Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

ENCAMPMENT OF CHIEF MOSKOWEKUM OF THE CREE TRIBE

The Red Indians, not yet fully subdued, caused some inconvenience to the constructors of the C.P.R. Many of the imported navvies went in dread of the painted braves, who were a little disposed to presume on the fears they excited. Fortunately, the North-West Mounted Police were in existence, and the historian of that force, Mr. A. L. Haydon, has told us what occurred.[^[1]] I give the following account of a typical incident:

“It was in the early days of the C.P.R.’s progress across the prairies that the Pie-a-Pot incident occurred. Readers of Mrs. Steel’s stories may remember one which tells how a Hindu fanatic squatted in the permanent way of a new railway line in India and resisted all efforts to dislodge him, until at length he was run over and killed. The fanatic in question had a religious motive for his defiant attitude. So much could hardly be said of Pie-a-Pot the Cree, who took it upon himself to play the same game. Pie-a-Pot and his band had been giving no little trouble to the police about this time. He and another chief named Long Lodge had left their reserve and were wandering about the country at large. This proceeding was contrary to the law, and particularly so as their followers were all armed, and had the reputation of being a turbulent crowd.

“What happened to bring Pie-a-Pot into sudden collision with the police was this. Fetching up with his band at last at a point some little distance ahead of the railway line, he encamped. His tepees were put up, the carts unloaded, the horses sent out on the prairie to feed, and there was every indication that the wanderers had found a choice spot from which they did not intend to move. By and by the railway track advanced closer towards them, and the contractors looked askance at the Indian settlement.

“Pie-a-Pot paid no attention to the oncoming army of white men. He was there first; it was his chosen location; let them shift him if they dared. The railway authorities sent emissaries demanding his evacuation of the spot; but Pie-a-Pot laughed at them, while his ‘bucks’ rode excitedly about on their ponies and fired off rifles at random, and shouted of what they would do to the whites if it came to a fight. Matters were at a deadlock. The railway men could not go on so long as the Indian camp blocked the way.

“Then the Lieutenant-Governor of the Territories was appealed to, and ere long there came a despatch from the North-West Mounted Police headquarters at Regina to the little post at Maple Creek, much to this effect: ‘Please settle trouble; move on Indians.’ On receipt of the message two men were at once detailed for the task. One was a sergeant, the other was a constable. With a written order to Chief Pie-a-Pot, an official notice to quit, they rode out quietly to the camp and made known their instructions.

“Their arrival was a signal for a fresh outburst on the part of the Indians. In their nomadic life the members of this band had not yet, to put it literally, run up against the law as personified by the North-West Mounted Police. They knew them by reputation to be firm, hard-dealing men whose hand was heavy upon the wrong-doer, but they had no practical experience from which to learn caution. So they surrounded the two guardians of law and order, jeering at them, backing their ponies into the police horses, and otherwise trying to discompose them. The sergeant and the constable, in their scarlet tunics, with the smart-looking pill-box forage caps set at an angle on their heads, meanwhile sat still, the former reading his order, which was that Pie-a-Pot must break camp and take the northward trail.

“To this command the chief insolently refused to listen. The sergeant pulled out his watch. ‘I will give you fifteen minutes,’ he said calmly. ‘If by the end of that time you haven’t begun to comply with the order, we shall make you.’ The quarter of an hour passed without any sign of a move being made. Pie-a-Pot sat in front of his tent and smoked. Round him and the policemen had gathered all the rest of the tribe, ‘bucks,’ squaws and children, most of them yelling abuse and urging on the bolder spirits among them to still further exhibitions of defiance. The firing of rifles almost in the faces of the red-coats was one form of sport indulged in, but it was of no avail.

“ ‘Time’s up!’ said the sergeant, replacing his watch in his pocket. Then that amazing man dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to his companion, and walked over to Pie-a-Pot’s tepee. One kick of his foot at the key-pole and the painted buffalo-skin covering collapsed. Ignoring the shrieks of the discomfited squaws thereunder, and the threats of the men, the sergeant proceeded through the camp, kicking out key-pole after key-pole until all the tents had been overthrown. ‘Now git!’ was what he said—or might have said, in the absence of any exact record of his utterances. And it is some tribute to his sagacity that Pie-a-Pot did so.”