At that time, and later in his formal report, Irvine expressed keen regret that Crozier, knowing the Commissioner to be within 50 miles with reinforcements, had not waited. But Crozier had been true to the Police record of not counting odds when duty seemed clear. And so, when his first small detachment, under Thomas McKay, had come back, the Superintendent doubtless felt that unless he acted at once, the rebels would say that the Police could be bluffed, and would thus be able to call to the cause of the revolt hundreds of half-breeds and Indians, who would take courage from the apparent apathy or weakness of the Government forces. Besides this, it became known later that the volunteers from Prince Albert were anxious to settle the rebels, as their homes were menaced by the uprising.
So the Duck Lake fight took place between Crozier, Inspector Howe, with Surgeon Miller and fifty-three men of the Mounted Police, aided by forty-one civilian volunteers from Prince Albert, under Captains Moore and Morton, a total of ninety-nine on the one side against Gabriel Dumont, Chief Beardy and a force of nearly 400 half-breeds and Indians on the other. The rebels first used a flag of truce, and under cover of conference partially outflanked our men on the one side, while the rest of their forces were well concealed under cover of log buildings and brush. The thing was too unequal, and our men, after fighting in the open with the utmost coolness and courage against a practically hidden enemy, gathered up their nine dead and five wounded, who needed care, and retired in good order to Carlton. The loss of the rebels, who concealed their dead, was not known, but Gabriel Dumont was wounded by a bullet which plowed along his head and felled him to the ground. A few years later Mr. Roger Goulet, a famous loyalist French half-breed land-surveyor in Winnipeg, who was on the Commission to inquire into the question of half-breed rights, said to me: "The Duck Lake fight was worth while, because Gabriel Dumont's wound, which I saw later when he took off his hat to make an affidavit, cooled his ardour to such an extent that he was timid for the rest of the campaign, or the rebellion might have lasted much longer." Goulet's theory possibly accounts for the fact that Dumont, whose judgment was for a night attack on Middleton's camp at Fish Creek, gave up the idea rather swiftly when Riel did not seem to see its advisability. When Colonel Irvine reached Carlton, as related, and found out how things stood, the immediate thing to settle was as to whether he should hold that post or not. This was not hard to decide. Carlton was simply a Hudson's Bay post without population, while Prince Albert was the largest white community in the whole region. The people there must be protected as a first duty, and it was only fair to the Prince Albert volunteers, who had left their homes and came so splendidly to the aid of the little body of Police, that the latter in turn should not leave those homes exposed to the barbarities of the rebels now intoxicated by a certain success. Accordingly, Fort Carlton was abandoned. It took fire from a hospital mattress and an over-heated stove, just as the Police were leaving, and burned to the ground. Irvine and his men, with their wounded, arrived in due course at Prince Albert, which they found full of refugees from surrounding homesteads as well as the town. Most of these refugees were in the church there, which they had surrounded with a wall of cordwood in dread of attack. The women and children were wild with apprehension of possibly falling into the hands of Beardy's tribe. And there was a band of Sioux to the north that it was feared might at any moment assert their traditional love of the warpath.
COL. T. A. WROUGHTON.
Asst.-Commissioner in command at Vancouver, B.C.
Photo. Steffens-Colmer, Vancouver.
LIEUT.-COL. AYLESWORTH BOWEN PERRY, C.M.G.
Commissioner since 1900.
Photo. Rossie, Regina.
