Above: Métis and First Nations prisoners following the North-West Rebellion, August, 1885; Sutton Coldfield's Holy Trinity Church
CUT KNIFE CREEK, NORTH-WEST REBELLION, CANADA, 1885
Bernard Winder, teamster
Holy Trinity, Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire
The Background
Credit where credit is due. When three groups of people that are usually antagonistic, or at best luke-warm, to each other unite against the authorities, those authorities really must have been working at getting something wrong. Well done to the Imperial Canadian Government in Ottawa, and their Lieutenant-Governor in the North-West Territory, Edgar Dewdney, in 1884-85. Shame that their mismanagement led to loss of life on all sides, including that of a saddler’s son from Sutton Coldfield.
So who were the three groups so provoked, and where in the immense North-West Territory did this occur?
Take a map of Canada and head west until you reach the province of Saskatchewan, with its capital Regina in the south-east. From Regina head north-west to Saskatoon. To the north-east of Saskatoon you will see the city of Prince Albert, and to the north-west of that you will see Battleford. Most of what I am going to cover occurred in that region.
Of the three groups, one was comprised of various tribes of native peoples, particularly the Cree and the Assiniboine. They were Plains Indians who lived by hunting, and by trading furs and associated products gleaned from their prey. Bison were the main source, but by the 1880s commercial hunting (amongst other factors) meant that the herds had virtually disappeared, and the native tribes were struggling to feed and clothe themselves, leading to an increased dependency upon government hand-outs from the local Indian Agents. Unsurprisingly, resentment was simmering.
The Countryborn or Anglo-Metis were a mixed-race farming community descended from intermarriage between Scots, Orcadian and English men, and native women. They had some sympathy with the westward expansion of Canadian Government territory, as they shared the same English language and Protestant religion (the Government was dominated by Lowland Presbyterian Scots). However, in 1880 the Hudson’s Bay Company sold the area in which they were settled to the Canadian Government, and in 1882 the District of Saskatchewan was created formally, with the Government sending in surveyors to establish land rights. As the Anglo-Metis farmers had no paper ownership of their farms they were worried that they might lose their land and their livelihoods, particularly as their farms were formed around a system of strips leading down to river banks, whereas the surveyors were organizing the land allocations into square plots, with no reference to river frontages or existing boundaries.
The French-Metis, more usually just known as Metis, were mixed race people descended from intermarriage between French trappers and native women. As a farming community they shared the Countryborn’s distrust of the surveyors. As a hunting and trapping community they had suffered from the same disappearance of game as the native tribes. As French-speaking Roman Catholics they did not identify with the Anglo-Protestant supremacy in Ottawa and its representatives, and resented what they perceived as prejudice. And as a people who had already moved west, away from Government control, following the Red River Rebellion of 1869, they really did not want to move again.
The Metis and the Countryborn attempted to negotiate with the Ottawa Government, and gain reassurances for their concerns, but felt they were making no progress, and to boost their campaign they summoned a semi-mythic figure from the Metis' recent past.
Louis Riel's Back-story
Louis Riel had been the leader of the Metis in the Red River Rebellion. In 1869, in a pre-echo of what was to happen in Saskatchewan, the Hudson’s Bay Company sold the Red River Colony, in what is now Manitoba, to Canada, and the Metis, for the same reasons pertinent in Saskatchewan, were nervous. Riel therefore established a Provisional Metis Government in an attempt to force concessions from the Canadian government, and in many ways he was successful: Manitoba was allowed to enter the Canadian Federation as a Province (as opposed to a less autonomous Territory); non-discrimination laws aimed at protecting Catholics were agreed; and French-speaking schools were allowed. All this should have led to Riel being féted as a gifted negotiator, as the ‘rebellion’ had been accomplished and completed with only one death. Unfortunately that death was a problem.
Thomas Scott was an Ulsterman, argumentative and opinionated, who had opposed Riel’s Provisional Government, and who was, with others, arrested for plotting to overthrow it. His conduct in his trial provoked Riel, under pressure from some of his people to prove that the Metis had to be taken seriously, to order his death, and so Scott was executed. Cue uproar in Government circles, and demands for revenge, so that once the Manitoba Act had been passed in early 1870 the army was sent in with orders to arrest Riel for murder. He fled over the border to Montana in the United States, and was working as a schoolteacher when the Metis of Saskatchewan sent for him in 1885. If he could negotiate a settlement in the Red River Colony, surely he could do it again?
But the Riel of 1885 was not the Riel of 1869. In the intervening years he had spent some time in a lunatic asylum, apparently possessed with messianic delusions which prompted him to view himself as the divinely appointed leader of the Metis. His arrival in the main Metis settlement, Batoche, led to the break-up of the union with the Countryborn, who returned to their own settlements and to reluctant co-operation with the Government.
The Conflict
Buoyed by the Countryborn’s return to the fold the Government position hardened, and they refused to negotiate further with the Metis. Meanwhile, in a separate development, a Cree chief, Big Bear, was attempting to form a Cree Confederacy with the aim of renegotiating land treaties made in Saskatchewan in the 1860s. The Government refused to talk to him as well. The trouble is, if you do not talk to angry men they just tend to get more angry, and so it proved.
On March 19th 1885 Riel announced the formation of the Provincial Government of Saskatchewan, based in Batoche, hoping that this declaration of independence would prompt the Countryborn to return. It did not.
On March 25th a party of North-West Mounted Police, the famed Mounties, set out from Fort Carlton, a fortified trading post, to fetch supplies from the store at the quaintly-named Duck Lake. The Superintendent there, Leif Crozier, had, Cassandra-like, been warning Governor Dewdney of the unrest simmering among the Metis and the Cree, and had even tried negotiating with Riel himself; now his fears were to be proved correct. The Mounties encountered, and were turned back by, a party of Metis under Gabriel Dumont. The next day Crozier set out with a force of a hundred men, Mounties and a force of volunteers from the township of Prince Albert, armed with a cannon, to assert his authority. The mission was an abject failure. Ambushed in the open, with the Metis firing from the cover of the trees, Crozier was forced to withdraw, but this time with casualties – twelve killed, and eleven wounded. The Metis had won a notable victory, and fearing a wider insurrection the local Police Commissioner, Colonel Acheson Irvine, ordered the abandonment and burning of the vulnerable Fort Carlton, without recognizing that such an action would be interpreted as a gesture of weakness, not just by the Metis, but also by the native tribes.
On March 30th a large number of Cree, led by a chief named Poundmaker, arrived at the township of Battleford, seeking supplies from the local agent, one Thomas or John Rae, to see them through the end of what had been a harsh winter. With the obduracy that is beginning to seem typical of the Government representatives, Rae refused to speak to Poundmaker, which meant a lot of restless Indians wandering the vicinity of the town. Scared by the presence of so many armed warriors the local homesteaders, all Countryborn, left their homes to seek protection behind the walls of nearby Fort Battleford. Unsurprisingly the starving Cree proceeded to loot the abandoned homes. Things escalated further with the arrival of a group of Assiniboine who, having heard of the Metis victory at Duck Lake and then of the events at Battleford, proceeded to shoot their local agent, and a farmer with whom they had been having a dispute, before heading to join up with Poundmaker.
As the news spread so did the unrest. At Frog Lake another group of Cree, under the leadership of a war chief named Wandering Spirit (in times of peace the Cree had political chiefs, like Big Bear and Poundmaker, but they had separate chiefs for war), having taken exception to the dismissive attitude of their local agent, Thomas Quinn, took him prisoner, and then took all the population of the township hostage as they finished mass in the church. Following an argument with Wandering Spirit Quinn was shot, followed by nine other men; all seemed to have been killed in cold blood, the settlers having been disarmed earlier (my thanks to Nick Brown for pointing out that the victims were unarmed, and not resisting the Cree). A further seventy-two settlers were held hostage.
Matters were turning serious. Over the following days Cree war parties raided settlements, including some in Alberta, which led to the formation of a cadre of volunteers, the Alberta Field Force. Meanwhile Lt.-Colonel William Otter was dispatched with a force of seven hundred and sixty-three men to relieve Fort Battleford, arriving on April 24th.
While Otter was on his way to relieve Battleford, one of Charles Dickens’ sons, Francis, a Mounties' Inspector, was experiencing problems at a trading post called Fort Pitt. As at Battleford, local civilians had sought shelter within the fortified post as around two hundred Cree gathered. When Dickens sent scouts out to reconnoitre they were chased back, and one was killed. Outnumbered, Dickens negotiated. The Mounties, twenty in number, were allowed to leave for Battleford; the civilians were kept as hostages; the fort was destroyed.
So, with matters becoming worse on the Cree front, it was time for the Metis to impose themselves again.
On the 10th April a British general, Frederick Middleton, had set out from Fort Qu-Appelle, just north of Regina, with a force of regulars and volunteers. On the 23rd the Metis, under Gabriel Dumont, ambushed Middleton’s force at Fish Creek. Middleton suffered ten killed, and forty-five wounded, and retreated, but the Metis, outnumbered and low on ammunition (this was to become an increasing problem), did not press their advantage.
This must have been a nightmare for the Government. Two separate campaigns, against two separate enemies, and reports of defeat after defeat, despite Government forces out in the field which were numerically superior and better armed. And then things deteriorated.
The Action
On May 1st Otter left Battleford with a force of nearly four hundred men, comprised of Canadian regulars, Mounties, and volunteer groups, with two field pieces and a Gatling gun. The aim was to attack the Cree and Assiniboine who had gathered under Poundmaker in the Cree Reservation at Cut Knife Creek. The camp consisted of an estimated one and a half thousand men, women and children, about one hundred of whom were fighters; devotees of Western history might be anticipating another Sand Creek massacre, but they would be overestimating Otter.
Otter thought the camp was on his side of the river, but Poundmaker and his war chief, Fine Day, had moved the camp over the water, to the top of Cut Knife Hill. To get to the camp Otter’s force had to ford the river, cross a marsh, and advance up the hill with wooded gullies flanking them on either side. The field pieces fell off their inadequate carriages, the Gatling Gun could not be got within range, and Otter’s men found themselves outflanked and sniped at by an enemy they could not see. After six hours of fruitless efforts Otter finally ordered a withdrawal, having lost eight men killed and fourteen wounded. Apparently Fine Day wanted to chase and cut down the fleeing Canadians, but was countermanded by Poundmaker, who presumably still thought negotiation would be feasible.
One of the men killed was Bernard Winder, and as he was the son of a saddler, and the brother of a leather currier and hide manufacturer, I suspect it is likely that he was the teamster that one report lists as being a casualty. In modern terms a teamster is an American truck driver, but in the 19th Century it referred to a man driving a team of draught animals pulling the supply wagons that would be necessary for a force like Otter’s.
The Man
Bernard was born in Birmingham in 1863, and in 1881 he was still at home, living with his widowed father in Sutton Coldfield and described in the census as a farmer. Presumably the opportunities offered by prospects in Canada prompted his emigration, a young man heading west, though I doubt that the probability of being shot in an Indian uprising occurred to him. I can find no other mention of him other than in the memorial in Holy Trinity Church, so he goes down in history as just another obscure victim of an obscure war. Ironically, his father, Walter, lived to be a centenarian, eventually dying in Essex in 1927.
The Denouement
Following the spate of reverses General Middleton decided to strike at the heart of the rebellion, and attack the Metis centre of Batoche. With over nine hundred men, supported by cannon and Gatling gun, he advanced to Batoche, aided by a steamship on the South Saskatchewan River. Batoche held about five hundred people, half of whom were fighting men, and on May 9th Middleton arrived on the ridge above and began a bombardment. Dumont attempted to take the guns, but failed. The steamship, Northcote, tried to sail around the town, to unload men for an attack from the rear, but ran into the raised ferry cable, was disabled, and drifted downriver and out of the fight.
Over the next two days, Middleton, seeing no need to be reckless, assayed a series of cautious advances, attempting to assess the Metis strength. By the 12th, confident that the Metis forces were depleted and running low on ammunition, he ordered a dual assault. While one force feinted from the north, drawing away defenders, a column under Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee attacked the Metis centre. Forces split, the centre broken, Riel surrendered, though Dumont escaped. The Metis rebellion was finished.
With the Metis defeated, and with Poundmaker’s forces, starving and without ammunition, having surrendered after Cut Knife Creek, the only opposition left active were the two hundred-strong group of Cree under Wandering Spirit and Big Bear, who were retreating northwards, still with hostages taken from Frog Lake and their other raids.
On May 27th a force of four hundred men under a retired British Major-General, Thomas Bland Strange, caught up with Wandering Spirit near Frenchman’s Butte. After an indecisive series of skirmishes, Strange withdrew, but the conflict had drained the Cree of energy and their remaining ammunition. The group began to splinter, and, pursued by yet another force under Major Sam Steele, finally dispersed after a skirmish at Loon Lake. Big Bear released the hostages, and on June 3rd Wandering Spirit rode into Fort Pitt to surrender. On July 7th Big Bear was captured, and the conflict ended, although until certain formalities were concluded it could not be said to be over.
Aftermath
On November 16th Louis Riel was hanged for treason.
On November 27th Wandering Spirit was hanged for the murder of Thomas Quinn at Fish Lake. Big Bear and Poundmaker were imprisoned.
Overall the tale seems to me to be one of the more inept episodes of the Empire that I have encountered. Small numbers of poorly armed hunters and farmers, and similarly small numbers of starving and poorly-armed native Indians, managed to inflict a number of embarrassing defeats on Government forces, after the Government obstinacy had managed to drive them into conflict. No surprise, then, that though the losing 'rebels' were hung and imprisoned, most of the victors, despite their inadequacies, went on to long lives and greater things.
General Sir William Dillon Otter went on to lead the Canadian infantry in the 2nd Boer War, and to become overall commander of the Canadian Army in 1908. He died in Toronto in 1929, aged 85.
Edgar Dewdney became Minister of the Interior, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. He died in 1916, aged 80.
Leif Crozier was appointed Assistant-Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police, and after retirement became a merchant and banker in Oklahoma. He died of a heart attack, aged 55, in 1901.
After being censured by General Middleton for the abandonment and burning of Fort Carlton Acheson Irvine resigned as Commissioner of the Mounties, and was appointed Warden of the Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba. He died in 1916, aged 78.
Francis Dickens was discharged from the Mounted Police in 1886 on grounds of ill-health. He died of a heart attack in Moines, Illinois, on the opening night of a lecture tour, aged 42.
Indian Mutiny veteran Major-General Thomas Bland Strange returned to England in 1887, where he remained, working at one time as a salesman for Maxim machine-guns. He died at Camberley in Surrey in 1925, aged 93.
Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee was born in the unlikely setting, given his names, of Spennithorne in Wensleydale. He died in 1898, and a memorial to his life can be seen on the wall of St. George's Cathedral, Southwark.
General Frederick Middleton, who was general officer of the Canadian Militia at the time of the uprising, was knighted for his efforts during the war. Five years later he resigned after being censured by a Commons Select Committee for misappropriating furs from Metis during the uprising. He died, aged 72, in 1898 in London.
Gabriel Dumont escaped to Montana, where he was recognised as a political refugee, and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He eventually returned to Batoche, where he died in 1906, aged 69.
Big Bear was imprisoned at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, under Acheson Irvine. He was released shortly before his death, when he was believed to be in his sixties, in 1888.
Poundmaker also suffered from ill-health in Stony Mountain, and was released in 1886, dying soon after of a lung infection, in his early forties.
In contrast to the other Indians, Fine Day lived to a great age, and indeed outlived all his white enemies. He became a respected Shaman, acknowledged as the historian of his tribe, and was still living in 1934. He even outlived Bernard Winder's father.
Sources
Pictures
Métis and First Nations prisoners following the North-West Rebellion, August, 1885. (L-R): Ignace Poitras, Pierre Parenteau, Baptiste Parenteau, Pierre Gariepy, Ignace Poitras Jr., Albert Monkman, Pierre Vandal, Baptiste Vandal, Joseph Arcand, Maxime Dubois, James Short, Pierre Henry, Baptiste Tourond, Emmanuel Champagne, Kit-a-wa-how (Alex Cagen, ex-chief of the Muskeg Lake Indians) - Wikimedia Commons, from Library and Archives Canada
Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Hill in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, West Midlands, England taken in April 2007. - by Erebus555 on Wikimedia Commons
Geneology
ancestry.co.uk
Military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Métis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Batoche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cut_Knife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Duck_Lake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fish_Creek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Pitt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dewdney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Lake_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Métis_people_(Canada)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-West_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundmaker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Government_of_Saskatchewan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Battleford
www.esask.uregina.ca - page titled The Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan
The War Trail of Big Bear (William Bleasdell Cameron, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1926) - online at peel.library.ualberta.ca
© Jonathan Dewhirst 2013
Wre
Credit where credit is due. When three groups of people that are usually antagonistic, or at best luke-warm, to each other unite against the authorities, those authorities really must have been working at getting something wrong. Well done to the Imperial Canadian Government in Ottawa, and their Lieutenant-Governor in the North-West Territory, Edgar Dewdney, in 1884-85. Shame that their mismanagement led to loss of life on all sides, including that of a saddler’s son from Sutton Coldfield.
So who were the three groups so provoked, and where in the immense North-West Territory did this occur?
Take a map of Canada and head west until you reach the province of Saskatchewan, with its capital Regina in the south-east. From Regina head north-west to Saskatoon. To the north-east of Saskatoon you will see the city of Prince Albert, and to the north-west of that you will see Battleford. Most of what I am going to cover occurred in that region.
Of the three groups, one was comprised of various tribes of native peoples, particularly the Cree and the Assiniboine. They were Plains Indians who lived by hunting, and by trading furs and associated products gleaned from their prey. Bison were the main source, but by the 1880s commercial hunting (amongst other factors) meant that the herds had virtually disappeared, and the native tribes were struggling to feed and clothe themselves, leading to an increased dependency upon government hand-outs from the local Indian Agents. Unsurprisingly, resentment was simmering.
The Countryborn or Anglo-Metis were a mixed-race farming community descended from intermarriage between Scots, Orcadian and English men, and native women. They had some sympathy with the westward expansion of Canadian Government territory, as they shared the same English language and Protestant religion (the Government was dominated by Lowland Presbyterian Scots). However, in 1880 the Hudson’s Bay Company sold the area in which they were settled to the Canadian Government, and in 1882 the District of Saskatchewan was created formally, with the Government sending in surveyors to establish land rights. As the Anglo-Metis farmers had no paper ownership of their farms they were worried that they might lose their land and their livelihoods, particularly as their farms were formed around a system of strips leading down to river banks, whereas the surveyors were organizing the land allocations into square plots, with no reference to river frontages or existing boundaries.
The French-Metis, more usually just known as Metis, were mixed race people descended from intermarriage between French trappers and native women. As a farming community they shared the Countryborn’s distrust of the surveyors. As a hunting and trapping community they had suffered from the same disappearance of game as the native tribes. As French-speaking Roman Catholics they did not identify with the Anglo-Protestant supremacy in Ottawa and its representatives, and resented what they perceived as prejudice. And as a people who had already moved west, away from Government control, following the Red River Rebellion of 1869, they really did not want to move again.
The Metis and the Countryborn attempted to negotiate with the Ottawa Government, and gain reassurances for their concerns, but felt they were making no progress, and to boost their campaign they summoned a semi-mythic figure from the Metis' recent past.
Louis Riel's Back-story
Louis Riel had been the leader of the Metis in the Red River Rebellion. In 1869, in a pre-echo of what was to happen in Saskatchewan, the Hudson’s Bay Company sold the Red River Colony, in what is now Manitoba, to Canada, and the Metis, for the same reasons pertinent in Saskatchewan, were nervous. Riel therefore established a Provisional Metis Government in an attempt to force concessions from the Canadian government, and in many ways he was successful: Manitoba was allowed to enter the Canadian Federation as a Province (as opposed to a less autonomous Territory); non-discrimination laws aimed at protecting Catholics were agreed; and French-speaking schools were allowed. All this should have led to Riel being féted as a gifted negotiator, as the ‘rebellion’ had been accomplished and completed with only one death. Unfortunately that death was a problem.
Thomas Scott was an Ulsterman, argumentative and opinionated, who had opposed Riel’s Provisional Government, and who was, with others, arrested for plotting to overthrow it. His conduct in his trial provoked Riel, under pressure from some of his people to prove that the Metis had to be taken seriously, to order his death, and so Scott was executed. Cue uproar in Government circles, and demands for revenge, so that once the Manitoba Act had been passed in early 1870 the army was sent in with orders to arrest Riel for murder. He fled over the border to Montana in the United States, and was working as a schoolteacher when the Metis of Saskatchewan sent for him in 1885. If he could negotiate a settlement in the Red River Colony, surely he could do it again?
But the Riel of 1885 was not the Riel of 1869. In the intervening years he had spent some time in a lunatic asylum, apparently possessed with messianic delusions which prompted him to view himself as the divinely appointed leader of the Metis. His arrival in the main Metis settlement, Batoche, led to the break-up of the union with the Countryborn, who returned to their own settlements and to reluctant co-operation with the Government.
The Conflict
Buoyed by the Countryborn’s return to the fold the Government position hardened, and they refused to negotiate further with the Metis. Meanwhile, in a separate development, a Cree chief, Big Bear, was attempting to form a Cree Confederacy with the aim of renegotiating land treaties made in Saskatchewan in the 1860s. The Government refused to talk to him as well. The trouble is, if you do not talk to angry men they just tend to get more angry, and so it proved.
On March 19th 1885 Riel announced the formation of the Provincial Government of Saskatchewan, based in Batoche, hoping that this declaration of independence would prompt the Countryborn to return. It did not.
On March 25th a party of North-West Mounted Police, the famed Mounties, set out from Fort Carlton, a fortified trading post, to fetch supplies from the store at the quaintly-named Duck Lake. The Superintendent there, Leif Crozier, had, Cassandra-like, been warning Governor Dewdney of the unrest simmering among the Metis and the Cree, and had even tried negotiating with Riel himself; now his fears were to be proved correct. The Mounties encountered, and were turned back by, a party of Metis under Gabriel Dumont. The next day Crozier set out with a force of a hundred men, Mounties and a force of volunteers from the township of Prince Albert, armed with a cannon, to assert his authority. The mission was an abject failure. Ambushed in the open, with the Metis firing from the cover of the trees, Crozier was forced to withdraw, but this time with casualties – twelve killed, and eleven wounded. The Metis had won a notable victory, and fearing a wider insurrection the local Police Commissioner, Colonel Acheson Irvine, ordered the abandonment and burning of the vulnerable Fort Carlton, without recognizing that such an action would be interpreted as a gesture of weakness, not just by the Metis, but also by the native tribes.
On March 30th a large number of Cree, led by a chief named Poundmaker, arrived at the township of Battleford, seeking supplies from the local agent, one Thomas or John Rae, to see them through the end of what had been a harsh winter. With the obduracy that is beginning to seem typical of the Government representatives, Rae refused to speak to Poundmaker, which meant a lot of restless Indians wandering the vicinity of the town. Scared by the presence of so many armed warriors the local homesteaders, all Countryborn, left their homes to seek protection behind the walls of nearby Fort Battleford. Unsurprisingly the starving Cree proceeded to loot the abandoned homes. Things escalated further with the arrival of a group of Assiniboine who, having heard of the Metis victory at Duck Lake and then of the events at Battleford, proceeded to shoot their local agent, and a farmer with whom they had been having a dispute, before heading to join up with Poundmaker.
As the news spread so did the unrest. At Frog Lake another group of Cree, under the leadership of a war chief named Wandering Spirit (in times of peace the Cree had political chiefs, like Big Bear and Poundmaker, but they had separate chiefs for war), having taken exception to the dismissive attitude of their local agent, Thomas Quinn, took him prisoner, and then took all the population of the township hostage as they finished mass in the church. Following an argument with Wandering Spirit Quinn was shot, followed by nine other men; all seemed to have been killed in cold blood, the settlers having been disarmed earlier (my thanks to Nick Brown for pointing out that the victims were unarmed, and not resisting the Cree). A further seventy-two settlers were held hostage.
Matters were turning serious. Over the following days Cree war parties raided settlements, including some in Alberta, which led to the formation of a cadre of volunteers, the Alberta Field Force. Meanwhile Lt.-Colonel William Otter was dispatched with a force of seven hundred and sixty-three men to relieve Fort Battleford, arriving on April 24th.
While Otter was on his way to relieve Battleford, one of Charles Dickens’ sons, Francis, a Mounties' Inspector, was experiencing problems at a trading post called Fort Pitt. As at Battleford, local civilians had sought shelter within the fortified post as around two hundred Cree gathered. When Dickens sent scouts out to reconnoitre they were chased back, and one was killed. Outnumbered, Dickens negotiated. The Mounties, twenty in number, were allowed to leave for Battleford; the civilians were kept as hostages; the fort was destroyed.
So, with matters becoming worse on the Cree front, it was time for the Metis to impose themselves again.
On the 10th April a British general, Frederick Middleton, had set out from Fort Qu-Appelle, just north of Regina, with a force of regulars and volunteers. On the 23rd the Metis, under Gabriel Dumont, ambushed Middleton’s force at Fish Creek. Middleton suffered ten killed, and forty-five wounded, and retreated, but the Metis, outnumbered and low on ammunition (this was to become an increasing problem), did not press their advantage.
This must have been a nightmare for the Government. Two separate campaigns, against two separate enemies, and reports of defeat after defeat, despite Government forces out in the field which were numerically superior and better armed. And then things deteriorated.
The Action
On May 1st Otter left Battleford with a force of nearly four hundred men, comprised of Canadian regulars, Mounties, and volunteer groups, with two field pieces and a Gatling gun. The aim was to attack the Cree and Assiniboine who had gathered under Poundmaker in the Cree Reservation at Cut Knife Creek. The camp consisted of an estimated one and a half thousand men, women and children, about one hundred of whom were fighters; devotees of Western history might be anticipating another Sand Creek massacre, but they would be overestimating Otter.
Otter thought the camp was on his side of the river, but Poundmaker and his war chief, Fine Day, had moved the camp over the water, to the top of Cut Knife Hill. To get to the camp Otter’s force had to ford the river, cross a marsh, and advance up the hill with wooded gullies flanking them on either side. The field pieces fell off their inadequate carriages, the Gatling Gun could not be got within range, and Otter’s men found themselves outflanked and sniped at by an enemy they could not see. After six hours of fruitless efforts Otter finally ordered a withdrawal, having lost eight men killed and fourteen wounded. Apparently Fine Day wanted to chase and cut down the fleeing Canadians, but was countermanded by Poundmaker, who presumably still thought negotiation would be feasible.
One of the men killed was Bernard Winder, and as he was the son of a saddler, and the brother of a leather currier and hide manufacturer, I suspect it is likely that he was the teamster that one report lists as being a casualty. In modern terms a teamster is an American truck driver, but in the 19th Century it referred to a man driving a team of draught animals pulling the supply wagons that would be necessary for a force like Otter’s.
The Man
Bernard was born in Birmingham in 1863, and in 1881 he was still at home, living with his widowed father in Sutton Coldfield and described in the census as a farmer. Presumably the opportunities offered by prospects in Canada prompted his emigration, a young man heading west, though I doubt that the probability of being shot in an Indian uprising occurred to him. I can find no other mention of him other than in the memorial in Holy Trinity Church, so he goes down in history as just another obscure victim of an obscure war. Ironically, his father, Walter, lived to be a centenarian, eventually dying in Essex in 1927.
The Denouement
Following the spate of reverses General Middleton decided to strike at the heart of the rebellion, and attack the Metis centre of Batoche. With over nine hundred men, supported by cannon and Gatling gun, he advanced to Batoche, aided by a steamship on the South Saskatchewan River. Batoche held about five hundred people, half of whom were fighting men, and on May 9th Middleton arrived on the ridge above and began a bombardment. Dumont attempted to take the guns, but failed. The steamship, Northcote, tried to sail around the town, to unload men for an attack from the rear, but ran into the raised ferry cable, was disabled, and drifted downriver and out of the fight.
Over the next two days, Middleton, seeing no need to be reckless, assayed a series of cautious advances, attempting to assess the Metis strength. By the 12th, confident that the Metis forces were depleted and running low on ammunition, he ordered a dual assault. While one force feinted from the north, drawing away defenders, a column under Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee attacked the Metis centre. Forces split, the centre broken, Riel surrendered, though Dumont escaped. The Metis rebellion was finished.
With the Metis defeated, and with Poundmaker’s forces, starving and without ammunition, having surrendered after Cut Knife Creek, the only opposition left active were the two hundred-strong group of Cree under Wandering Spirit and Big Bear, who were retreating northwards, still with hostages taken from Frog Lake and their other raids.
On May 27th a force of four hundred men under a retired British Major-General, Thomas Bland Strange, caught up with Wandering Spirit near Frenchman’s Butte. After an indecisive series of skirmishes, Strange withdrew, but the conflict had drained the Cree of energy and their remaining ammunition. The group began to splinter, and, pursued by yet another force under Major Sam Steele, finally dispersed after a skirmish at Loon Lake. Big Bear released the hostages, and on June 3rd Wandering Spirit rode into Fort Pitt to surrender. On July 7th Big Bear was captured, and the conflict ended, although until certain formalities were concluded it could not be said to be over.
Aftermath
On November 16th Louis Riel was hanged for treason.
On November 27th Wandering Spirit was hanged for the murder of Thomas Quinn at Fish Lake. Big Bear and Poundmaker were imprisoned.
Overall the tale seems to me to be one of the more inept episodes of the Empire that I have encountered. Small numbers of poorly armed hunters and farmers, and similarly small numbers of starving and poorly-armed native Indians, managed to inflict a number of embarrassing defeats on Government forces, after the Government obstinacy had managed to drive them into conflict. No surprise, then, that though the losing 'rebels' were hung and imprisoned, most of the victors, despite their inadequacies, went on to long lives and greater things.
General Sir William Dillon Otter went on to lead the Canadian infantry in the 2nd Boer War, and to become overall commander of the Canadian Army in 1908. He died in Toronto in 1929, aged 85.
Edgar Dewdney became Minister of the Interior, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. He died in 1916, aged 80.
Leif Crozier was appointed Assistant-Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police, and after retirement became a merchant and banker in Oklahoma. He died of a heart attack, aged 55, in 1901.
After being censured by General Middleton for the abandonment and burning of Fort Carlton Acheson Irvine resigned as Commissioner of the Mounties, and was appointed Warden of the Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba. He died in 1916, aged 78.
Francis Dickens was discharged from the Mounted Police in 1886 on grounds of ill-health. He died of a heart attack in Moines, Illinois, on the opening night of a lecture tour, aged 42.
Indian Mutiny veteran Major-General Thomas Bland Strange returned to England in 1887, where he remained, working at one time as a salesman for Maxim machine-guns. He died at Camberley in Surrey in 1925, aged 93.
Colonel Bowen van Straubenzee was born in the unlikely setting, given his names, of Spennithorne in Wensleydale. He died in 1898, and a memorial to his life can be seen on the wall of St. George's Cathedral, Southwark.
General Frederick Middleton, who was general officer of the Canadian Militia at the time of the uprising, was knighted for his efforts during the war. Five years later he resigned after being censured by a Commons Select Committee for misappropriating furs from Metis during the uprising. He died, aged 72, in 1898 in London.
Gabriel Dumont escaped to Montana, where he was recognised as a political refugee, and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He eventually returned to Batoche, where he died in 1906, aged 69.
Big Bear was imprisoned at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, under Acheson Irvine. He was released shortly before his death, when he was believed to be in his sixties, in 1888.
Poundmaker also suffered from ill-health in Stony Mountain, and was released in 1886, dying soon after of a lung infection, in his early forties.
In contrast to the other Indians, Fine Day lived to a great age, and indeed outlived all his white enemies. He became a respected Shaman, acknowledged as the historian of his tribe, and was still living in 1934. He even outlived Bernard Winder's father.
Sources
Pictures
Métis and First Nations prisoners following the North-West Rebellion, August, 1885. (L-R): Ignace Poitras, Pierre Parenteau, Baptiste Parenteau, Pierre Gariepy, Ignace Poitras Jr., Albert Monkman, Pierre Vandal, Baptiste Vandal, Joseph Arcand, Maxime Dubois, James Short, Pierre Henry, Baptiste Tourond, Emmanuel Champagne, Kit-a-wa-how (Alex Cagen, ex-chief of the Muskeg Lake Indians) - Wikimedia Commons, from Library and Archives Canada
Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Hill in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, West Midlands, England taken in April 2007. - by Erebus555 on Wikimedia Commons
Geneology
ancestry.co.uk
Military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Métis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Batoche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cut_Knife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Duck_Lake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fish_Creek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Pitt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dewdney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Lake_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Métis_people_(Canada)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-West_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundmaker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Government_of_Saskatchewan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Battleford
www.esask.uregina.ca - page titled The Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan
The War Trail of Big Bear (William Bleasdell Cameron, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1926) - online at peel.library.ualberta.ca
© Jonathan Dewhirst 2013
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