After a summer of struggle at Fort Walsh, the forced treaty signing in winter, and another summer of dry prairie trails and sad visits with many friends, Big Bear knew more than he wanted to know of the desperate misery, the prostrating boredom the Cree endured on their reserves. Life began with food, yes, but true life was more than intermittent doses of lumpy flour and rancid pork, the endlessness of nothing to do. He and his band remained the largest group that had not yet chosen a reserve: that was the one bargaining power they had left to change the treaty. Could they negotiate one large “land set aside” for all Cree—perhaps even for all the Plains People—one huge united land together, straddling rivers and plains and parkland? Could he convince the Blackfoot Confederacy suffering on their reserves, big as they were, to agree? Crowfoot and the Siksika, Red Cloud and the Bloods, Sitting-On-Eagle-Tail-Feathers and the Peigan—was it possible that the land could again feed them as well as it once had, not these endless dry rations.… O Great Spirit, grant wisdom.
And always, the thundercloud on the edge of his thoughts: his last hunt and the vision Coyote had forced him to see beyond the buffalo cow. Bursting out of the ground, spurting between his fingers, blood, uncontrollable—what did it mean?—when would it happen?—must it—why? O Great One, O Only One, have mercy.
Winter was upon them and the men scattered into the forest, trying to rekindle their solitary hunting and trapping skills. But the animals were few, their tracks in the snow largely unreadable memories of their passing. Nevertheless, they worked to be able to support themselves without the tasteless White rations; traders James Simpson and Angus McKay paid them good beef for hauling freight. Big Bear and his sons drove freight sleighs to Edmonton, and visited Chief Pakan in his cabin of logs at Saddle Lake, who reminded them that eight years ago he was already thinking of one huge Cree land along the North Saskatchewan. Yes, Big Bear said, yes, we must talk more of this. All of us, together.
The band lived in unsurveyed boreal forest, their worn hide lodges patched with canvas. There was plenty of wood for fires to keep even the smallest, weakest child warm—better than digging buffalo dung out of drifted snow. But eating squirrels, spruce grouse, and porcupines, chopping down trees for White firewood … it was an inconceivable life for hunter warriors who had once galloped along horizons dancing to the thunder of buffalo. Councillors such as Twin Wolverine, Wandering Spirit, Imasees, and Four Sky Thunder could barely endure it, and those who dreamed of being Worthy Young Men—Kingbird, Round the Sky, Miserable Man, Iron Body, Bad Arrow—found nothing manly in chasing rabbits.
Over and over Big Bear tried to convince his council, and especially his sons, that the only political leverage they had left was their last bit of freedom: to refuse to be fenced in. Use the Queen’s law against her, refuse until government agreed to negotiate substantial change, both to the treaties and the little, scattered reserves.
Well, Twin Wolverine said bitterly, if we had our own, particular place, at least we could work for ourselves. Not wear out our horses dragging manure for Whites.
Imasees sneered, You want to dig dirt the rest of your life?
They were clamped tight by iron winter; green spring would certainly come—but with no more great animals. There was only one assured guidance: to dedicate himself to the worship ceremony of a Thirst Dance. Big Bear prayed and meditated and prayed, then, over the winter drifts he sent tobacco to every Plains Cree reserve: Will you come, pray with me in the Thirst Dance? And, together, hold a Grand Council about treaty?
And Poundmaker responded immediately: We will help. Build your Thirst Dance Lodge here beside the Battle River; come, fulfill your vow with us.
The Saskatchewan Herald, March 8, 1884, editorialized:
“Big Bear has seen and conversed with many of the chief officers of Indian Affairs, but none of them seems to be ‘the head’—there is always some one higher. To settle who this higher power is has now become the one object of his life. To this end he has made up his mind to go to Ottawa, calling at Regina on his way. If there is a head to the Department, he is bound to find him, for he will deal with no one else. If the old growler gets down to Ontario, it is to be hoped he will be kept there.”
To meet, to say nothing of speaking with, “the head” of Indian Affairs was impossible for any Indian in 1884. But after years of Morris, Laird, Rae, Crozier, Reed, Irvine, Dewdney, and Vankoughnet, Big Bear understood only too well the endless evasions of government hierarchies; he resolved to “find that one White man than whom there is none higher.”
Three months of vigils, prayers, and songs were past, the stories told, the feasts and dancing and offerings made. Cree from Little Pine and Poundmaker and Young Sweetgrass and Lucky Man and Thunderchild had gathered with Big Bear’s band. The centre tree had been chosen beside the Battle River, ceremonially chopped down, and hauled with laughter and singing to the lodge site. There it was raised, its top branches high in the air and its twenty-four rafters radiating out to the surrounding circle of wall. Fresh spring aspen covered the great lodge, a dazzling green plant born suddenly out of the grass above the looping thread of river.
Inside, Big Bear was praying. Carried on the beat of drums, the rhythm of People dancing with him—past the altar, the buffalo skulls, around the Centre Thunderbird Tree hung with offering flags—and sustained by the songs and cries of his gathered community: Grant me wisdom, grant us understanding, we have lost our way of how we should live, grant me my vow, hear our prayer, O Only One, have pity. No eating, no drinking, no sleeping, only movement and petition.
And on the third day the police arrived. At the leafy entrance, Superintendent Crozier in scarlet uniform, two constables, and Louis Laronde, interpreter, who explained that the farm instructor on Little Pine’s reserve had been hit with an axe handle by He Speaks Our Tongue when the instructor refused him food; they had come to arrest the Young Man.
Poundmaker and Little Pine stared up at Crozier, whose spirit once went mad on the prairie but who now sat on his horse like polished steel. Warriors muscled together around the chiefs, furious and bristling weapons, while Poundmaker explained that this was their most sacred ceremony. Big Bear was dancing; there would be no arrest near the lodge. And carefully, without anyone raising his voice, they agreed that the ceremony would be completed tomorrow and that the day after, the chiefs would bring Tongue to Crozier. He would be waiting for them at the Poundmaker Agency buildings.
On June 20, 1884, more than three hundred Cree men, some armed and in war paint, others carrying green poplar branches, left the Thirst Dance camps. Big Bear, Little Pine, and Poundmaker walked in the lead, but when they reached the rise overlooking the Agency buildings, the Young Men refused to go farther. Hundreds of women and children watched from the surrounding hills, and together they saw the Uniforms moving into formation. There were at least fifty of them. Ten marched left, ten marched right and hunkered down behind low bastions, rifles poised. Between them the remaining police, mounted and on foot, advanced with arms holstered toward the rise, with Crozier, Laronde, and Farm Instructor Craig walking in the lead. Screams, war whoops, the falsetto ululations of war cries rang over the hills.
Big Bear and Poundmaker advanced to meet Crozier. Poundmaker carried his war club with its four embedded knives, but Big Bear was empty-handed and not wearing his sacred bear paw. The chiefs offered to take the place of the accused—put us on trial in his stead—but Crozier instantly refused. Then Craig recognized He Speaks Our Tongue’s face in the crowd, pointed at him and, above all the noise, roared his name. The police surged forward, and Crozier’s white gauntlet reached for the Young Man, who cried out, “Don’t touch me!”
Laronde shouted Crozier’s yell, “I won’t touch you! But you must come!”
The hill was a swirl of painted faces and rifles and uniforms and incomprehensible war cries, with Big Bear’s poplar leaves waving with many others, and his gigantic voice: “Stop! Wait! Wait!”
And no gun was fired. Like a miracle amon
g the screaming. The cluster of Uniforms was wrestling Tongue down the hill as Cree warriors swirled around them like galloping dervishes, waving their rifles and war clubs and shrieking, but there was no shot. “Wait! Stop!” And in the tangled melee of overwhelming fury He Speaks Our Tongue disappeared behind the bastions, and even as the Cree on foot were charging those flimsy walls, bags of flour and slabs of bacon came flying over. The horsemen wheeled aside in rage, the women and children came running from the hills.
Crozier reported to Dewdney, calmly describing his own adamant courage: “It is yet incomprehensible to me how some one did not fire. Unless we can keep the Indians’ confidence, there is only one other policy—and that is to fight them.”
Big Bear and Little Pine sat together on the hill at Poundmaker’s, watching their People swarm the Agency buildings and carry away the food thrown at them.
Little Pine said heavily, All this, for a day’s worth of flour.
Imasees galloped below them, waving the revolver he had torn from a policeman’s hand but had not fired. Big Bear watched him grow small, vanish where the crest of Cutknife Hill shone in the summer sun—riding out his rage but not his iron anger.
Little Pine said to Big Bear, Your power was strong today. You stopped the blood.
Strong enough to save police. Crozier controls his men, very disciplined.
Yes … but where is our Grand Council?
Ahhhhh.
Vanished in the melee of the arrest of a Young Man, always so hard to control. In the following days they ate fish from the weir they built across the Battle River. The saskatoons were ripening like purple foam in the coulees, and they picked and visited and prepared for travel back to Fort Pitt and the looming necessity of choosing a reserve if they wanted to receive the treaty payments they needed to survive winter. Not live—survive. And while they packed, they heard that Gabriel Dumont had brought Louis Riel from Montana. Riel, who had confronted Canada at Red River and forced Macdonald to establish the province of Manitoba. Riel had already spoken twice to cheering crowds as they neared Batoche:
“I salute you with all the cheers of my heart, because your different interests are finding the way to the grand union: the grand union of feelings, of views, of endeavors, without which a people can never have any influence, without which a people can never accomplish any thing of importance and without which you could not be happy.”
Big Bear was apprehensive about Dumont, Catherine Simpson’s brother, who, in a crisis, would not share buffalo with them—and also about Riel’s excited musings about war when they met on the Missouri. “Grand Union” was very good, but would a union with Riel be good for Cree? He had done nothing for them in Manitoba fifteen years ago.
On the trail back to Fort Pitt, the band crossed the North Saskatchewan and rested in The Little Hills. While they were remembering Black Powder there, Chief Beardy’s messenger found them: “Come for Grand Council to Duck Lake. The Carlton chiefs are here, waiting for you.”
And Big Bear recognized that his Thirst Dance vow had been answered, more broadly than he had dared ask.
And so it was that Big Bear’s deep, powerful voice filled the August afternoon while the chiefs who had signed Treaty Six at Carlton listened. The emaciated faces of Mista-wasis, Ahtah-kakoop, Beardy, and One Arrow told the miserable story of enduring reserve life for eight years. A police informant who understood Cree jotted down notes:
“I wish to stay on the land the Great Spirit gave me. I see clearly the one who cheats me. And it is good, in one way, that I am cheated, for now I more fully understand what great good the Only One has given me. I pray and watch for the day when we will, together, speak with one voice.
“What I see is this: I speak for my band as a chief speaks for his People when they are united, but the White agent I speak to isn’t like that. There is always someone higher behind him, whom I never see. I say: Who wastes a bullet on a tail when he knows at another end bear’s teeth are waiting? It is time to talk to that one White than whom there is none higher! I see my children’s bellies hanging slack under their ribs and I say it is time, now!
“Every man of us was blind when making treaty. He did not understand what use he had for it. He was rich, his food and clothing were in his hand; the land was wherever he wanted to go, for we had been given Earth and Buffalo, who needs more to breathe than air? While he was enjoying all this, Government came from far away to this place where we belong and said we must have a treaty. We and the Governor called upon the Great Spirit to witness the treaty, then he invoked the name of the Queen and finally himself. He said, ‘We are one blood, I want to help you stand on the same place with my white children, to live together like brothers. We are not going to buy your land. It is a big thing, it is impossible for a man to buy the whole country, we came here to make certain it is kept for you.’
“Therefore, we understand that the land is only borrowed, not bought. And only to the depth a plow can go [six inches], so settlers can grow crops. Anything underground is not given up.
“My friends, I am trying to grasp the promises which they made me. I see my hand closing again and again, but I can find nothing in it. They offered me a spot as a reserve, but since I see that they are not going to be honest, I am afraid to take a reserve. They have given me to choose between several small reserves, but I feel sad to abandon the liberty of my own land when in return I will not get one half of what they have promised me.
“I walk the Earth from the Cypress Hills to Battleford to Pitt, and what I see is the tiny piece of land I am told I must choose and then never leave unless an Agent says I can go. What is that, a mark to see on paper so I can walk on what they borrowed? I belong here! I gaze on our great land, and I feel choked. Is the Queen more to us than Mother Earth? Every man must have the right the Only One gave us: let every man walk where his feet can walk.
“We must stand together with the Only One. Why do we keep turning the same ugly word over and over among ourselves and then swallowing it again? Only a sick dog eats again what he has once vomited out. The white man never hears us speak as one voice, with power. I say, we must choose one of us from all the bands to speak our words. To speak to that White than whom there is none higher, whether that is in Regina or in Ottawa or across the ocean. To speak to the Grandmother like I speak to you. It was done in her name, and I do not believe she wants us to die the way we are.
“It has come to me that we are too scattered. And Pakan at Saddle Lake thinks so too. We are small here, we are smaller there, and who hears us? Who stirs in his sleep when one buffalo runs? But when a herd moves, ahhhhh—we too must shake the ground, we must speak with one thundering voice, we must have one huge ‘land set aside’ for all of us. Together. Then, when we move, every White will lay his ear to the ground so he won’t get trampled.
“It has come to me as through the bushes that you are not united. That you cannot speak for your people because they do not know what can be done. Let us become united and I will speak. Years before the treaty we heard that the Hudson’s Bay Company had sold the land to Government. How can you sell land? When, from whom, had the Company ever received it? We know they sold what was not theirs for more money than all our People have received after eight years of treaty, and besides that the Company still has more land than all our reserves together. Now Government says the railroad that strangles the land owns even more than that. While we beg! We sit with salt pork growling in our bellies and talk about how to beg some White to give us another cup of tea. No wonder the buffalo are gone. They would die of shame to be run by hunters whose arms hang slack as pig’s fat! Whose councils see no more wisdom blazing before them, whose words are forever complaint and whine!
“I see how government agents bring us everything crooked. They take our lands, they sell them and they buy themselves fine coats, then they clap their hands on their hips and call themselves men. They are not men, They have no honesty. It is then I feel the rope around my neck, and I tell my People I
am afraid to take a reserve, to leave my large liberty for such a choked little place where little iron pegs stick in the ground and little agents have nothing to do but watch me try to live. But there is no good in being angry with agents, no one wants blood to stain our land. We want our land clean, pure, so that when we are together on one reserve large enough for our life, together, we will find peace together there. When will you have a big meeting? When will you speak each for your People, this is what we will do, together?”
The chiefs and councillors of the 1,678 People officially listed as alive in the Carlton District sat motionless as rocks, sweat running down their faces. Big Bear spoke softly:
“It sometimes comes to me that we have been breathed over. Like the trance that falls upon us when Windigo is coming. Our power songs call helplessly into the night, our wisdom cries through the trees but we cannot find it. Ice forms in our bodies, we are terrified of the sun rising in another day, eiya, eiy-a-a-a, O Great Spirit, have pity.
“I speak what the Only One gave me to see. Don’t allow anyone to poison my words. Speak to your People, and we will altogether make one Grand Council, everyone from the Peace Hills and Edmonton in the west to Piapot in Qu’Appelle, and also Crowfoot on the Bow. I say, we must speak with one thundering voice to that one in government than whom there is none higher!”
The Carlton chiefs did begin speaking with one voice: three days after Big Bear’s speech they presented a paper listing eighteen grievances to agent John Macrae. Big Bear told him: “These chiefs should be given what they asked for, all treaty promises must be fulfilled.” Macrae promised to send the list to Governor Dewdney—eventually “Old Tomorrow” Macdonald in Ottawa would see it and initiate an investigation—and the chiefs agreed with Big Bear that next year “when the leaves come out” they would gather for a Grand Council of all Treaty Six chiefs, and as many of Treaty Four (Piapot) and Treaty Seven (Crowfoot and Red Crow) as would come. Then, together, they would choose a representative to go speak for them in Regina and Ottawa. Big Bear recommended—perhaps thinking of the Cree sacred number—“The choice of a representative should be given us every four years.”
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