Around him rode his allies and lieutenants. No two of them were dressed alike. One gentleman wore a black “wide-awake” hat and a long blue naval frock-coat with brass buttons, hanging over the usual dirty blanket breeches. Another wore on his head the whole skin of a big otter, its teeth grinning in front and its tail hanging down behind. Still another had stuck feathers in his topknot, and a fourth wore a hard felt Derby hat adorned with fluttering ribbons of many colors. All of them had washed the yellow war-paint off their faces, discarded their guns, and rode on, silent and impassive as statues, to meet any dreadful fate that might be in store for them.
General Middleton, newly arrived from his victory at Batoche, held his court in the open air, sitting on a campstool for bench, with an interpreter by his side. Poundmaker sat before him on the ground, the rest of the prisoners squatting around in a semi-circle at a more respectful distance.
Poundmaker, being severely questioned by the General, denied having any intention of fighting; nor had he ever promised to help Riel. He did not know what Indians had committed murder or robbery.
A very gay young Stoney came forward and squatted right at the General’s feet,—a regular Indian dandy, covered with bead-work, and wearing a woman’s black straw hat with a bright green plume. With the utmost coolness, he confessed to a perfectly unprovoked murder. He and a few comrades had come across an inoffensive farmer greasing his wagon wheels, and had [a]The Hunt for Big Bear] shot him down like a rabbit. “I told my people I would give myself up to save them,” the murderer said.
Another speaker, an old and ragged man, had also a murder to confess. This was Ikta, the slayer of the farm instructor on Red Pheasant’s reserve. Ikta wound up by offering to be cut into little pieces, if only the white men would spare his wife and children and give them food.
At last a woman rose to speak. “Tell her we don’t listen to women,” said the General to the interpreter. “Then why does your Queen send her word for us to obey?” asked an Indian. The General muttered that the Queen had men for her advisers; but the woman was allowed to speak, and put in a pathetic plea for mercy to the conquered red men.
Then the murderers, and Poundmaker, and three other chiefs, were locked up in the fort, while the rest of the red men were sent off to repent on their reserves.
The war was not over yet, though the fighting was. Big Bear was still at large. To rescue the twenty-six prisoners he had been dragging about with him since his capture of Fort Pitt, flying columns were sent off to scour the maze of wood and river and lake in the north. It seemed like hunting through a haystack for a needle; but it gave promise of fresh adventures in a country very different from any we had so far seen, and I attached myself to a troop of Mounted Police and Scouts who seemed more likely than the rest to catch the runaways.
Our experiences on that wild chase were varied and even entertaining, to those of us who had a spice of the Mark Tapley in our dispositions. For hardship, this proved the worst part of the whole campaign.
Leaving the sunlit prairie behind, we plunged into a [a]The Prisoners Escape] forest broken by glades and lakes and sloughs and muskegs. If a lake was shallow and had a reasonably firm bottom, we waded through; if not, we squeezed our way along the boggy edge between wood and water. One day we covered only twelve miles. The mosquitoes had no trouble keeping up with us. They had never had such a feast in their lives. We ourselves had to feast on hard tack and salt pork, washed down with sugarless and milkless tea.