A small but steady stream of white settlers now began to trickle in, coming from Ontario through the States. The French Métis soon found themselves in a minority. The wilder spirits sold their land and flitted to the banks of the Saskatchewan, four or five hundred miles away to the north-west; but even there the stream of white immigration followed, and the land surveyors again began to map out the country with ruthless regularity. The Métis, living along the river bank, from which their farms ran back in narrow strips, were afraid they might lose their land, especially as the issue of their patents had been delayed and petitions to the Government seemed to fall on deaf ears.
In the fall of 1884, it was plain that a storm was brewing. Louis Riel, after many years of exile, returned from the United States on his kinsmen’s invitation, and put himself at the head of their agitation for the redress of grievances. Chiefly, and naturally, they wanted [a]The Duck Lake Fight] the same title to their land as had been given to the Métis back on the Red River. Such grievances as actually existed might have been remedied, and the threatening storm prevented, if the Federal Government had given a little attention to the matter. Agitation was allowed to flame up in revolt, and Louis Riel had proclaimed himself “President of the Saskatchewan” before the government machine began to stir.
The Métis began, in the spring of 1885, by seizing the persons and property of their white neighbors at Batoche and Duck Lake. Mounted Police went to the rescue, accompanied by some volunteers from the neighboring town of Prince Albert, but were driven back with a loss of twelve killed, nine being left dead on the snow. The rebels had beaten the white men!
Imagine what that meant, in a country where the little white population of peaceful farmers lay thinly scattered among strong tribes of warlike Indians. The Métis were a mere handful compared to the pure-blooded red-skins; these numbered, even without the tribes of the distant north, some 25,000, including braves who had taken many a scalp in tribal wars, and in fights with white troops south of the frontier. If these tribes had gone on the war-path, the scattered white population of the territories might have been wiped out of existence, and the re-conquest of the country might have involved a long and hard campaign.
Everything depended on the Indians. The Métis knew this perfectly well, and Louis Riel moved heaven and earth to drag in the only allies who could give him a chance of winning. Adopting the name David, and pretending to have supernatural powers, he claimed to be a new Messiah sent to lead the red men and give [a]Battleford Besieged] them victory over the white. He sent his envoys all over the plains to rouse the ancient passion of the tribes for war. Promising impossible gains, and threatening when persuasion failed, they did their very worst.
The strongest tribes, including the Blackfeet, decided to sit still and mind their own business. This was partly owing to the fairness with which as a rule they had been treated by the Canadian Government and the Hudson’s Bay Company, partly to the influence of missionaries and Mounted Police in their midst, and partly to their own good sense. The railway had just arrived; and the spectacle of an army of men constructing at marvellous speed a road of steel across the prairie was a most convincing evidence of the white man’s power. But for a while it was touch and go, even among the Blackfeet. So it was among Piapot’s Crees near Qu’Appelle.
The flaming words of the new “Messiah” and his apostles had more effect on the tribes along the North Saskatchewan. The more intelligent chiefs, like Poundmaker of the Crees, knew well enough what the end of the war must be, sooner or later; but the younger braves, the hot-headed extremists, were shouting for a fight, and carried the tribe with them. An Indian chief will never hang back when his tribe is bent on war, however crazy he may think it; so even Poundmaker, the white man’s friend, fought the white man rather than be called a coward by his own foolish folk.
“The Indians are on the war-path. Battleford is besieged!” That was the news flashed down to the East before we had recovered from the shock of the Duck Lake defeat. The whole white population of Battleford town, with hundreds of refugees from the country-side, crowded into the fort, standing high on a point of land [a]Frog Lake Massacre] in the fork of the Battle and Saskatchewan Rivers. This fort was simply a log stockade enclosing the Mounted Police barracks, stables and storehouses. The railroad was nearly two hundred miles away to the south, and the road to it was cut off by the enemy. The Government telegraph line, the only means of communicating with the outside world, was cut again and again by an unseen foe. Imagine the feelings of the beleaguered refugees, watching the smoke of their burning farmhouses, and wondering whether they themselves would be slaughtered or starved before any one came to their rescue!
Within a week, the exaggerations of rumor were rivalled by a terrible statement of fact brought in by a scout from Fort Pitt. This Hudson’s Bay post, ninety miles up the Saskatchewan, had been held by twenty-four Mounted Police under Inspector Dickens, a son of the novelist. Five miles farther north, on the picturesque shores of Frog Lake, a smaller Hudson’s Bay post and a Roman Catholic mission had begun to develop into a settlement, possessing even a mill.
The Crees in that neighborhood, headed by a chief named Big Bear, held a war dance on hearing of Riel’s victory, and ordered the white folk into the Indian camp as prisoners. A Government agent, Thomas Quinn, refused to go, and a furious Cree named Wandering Spirit shot him down. The Indians had probably not planned a massacre, but this taste of blood roused their tiger spirit. Nine men in all were shot, including two priests. Only the Hudson’s Bay clerk was spared. There were two white women, but friendly Métis paid three dollars and four ponies ransom for them, and kept them safe. [a]Fort Pitt Abandoned]