When the leaves came out, People trekked south from Carlton, from Jackfish and Saddle and Frog lakes, from Edmonton and the Peace Hills until more than three thousand People crowded into The Forks valleys with Big Bear’s band. There were festivals of dancing and food, Elders told Wîsahkêcâhk stories that Horsechild had never heard, and children’s laughter spread under the cottonwoods to the sandbanks of the ice-running river. But to feed themselves they had to move to the buffalo, south, so deep into Blackfoot territory that the great cones of the Sweetgrass Hills floated grey as dreams on the horizon.
They look like animals, Imasees said, waiting for us. Why don’t we go live there? Just follow the Milk River.
It’s Long Knives country, said Twin Wolverine.
If the Sioux come to this side of the Line and kill our buffalo, we can go there and kill theirs.
The Long Knives would shoot us.
Sayos and her daughter Nowakich were roasting buffalo haunch over the lodge fire. Nowakich’s husband, Lone Man, chewed meat, saying nothing, and suddenly she spoke: Maskepetoon had a big silver medal from their Great Father, like Sweetgrass got from the Grandmother. Does that mean Maskepetoon made treaty with the Whites over there?
Yes, he had a medal, Big Bear said. That “Father’s” face was on it too.
Who cares, a dead silver face. Imasees rose, belching comfortably. You can’t even see their stupid Line, it’s wherever Whites say it is. I say, if we’re strong enough to ride on the prairie, it’s our land.
Once that had certainly been true, but no longer. Big Bear contemplated that as he cantered north with several councillors while their Young Men searched the prairie ahead. They had only two hundred miles of steady riding to Sounding Lake, but most of the treaty People remained hunting with his. They knew that five dollars gave you one thin blanket or half a bag of mouldy flour; one buffalo, with liver and brain and heart and tongue and nose and intestines and hooves and horns and bones and mounds of meat and a huge hide, made mockery of a little pile of paper.
Nevertheless, two thousand Cree now living on reserves of “land set aside” waited for the governor on the flats where Sounding Creek entered the lake. Stone-faced David Laird arrived on August 13 with his troop of police surrounding the money-chest wagons. As Laird reported it, Big Bear immediately stated his most direct demand:
“‘The Great Spirit has supplied us with plenty of buffalo for food until the white man came. Now as that means of support is about to fail us, the Government ought to take the place of the Great Spirit, and provide us with the means of living in some other way.’”
In three days of talk, Laird conceded nothing. He described Big Bear as an “old [he was fifty-three] and weazened” man whom he disliked intensely because “he was an untrustworthy and bad Indian.” In any case, the Canadian prairie had been signed away by most of the plains chiefs: what did a few hardline Cree matter, even if their bands numbered some thousands? Let them eat buffalo, wait them out.
The White wife of a trader certainly did not consider Big Bear “weazened.” She wrote:
“He was to be seen every day riding round the camp on an Indian pony, haughty and defiant, his face and body adorned with war paint and his long black hair decorated with eagle feathers.… He was the typical red Indian in all his savage glory and was a striking figure, with his brown body well tanned by the sun exposed to view.…”
Together with the treaty chiefs, who delayed accepting their annual payments because living on reserves was proving so disastrous, Big Bear argued that the government had added crucial living clauses of extra food to Treaties One and Two, and therefore Treaty Six must be augmented as well to deal with the deadly sudden loss of the buffalo. Laird remained adamant: he could add nothing. When Cree Young Men galloped around his circled wagons in protest, firing shots into the air, he threatened them with arrest.
On Monday, August 25, 1878, the first issue of the Saskatchewan Herald, handset and printed by P.G. Laurie at Battleford, now the capital of the North-West Territories, reported that Big Bear spoke “not only for himself and his band, but for those who had already signed” and that “he would come again next year to receive the answer.”
The first newspaper west of Red River had half its information wrong. Big Bear did not mention coming again next year, and part of the reason was Sounding Lake. The shallow water so beautiful in its surround of shaggy Neutral Hills, which the Cree and Blackfoot had once dedicated as a peace boundary between them, the lake where, their stories told them, the buffalo had burst up from the hand of the Creator—this doubly sacred place. The wind shifting in the wolf willow whispered his prayer back to him: Trust the buffalo. To face Whites he needed the resolute courage of that faith, and the wisdom of time to understand what The Only One wanted People to do. Out of three annual attempts to talk treaty and now three days of deadlock with Laird at Sounding Lake grew a conviction, and a vow.
He told Laird he would watch for four Cree years to see how Government kept faith with those Cree who had signed Treaty Six. For four years his band, and every Person who wanted to join them, would watch and live the independence and freedom they had always had: with buffalo, without treaty.
Four years. Had Big Bear’s band been Blood or Siksika, an Elder would have focused his memory of those years in the cryptic oral code of the Blackfoot Winter Count. The Cree, however, had highly respected Old Men who were “professional rememberers” for their communities; they could recount, with practised accuracy, key tribal events of the near and distant past. The band’s Old Men might have remembered those four years with these happenings:
Year One: August (Buffalo Breeding Moon) 1878 to August 1879
When Little Pine and Lucky Man Signed
Saskatchewan Herald, November 16: Government surveyors staking land near the Bow and Oldman rivers are confronted by Assiniboine, who tell them they “know of no one in Canada who has a right to take away their land.” Big Bear is sent for, and a parley results in deadlock. When Police Commissioner Irvine arrives from Fort Walsh with twenty-six police, he finds three hundred Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cree, and Sioux warriors waiting. Big Bear and Irvine agree that the surveyors will stop their work and the Indians and police will “leave the dispute to be settled between the Governor and Big Bear when the leaves come out.” There is no mention of Big Bear wearing his war Bear paw.
Few fall buffalo and early snow with weakened horses make hunting barely possible. The Eagle Hills People are so near starvation that they petition officials to give them next summer’s treaty payments in January. They receive nothing.
Father Lestanc with the Métis at The Forks writes to the Herald on March 24: “Very severe winter. All the tribes—the Sioux, Blackfoot, Bloods, Sarcees, Assiniboines, Stoneys, Cree and Saulteaux—now form but one party, having the same mind. Big Bear up to this time cannot be accused of uttering a single objectionable word, but the fact of his being the head and soul of all our Canadian plain Indians leaves room for conjecture. They also seem desirous of securing Sitting Bull’s assistance to obtain another, and better, treaty.” But on May 5, the Herald reports: “The great confederacy of which Big Bear was to be the chief has come to nothing. The Blackfoot declined to give him their allegiance, actuated perhaps by a lingering remembrance of past enmity. The large party that wintered at The Forks has now dispersed.”
Prime Minister Macdonald appoints his friend Edgar Dewdney as the new Indian Commissioner. Arriving at Fort Walsh via Montana, Dewdney notes:
“July 2: Had an interview with some non-Treaty Cree Indians. They are said to have cut themselves off from Big Bear, although they deny it.
“July 3: Had interview with Big Bear and other Indians that promised to take the Treaty. Little Pine [270 persons] and Lucky Man [200 persons] did so, leaving Big Bear almost alone.
“July 4: Had long interview with Big Bear but no results. The same—talk but would not take the Treaty. Parted good friends.”
Dewdney writes to Macdonald con
fidentially: “I have not formed such a poor opinion of Big Bear as some appear to have done. He is a very independent character, self-reliant, and appears to know how to make his own living without begging from the government.”
Year Two: August 1879 to August 1880
When the Buffalo Disappeared across the Line
At Sounding Lake, Dewdney pays Little Pine’s band and those who signed with Big Bear’s councillor Lucky Man—Imasees’s father-in-law—the twelve-dollar signing bonus plus another fifteen dollars for three years’ back pay. Little Pine trades and leaves immediately to hunt buffalo.
A number of Big Bear’s band—which still numbered more than two thousand People—make the long trek with him to Fort Pitt carrying their few hides. It will be their last free trade on the North Saskatchewan; bleached bones cover the prairie, and they realize that whatever living animals remain have disappeared into Montana. Police Commissioner James Macleod writes Ottawa that increased American military manoeuvres along the border, including deliberate grass fires, are preventing the usual buffalo migration into Canada.
Big Bear’s band lives that winter in Montana, hunting along the Milk River and into the Bears Paw Mountains. Louis Riel is trying to organize a Métis-Indian coalition to possibly invade Canada and invites Big Bear to visit the Big Bend Métis settlement. The chief stays one day and, as his grandson Four Souls remembered it in 1975, tells Riel: “Let’s fight the Queen with her law, not with guns. This way we might have a chance.” Riel notes in his papers: “The Cree have a very good chief. He is Big Bear. He is a man of good sense.”
Fort Benton Record, March 12: Five thousand starving Indians from Canada’s northern reserves are camped around Fort Walsh and existing on sparse rations distributed by police. “There is nothing whatever to keep them from starvation north of the line.”
During treaty payments at Battleford in July, Poundmaker speaks for all the emaciated People just returned from Fort Walsh. He tells Dewdney the Cree are weak, without provisions, and that they need more resources to farm their reserves. “I am not asking for more money. We need ten cows and ten yokes of cattle on each reserve because now, when one family works with one yoke, lots of others must remain idle and we cannot put in much crop. If we get what we ask, I think we can make our living out of the ground. The Cree that are not settled are watching us.”
Dewdney responds: “Poundmaker is very sensible; when Indians talk that way, the government is much more likely to assist them than when they use threats.” Within weeks Dewdney officially names Poundmaker a chief, and he and 182 followers take a reserve along Cutknife Hill on the Battle River. But more cows and oxen never appear.
Saskatchewan Herald, August 2: It seems Wandering Spirit has ridden from Montana to observe the new commissioner in Battleford. Big Bear’s war chief declares: “I am very happy at what Poundmaker has said. I intend to abide by it.” Not long after, he is again hunting buffalo with Big Bear across the Line.
Year Three: August 1880 to August 1881
When Cree and Blackfoot Lived Together
Crowfoot’s starving treaty Siksika settle near Carrol, Montana, and pledge peace with Big Bear’s twenty-four hundred Plains Cree. They live side by side that winter and hunt the buffalo still plentiful in the Judith basin. Good meat and hides are available, but also endless whisky, and that creates havoc. As trader James Schultz later wrote:
“There were nights when a thousand Indians would be drunk together, dancing and singing around little fires built down in the timber, some crying foolishly, some making love, others going through all kinds of strange and uncouth antics. But there was very little quarrelling among Big Bear’s people, not half a dozen being killed in the whole winter. More than that number froze to death, falling on their way home in the night.”
A band member has a sexual affair with Big Bear’s youngest wife and, in a drunken rage, clubs the chief to death. But, as his grandson Four Souls told it later, “Big Bear’s oldest wife, Sayos, had been instructed what to do in case he got killed. So she called a medicine man who followed the instructions and Big Bear was brought back to life. He didn’t take revenge on this man right away, but later he got the medicine man to use bad medicine on him and killed him.” And Big Bear forgives his young wife because of the alcohol.
In mid-February, the bands from Mosquito, Moosomin, and Poundmaker—now “the most influential chief on the Saskatchewan”—come to Battleford to declare they must hold a Grand Council with the Indian Commissioner. The treaty understandings must be changed, Poundmaker states; if extra rations are not given, he will kill government oxen for food, and there are not police enough to arrest him. But there is no commissioner in winter Battleford, nor even an agent, to answer them, and they return to their bits of “land set aside” all the hungrier.
In May, Poundmaker and three thousand treaty Cree, unable to plant crops because they have no seed or draft animals or food, leave their reserves again to look for buffalo in the Cypress Hills. But no herds will ever again roam free in prairie Canada. To prevent violence, the Fort Walsh police dole out starvation rations of flour and rancid bacon hauled from Fort Benton, before they force the People north for treaty payments. Meanwhile, Montana ranchers petition the U.S. Army to chase Canadian Indians back over the border because, though they are “ostensibly here for the purpose of hunting buffalo, they have killed and eaten many of our cattle.”
Year Four: August 1881 to August 1882
When Big Bear Ran His Last Buffalo
The Marquis of Lorne, Governor General of Canada, tours the North-West Territories. Poundmaker guides his huge party from Battleford across the bone-haunted prairie to Crowfoot on the Bow River. During the journey Poundmaker is astounded to discover that the haughty, aloof Imperial Head of Canada, whose one wife is the daughter of the Great Grandmother venerated in every treaty, can actually explain nothing about government actions. The man Macdonald, who will never visit the Territories and whom no more than a dozen Plains People will ever see, makes all decisions as Head of Indian Affairs through an Indian Act no Person has ever heard a word about.
Another hard winter. There are still large herds along the Missouri, but rotgut whisky is more destructive than ever, and cycles of horse stealing by Young Men ruin the peace. Big Bear and his People, camped on the Musselshell River, recognize that despite adequate hunting, their life and community are being destroyed.
Major John Young, in charge of the immense Indian lands along the Missouri, offers Big Bear a reservation if he signs a treaty with Washington. Twin Wolverine, Imasees, and Wandering Spirit are strongly in favour, and a deep rift develops in the band when Big Bear will not agree.
In March, the U.S. Army launches “The Milk River Sweep.” Soldiers attack Little Pine’s band and harry them back across the border, but a messenger warns Big Bear in the Little Rocky Mountains, and war chief Wandering Spirit takes command. He sends scouts to watch for patrols while camp is struck and, covering their trail of travois and hoof prints, twelve hundred People disappear into the Missouri Breaks. The Benton Record is disgusted: the army should present Big Bear the “Freedom of Milk River” on a silver platter—if they can find him.
But the Plains Cree cannot live a life in hiding. After one more good hunt, and some warrior adventures for the Young Men stealing back horses stolen from them in past years, as the leaves open on the Missouri cottonwoods, Big Bear’s band trails slowly north. Past the valley where Chief Joseph and his Nez Percé made their last stand in the Bears Paw Mountains, north along Battle Creek, across the Medicine Line and past Old Man On His Back to the Cypress Hills. They circle their lodges at Cypress Lake; a day’s ride away, near Fort Walsh among the green-grass hills are the destitute camps of five thousand treaty Indians. After four years of difficult independence, of watching and waiting, Big Bear and his People have returned to ignored promises, impossible farming conditions, and starvation. From the northern reserves around the Peace Hills, named to honour Chief Maskepetoon, Chiefs
Bobtail, Ermineskin, and Samson have sent a bitter letter to Macdonald:
“The conditions of the treaty were mutually agreed to. We understood them to be inviolable and in the presence of the Great Spirit reciprocally binding. But alas! how simple we were.… We are now reduced to the lowest stage of poverty. We were once a proud and independent people, and now we are mendicants at the door of every white man in the country, and if it were not for the charity of white settlers, we should all die on government fare.… Our young women are reduced by starvation to become prostitutes to the white man for a living, a thing unheard of before amongst ourselves. What shall we then do?.… Shall we still be refused [assistance] and be compelled to adhere to the conclusion that the treaty is a farce enacted to kill us quietly, and if so, let us die at once?”
At Fort Walsh in July, Police Commissioner Irvine forces the People to go north for their treaty payments by withholding all rations. As Indian Farm Instructor Robert Jefferson later commented: “The Indians were more law-abiding than white men under the same circumstances would ever have been; had it been otherwise, ten times the number of police would not have kept them in order.”
THE RUNNING HOOVES DRUMMED Big Bear into another country, calling and calling, as the buffalo effortlessly fanned out before him. The gashed wounds left in the animals’ flanks by hunters they had once and then again outrun dripped brilliant red in the rhythmic bunch and release of their muscles, and then there was only one great cow running, floating strong, growing large until beside him streamed the tufted stick of her tail, the rolling leap of muscle in her hindquarters, and he felt life surge within her, her heart in that violent, happy thunder as she ran true the great curve of Earth, as he drifted along her flank, and for an instant his arrow pointed her, one instant and its feathers burst in the coarse hair behind her shoulder. And her rhythm rippled momentarily, her heart staggered as his arrow feathers flamed into double blossom. Then his horse had to swing sharply aside or he would have pitched over her, falling.
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