the most difficult prayer for guidance? Will you help my People help me fulfill it?