Disappeared across the Line
At Sounding Lake, Dewdney pays Little Pine’s band and those who signed with Big Bear’s councillor Lucky Man—Imasees’s father-in-law—the twelve-dollar signing bonus plus another fifteen dollars for three years’ back pay. Little Pine trades and leaves immediately to hunt buffalo.
A number of Big Bear’s band—which still numbered more than two thousand People—make the long trek with him to Fort Pitt carrying their few hides. It will be their last free trade on the North Saskatchewan; bleached bones cover the prairie, and they realize that whatever living animals remain have disappeared into Montana. Police Commissioner James Macleod writes Ottawa that increased American military manoeuvres along the border, including deliberate grass fires, are preventing the usual buffalo migration into Canada.
Big Bear’s band lives that winter in Montana, hunting along the Milk River and into the Bears Paw Mountains. Louis Riel is trying to organize a Métis-Indian coalition to possibly invade Canada and invites Big Bear to visit the Big Bend Métis settlement. The chief stays one day and, as his grandson Four Souls remembered it in 1975, tells Riel: “Let’s fight the Queen with her law, not with guns. This way wemight have a chance.” Riel notes in his papers: “The Cree have a very good chief. He is Big Bear. He is a man of good sense.”
Fort Benton
Record
, March 12: Five thousand starving Indians from Canada’s northern reserves are camped around Fort Walsh and existing on sparse rations distributed by police. “There is nothing whatever to keep them from starvation north of the line.”
During treaty payments at Battleford in July, Poundmaker speaks for all the emaciated People just returned from Fort Walsh. He tells Dewdney the Cree are weak, without provisions, and that they need more resources to farm their reserves. “I am not asking for more money. We need ten cows and ten yokes of cattle on each reserve because now, when one family works with one yoke, lots of others must remain idle and we cannot put in much crop. If we get what we ask, I think we can make our living out of the ground. The Cree that are not settled are watching us.”
Dewdney responds: “Poundmaker is very sensible; when Indians talk that way, the government is much more likely to assist them than when they use threats.” Within weeks Dewdney officially names Poundmaker a chief, and he and 182 followers take a reserve along Cutknife Hill on the Battle River. But more cows and oxen never appear.
Saskatchewan Herald
, August 2: It seems Wandering Spirit has ridden from Montana to observe the new commissioner in Battleford. Big Bear’s war chief declares: “I am very happy at what Poundmaker has said. I intend to abide by it.” Not long after, he is again hunting buffalo with Big Bear across the Line.
Year Three: August 1880 to August 1881
When Cree and Blackfoot Lived Together
Crowfoot’s starving treaty Siksika settle near Carrol, Montana, and pledge peace with Big Bear’s twenty-four hundred Plains Cree. They live side by side that winter and hunt the buffalo still plentiful in the Judith basin. Good meat and hides are available, but also endless whisky, and that creates havoc. As trader James Schultz later wrote:
“There were nights when a thousand Indians would be drunk together, dancing and singing around little fires built down in the timber, some crying foolishly, some making love, others going through all kinds of strange and uncouth antics. But there was very little quarrelling among Big Bear’s people, not half a dozen being killed in thewhole winter. More than that number froze to death, falling on their way home in the night.”
A band member has a sexual affair with Big Bear’s youngest wife and, in a drunken rage, clubs the chief to death. But, as his grandson Four Souls told it later, “Big Bear’s oldest wife, Sayos, had been instructed what to do in
At Sounding Lake, Dewdney pays Little Pine’s band and those who signed with Big Bear’s councillor Lucky Man—Imasees’s father-in-law—the twelve-dollar signing bonus plus another fifteen dollars for three years’ back pay. Little Pine trades and leaves immediately to hunt buffalo.
A number of Big Bear’s band—which still numbered more than two thousand People—make the long trek with him to Fort Pitt carrying their few hides. It will be their last free trade on the North Saskatchewan; bleached bones cover the prairie, and they realize that whatever living animals remain have disappeared into Montana. Police Commissioner James Macleod writes Ottawa that increased American military manoeuvres along the border, including deliberate grass fires, are preventing the usual buffalo migration into Canada.
Big Bear’s band lives that winter in Montana, hunting along the Milk River and into the Bears Paw Mountains. Louis Riel is trying to organize a Métis-Indian coalition to possibly invade Canada and invites Big Bear to visit the Big Bend Métis settlement. The chief stays one day and, as his grandson Four Souls remembered it in 1975, tells Riel: “Let’s fight the Queen with her law, not with guns. This way wemight have a chance.” Riel notes in his papers: “The Cree have a very good chief. He is Big Bear. He is a man of good sense.”
Fort Benton
Record
, March 12: Five thousand starving Indians from Canada’s northern reserves are camped around Fort Walsh and existing on sparse rations distributed by police. “There is nothing whatever to keep them from starvation north of the line.”
During treaty payments at Battleford in July, Poundmaker speaks for all the emaciated People just returned from Fort Walsh. He tells Dewdney the Cree are weak, without provisions, and that they need more resources to farm their reserves. “I am not asking for more money. We need ten cows and ten yokes of cattle on each reserve because now, when one family works with one yoke, lots of others must remain idle and we cannot put in much crop. If we get what we ask, I think we can make our living out of the ground. The Cree that are not settled are watching us.”
Dewdney responds: “Poundmaker is very sensible; when Indians talk that way, the government is much more likely to assist them than when they use threats.” Within weeks Dewdney officially names Poundmaker a chief, and he and 182 followers take a reserve along Cutknife Hill on the Battle River. But more cows and oxen never appear.
Saskatchewan Herald
, August 2: It seems Wandering Spirit has ridden from Montana to observe the new commissioner in Battleford. Big Bear’s war chief declares: “I am very happy at what Poundmaker has said. I intend to abide by it.” Not long after, he is again hunting buffalo with Big Bear across the Line.
Year Three: August 1880 to August 1881
When Cree and Blackfoot Lived Together
Crowfoot’s starving treaty Siksika settle near Carrol, Montana, and pledge peace with Big Bear’s twenty-four hundred Plains Cree. They live side by side that winter and hunt the buffalo still plentiful in the Judith basin. Good meat and hides are available, but also endless whisky, and that creates havoc. As trader James Schultz later wrote:
“There were nights when a thousand Indians would be drunk together, dancing and singing around little fires built down in the timber, some crying foolishly, some making love, others going through all kinds of strange and uncouth antics. But there was very little quarrelling among Big Bear’s people, not half a dozen being killed in thewhole winter. More than that number froze to death, falling on their way home in the night.”
A band member has a sexual affair with Big Bear’s youngest wife and, in a drunken rage, clubs the chief to death. But, as his grandson Four Souls told it later, “Big Bear’s oldest wife, Sayos, had been instructed what to do in
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