{eight} Fort Walsh

“Le plus terrible dans ce monde, c’est que chacun à ses raisons.”
“The most terrible thing about this world is that everyone has his reasons.”

JEAN RENOIR, La Règle du jeu, 1939

Imagine that we’re sitting together on the hillside above Fort Walsh. With every breath, we draw in the winy scent of wild roses, the smoky sweetness of sage, the sheen and shimmer of a perfect summer day. Down below, tourists in shorts and suntops are legging it along the road from the visitors’ center to the fort’s main gate or climbing aboard the bright yellow bus in front of the stockade. Since the site is only open from the May long weekend until early fall, these days it’s always summer at Fort Walsh. If ever there was a place to offer healing and distract us from troubling thoughts, here it is spread out in front of us. In the foreground, a soft screen of wolf willows; in the distance, a rollicking sweep of hills; and in between, on the flats below, a historic site managed exclusively for our edification and pleasure.

It’s been years now since Keith and I made our first tour of the fort, and I’m surprised by how much of that visit I can still recall. But then, who could forget the portly gent in full North-West Mounted Police regalia who greets us at the entrance with his knee-high boots polished to a fine luster, his scarlet coat buttoned to the chin, and a white pith helmet affixed to the top of his cranium? The original intention of this uniform had been to mark the mounted police as British, in contrast to the blue-coated Americans, and, in the years when that distinction truly mattered, it had served its purpose well. In deference to this historical significance, our guide bears his domed, beknobbled headgear with all the dignity he can muster.

Despite his cheerfully ridiculous accoutrements, our man knows his stuff, and he quickly fills us in on the basics about Fort Walsh. Although the present-day buildings date from the 1940s, he explains that the original construction was undertaken in 1875 by the thirty-man squad of “B” Division of the North-West Mounted Police, assisted by a crew of Métis sawyers. The commander of the operation was a flamboyant, hot-tempered officer named Inspector (or as he preferred to have it, “Major”) James M. Walsh, the man who lent his name to the outpost and whose picture—perhaps we’d noticed?—is featured on the cover of the fort’s brochure. Walsh was known to some of his Aboriginal clients as White Forehead Chief, so he must sometimes have worn his pith helmet in the course of his official duties. For this portrait, however, he has replaced his regulation issue with a slouch-brimmed Western hat, which he’s garlanded with a scarf and set on his head at a rakish tilt. Done up in fringes and buckskin, with a sword dangling from his belt, Major Walsh exudes a kind of steamy swashbuckling charisma.

It has sometimes been suggested, our guide tells us with a wink and a nod, that Walsh and his men chose this valley on account of the McKays, a prominent Métis family who had settled here several years earlier and who had three marriageable daughters. But the police doubtless had other, more workaday reasons for choosing this location as well—an abundance of flowing water, a ready supply of wood, the promise of shelter from blizzards, and, above all, ready access to evildoers. Despite the atrocities of 1873, whiskey traders were still active in the Cypress Hills, and the police had been sent to put an end to their dirty business.

Once this background has been imparted, our guide indicates with a nod of his helmet that it’s time for the tour to begin. What a brutal life it must have been for the men who were stationed here, sleeping on straw-filled pallets in this frigid bunkhouse (there were no winter closures back then), subsisting on an unvarying diet of stew and starches, mucking out a Stygian stable that provided quarters for as many as forty horses. Reveille sounded at 6:30 each morning, announcing a day of rifle drills, artillery drills, riding drills, inspections, patrols, and fatigues that extended until sundown and sometimes beyond. All this for $1 a day for a constable, less for the lower ranks. Small wonder, then, that the site of the enlisted men’s barracks has yielded an archaeological treasure trove of bottles that once held beer and various high-alcohol-content patent medicines. Even the higher-ups in the force indulged in illicit drink, though they tried to hide their consumption by tossing the empties down the privy. Like the old joke says, the Mounties had been sent west to keep down alcohol and they sure as heck did their best to fulfill their mission.

By the time we’ve imbibed all this good-humored scandal, we’ve made our way three-quarters of the way around the enclosed yard and are sauntering back toward the front gate. Across the lawn, a red-coated guide is shouting commands to a troop of pint-sized police recruits, each outfitted in a tiny scarlet jacket and jaunty pillbox cap. Quick March. Halt. Atten-shun! Nearby, a young sub-constable has nabbed her father and is dragging him off to a mock court, where he is doomed to stand trial for some historical misdemeanor. On all sides, Fort Walsh appears to be delivering on its promise to serve up the past as wholesome family fun. And the grand finale is yet to come.

With a wave of his red-coated arm, our guide directs us through the door of an unassuming log building just to the right of the exit, in the shelter of the stockade. The commissioner’s residence, he tells us, and it was here, he says, that the great Lakota chief Sitting Bull—who with his people had taken refuge in Canada following the Battle of the Greasy Grass—once met an official delegation from the United States and sent them home empty-handed. From somewhere, the guide has now produced a sheaf of papers and he’s scanning the faces of the visitors who are gathered in the house, looking for volunteers. Who would like to read the words of the American General Terry, as he tries to induce the Lakota to return to the States and settle on their reservations? Who would like to be Sitting Bull and tell the Ugly Americans to beat it?

Most of us hang back shyly, but a couple of brave souls step forward to accept the challenge. Looks like we’re in for a touch of drama.

Let’s say that you and I are sitting on the hill overlooking Fort Walsh, only it isn’t summer now. It is October 16, 1877, around sundown. Below us, the cluster of whitewashed buildings that house the police glows faintly through the dusk; and to the north of the palisade, where a scraggly village has sprung up out of nowhere over the past couple of years, lamps are being lit in the pool hall, the laundry, the restaurant. Somewhere a dog is barking; somewhere a coyote sings its eerie, quavering song. In the distance, a low rumble of hooves and the creaking of wagons announce the imminent arrival of travelers coming in from the south, along the Benton Trail. And then, here they are, breasting the rim of the valley, pausing to take in the view, and proceeding briskly down the slope and across the parade ground toward the fort.

At the head of the procession, two men ride abreast: Colonel James F. Macleod, the commissioner of the mounted police, in his scarlet tunic and gleaming white helmet, and beside him, U.S. Army Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, resplendent in a blue uniform tinseled with gold braid. These dignitaries are followed by an honor guard of twenty-eight police lancers, their red-and-white pennants fluttering cheerily overhead, and a straggling train of supply wagons, drawn by mules and staffed by a company of American infantrymen. Ordinarily, the U.S. infantry would have been stopped at the border (where three complete companies of cavalry are now waiting to see Terry and his commission safely home) but an exception has been made for the supply train on this special occasion.

No one seems surprised that the Americans have arrived with armed force, while the mounted police get by on chutzpah and an unspoken promise of good governance. Long live the Great White Mother, Victoria Regina, and her worldwide reign of peace and justice.

On one side of the border lies danger; on the other, hope. At least, that’s what the Lakota have concluded. And it has been hope, a hope born of desperation, that has drawn some four thousand Lakota refugees across the border into the Great Mother’s country in recent months. Behind them lies a bloody saga of mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government—promises broken, treaty lands stolen (including the sacred Black Hills, “the heart of the people” 1), peaceful camps attacked. Altogether, it is a record of such iniquity that, in December of 1876, a congressional commission had declared it to be “dishonorable to the nation and disgraceful to those who originated it.” 2 But that stinging assessment has gone unnoticed in the national outrage over the events of 26/6/76, the day the Lakota put paid to the 7th Cavalry and its golden-haired commander. Since then, the American military has engaged its superior firepower with redoubled ferocity (even invoking the black-velvet-clad showmanship of Buffalo Bill), forcing some of the Lakota to surrender and accept internment on reservations, while others have fled to sanctuary across the border.

Since their arrival on British soil, the refugees have devoted themselves to hunting buffalo and caring for their children. (“I came here to hunt, nothing bad,” Sitting Bull has told the police. “I came to see the English, where we are going to raise a new life.” 3) A few bands have settled temporarily in the remaining buffalo country in and around the Cypress Hills with camps at, among other places, the Head of the Mountain in the west and along the Frenchman River in the east. In response, the police have recently established a small detachment at Chimney Coulee, which they call the East End post, both to surveil the new arrivals and to serve as a stopover on the 120-mile journey from Fort Walsh east to Wood Mountain, where the majority of the refugees have congregated.

That’s where Inspector Walsh has had to travel to ask the Lakota if they will come and meet the Americans. The chiefs have agreed with great reluctance. It doesn’t help that General Terry was the overall commander of the American forces during the war against the Sioux. It doesn’t help that, a day before the Lakota delegation is scheduled to leave for Fort Walsh, a party of around a hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children had struggled into camp, wounded and bleeding, after a calamitous encounter with the American army at the Battle of Bear Paw. These are people who have done everything the white man demanded—accepted the Christian religion, taken up farming, settled in permanent homes—yet in the end they have been evicted from their treaty lands and harried across the country all the way from Oregon.

Even with this painful evidence before them, the Lakota have eventually allowed themselves to be persuaded to attend the parley at Fort Walsh. By the time the general and his entourage enter the stockade, the Lakota delegation is camped nearby. All the leading chiefs are present: Bear’s Head; Spotted Eagle; Flying Bird; Whirlwind Bear; Medicine Turns Around; Iron Dog; The Man That Scatters the Bear, with his wife (whose name the clerks at tomorrow’s meeting will not bother to note); Little Knife; The Crow; Yellow Dog; and, of course, Sitting Bull. They have come not out of any respect for the Americans or even friendship with the police but in the hope that the Great Mother will see their good intentions and take pity on them. After all, the Dominion government has recently granted a small reserve to Sioux who fled across the border as refugees after the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. Are not the more recent arrivals equally deserving of consideration?

The meeting convenes at 3 PM on October 17. (For the record, it is held in the orderly room, not the commissioner’s house, which won’t be built for several months.) Through an interpreter, General Terry lays out the terms of the proposed repatriation: the Lakota will surrender their arms and horses and proceed to the Indian agencies on the Missouri River, where a herd of 650 cattle has been purchased for their use. “From these cows,” Terry explains stiffly, “you will be able to raise herds, which will support you and your children . . . long after the game upon which you now depend for subsistence shall have disappeared.” In return for accepting this offer and agreeing to live in peace, the general pledges that “what is past shall be forgotten, and . . . you shall be received in the friendly spirit in which the other Indians who have been engaged in hostilities against the United States and have surrendered to its military forces have been received . . . It is time that bloodshed should cease.” 4

Thˇathˇáŋka Íyotake, Sitting Bull, is the first to stand and deliver his rebuke. “I was born and raised in this country with the Red River Half-breeds,” he tells the assembly, “and I intend to stop with them . . . You have got ears, and you have got eyes to see with them, and you see how I live with these people. You see me? Here I am!” He pauses to shake hands with Macleod and then with Walsh, before turning back to face the American delegation. “If you think I am a fool, you are a bigger fool than I am. This house is a medicine-house. You come here to tell us lies, but we don’t want to hear them . . . Don’t you say two more words. Go back home where you came from. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here, and to raise this country full of grown people.” 5

Now comes the part that will never be re-enacted by tourists in the years that lie ahead. Later in the day, after the Americans have withdrawn to their quarters, Macleod holds a private meeting with the Lakota chiefs. Behind closed doors, he tells them that the Queen’s government denies their claim to be British and sees them instead as “American Indians . . . who have come to our side of the line for protection.” 6 He reminds them that their only hope lies with the buffalo, which will soon be gone, and when that day comes, they can expect “nothing whatever” from the Queen in the way of assistance. In response, Sitting Bull will again grasp Macleod by the hand and express the wistful hope that there will be “lots of buffalo for a long time to come.” When he accepts Macleod’s gifts of tobacco, provisions, and blankets for the return trip across the plains, he may not immediately understand that, for all her apparent maternal kindness, the Great Mother is cold as stone. He cannot know that, in the corridors of power in faraway Ottawa, the Queen’s government has decided to stand by and watch hunger do its work.

Month after month ticks past, and the Lakota refugees remain on the Canadian side of the border, with camps in the Cypress Hills (often along the Frenchman near the East End post) and a home base at Wood Mountain. In fact, there are more of them than ever, thanks to a straggling influx of asylum seekers who appeared soon after Terry left, looking for refuge from the misery and political confusion on the American reservations. (These are the people who may have stayed at the purported Crazy Horse camp.) With them, the newcomers have brought word that Crazy Horse, the revered leader of the Lakota resistance, has been murdered, stabbed with bayonets as government officers attempted to put him under arrest. So much for General Terry’s promise of forgiveness and friendliness.

Since moving to Grandmother’s Country, by contrast, life has been peaceful and good, and the Lakota children have, for the first time in years, begun to play again. But now a familiar enemy is creeping into the camps. After several years of abundance, prairie fires have swept across the Lakota’s new country, blackening the grass and keeping the buffalo at a distance. In response, most of the refugees have slipped back across the border, where they have again been met with force but where the opportunities for hunting have been somewhat better. Meanwhile, reports from far and wide (from the Qu’Appelle Valley west to the foothills) speak of widespread famine—the buffalo are totally gone—and people have been reduced to eating mice, gophers, dogs, horses, even old buffalo hides. People have died, are dying, of starvation.

Yet there’s no need for panic, because the Canadian government has everything in hand. With the Pacific Scandal set neatly behind him, Sir John A. Macdonald has returned to the prime minister’s office with a new and improved program for national prosperity. No longer content merely with forging a geographical union of provinces linked by steel from coast to coast, Macdonald is now focused on national economic integration. As before, his vision hinges on the settlement of the West. Once the prairies are thickly populated by farmers—including “civilized” Indians—the land will produce such bounty that everyone will be fed, with an abundant surplus left over for sale on world markets. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs in eastern Canada will tool up to meet western demand for farming equipment, building materials, and household goods. Before you know it, the rails will be humming with westbound shipments of plows and cookstoves and outgoing boxcars of golden grain. It is just a matter of getting the necessary arrangements in place.

Over the preceding decade, the government has been working its way down an extensive To Do list. One of the first items to be checked off was establishing a framework for private land ownership. The incoming settlers would naturally expect to hold title to their farms, so that their lands could be bought and sold or passed down to their sons. But for this to be possible—before the longed-for influx of settlers could be persuaded to risk everything on this Last Best West—the whole wide, windswept run of the grasslands would have to be divided into precisely defined, ownable parcels. And so the work began. By 1874, an international team of surveyors had marked the Canada–U.S. boundary from Manitoba west, bisecting the Benton Trail just south of the Cypress Hills, and then continuing clear across to the Rockies, a span of almost nine hundred miles. Soon thereafter, an invisible network of latitude and longitude began to extend north across the open prairie, trapping the subtleties of the land in its impassive grid. Before the end of the decade, crews from the Dominion Land Survey were at work with their chains and theodolites across the Saskatchewan country, assigning a numerical designation to every section and quarter-section. Silently, unobtrusively, the prairie ecosystem was being transformed into supercolossal real-estate development.

“Do you see the Great White-man coming?” an Aboriginal man asked one of the land speculators who, by the mid-1870s, had begun to haunt the West. No, the other responded. “I do,” the speaker continued. “And I hear the tramp of the multitude behind him. When he comes you can drop in behind him and take up all the land claims you want, but until then I caution you to put up no stakes in our country.” 7

Therein lay the other big item on the government’s agenda: the Indian Question. The challenge on the Canadian prairies was exactly the same as in the U.S.—to get the Indians to forfeit their traditional territories and settle on government-approved plots, where they could be introduced to the arts of farming and “civilization.” North of the border, however, force was not an option. Not only did Canada fancy itself above such brutal tactics, it frankly could not afford a war. (The United States was expending around $20 million a year on fighting its Indians, more than the entire budget of the young and impoverished Dominion.) Instead, the Canadian government again opted for the lofty virtues of order and governance. Beginning in 1871, the nation, on behalf of the Great Mother and in response to repeated requests from Aboriginal leaders, entered into a series of agreements with the Aboriginal people of the plains, starting in present-day Manitoba with Treaties 1, 2, and 3, and then proceeding west and northwest and west again to cover off one vast stretch of the country after another.

Treaty 4, for example, which was signed by the Plains Cree and Nakoda in the Qu’Appelle Valley in 1874, encompassed all the lands south of the South Saskatchewan River as far west as—and including—the Cypress Hills, a principality of about 75,000 square miles. Treaty 6, signed two years later, took in an even larger area—more than 120,000 square miles in all—centering on the Saskatchewan River system, across what would one day become central Saskatchewan and Alberta. Finally, Treaty 7, formalized at Blackfoot Crossing in 1877, dealt with a further 50,000 square miles of desirable farming and grazing land, from the Red Deer River south to the border and from the eastern margin of the Cypress Hills west to the Rocky Mountains. Although the nations of the Niitsítapi had hunted and camped in the Cypress Hills for longer than memory, they were formally alienated from this territory by the boundaries of the treaties.

The treaty documents appeared to reflect a meeting of minds between the various indigenous peoples and the Queen but, in fact, they stood at an intersection of conflicting needs. For the government side, the crux of the matter was the clause in which the Aboriginal signatories agreed to “cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for Her Majesty the Queen, and Her successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever” to the wide prairie land. (To people hearing these words in translation, the concept of “yielding” something to which they had never claimed “title” was just so much gobbledygook, in keeping with the whereas’s and hitherto’s of the rest of the document.) What the Native signatories did take away from the discussions, by contrast, were the promises of help with the traumatic transition that was rapidly bearing down on them.

“The Queen knows that you are poor,” the government’s spokesman had assured the chiefs at the signing of Treaty 4. “The Queen knows that it is hard to find food for yourselves and [your] children; she knows that the winters are cold, and your children are often hungry...

“The Queen always keeps her word,” he went on, “always protects her red men. She learned . . . that bad men from the United States had come into her country and had killed some of her red children. What did she say? This must not be, I will send my men [the police] and will not suffer these bad men to hurt my red children, their lives are very precious to me . . .”

Now, “out of her generous heart and liberal hand,” the government’s Treaty Commissioner affirmed, “she wants to do something for you, so that when the buffalo get scarcer, and they are scarce enough now, you may be able to do something for yourselves . . .”

“I know,” the same spokesman continued two years later, at the signing of Treaty 6, “that the sympathy of the Queen, and her assistance, would be with you in any unforeseen circumstances. You must trust to her generosity . . . All I can promise is that you will be treated kindly . . .” 8

And so, we arrive at midsummer 1879. With a decade of preparation behind him—and with alarming rumors of famine echoing around the North-West—Sir John A. Macdonald is anxious to kick his Indian policy into high gear. His immediate goal is to bring the treaty process to fruition by signing up the few remaining holdouts, fulfilling the government’s side of the bargain at a manageable cost, and getting the estimated 23,000 Indians on the Canadian plains established on reserves as quickly as possible. To perform this mission, the prime minister has recently recruited the Honourable Member for Yale, British Columbia, a sometime-surveyor, cattleman, land agent, auctioneer, gold miner, trailblazer, and all-around up-and-comer, who just happens to be one of the prime minister’s most loyal supporters in the House of Commons. His name is Edgar Dewdney, and for nearly six weeks, he and his muttonchop whiskers have been making their way across the continent by what (in the absence of Macdonald’s railroad) is still the only feasible route, traveling first by train from Toronto to Collingwood, then across the Great Lakes by steamer to Duluth, onward by rail to Bismarck, up the Missouri by steamboat to Fort Benton, and thence by horse-drawn wagon to his first official port of call in the Canadian Interior. With a relief that we can only imagine, his team pulls over the final ridge and his destination comes into view: a huddle of whitewashed buildings surrounded by a rustic stockade, flanked by a straggling town site, and embraced by a circle of hills. Welcome to Fort Walsh, Mr. Indian Commissioner.

As it happens, Ned Dewdney is not the only high muck-a-muck who is in residence at the fort. In fact, he has traveled cross-country with the top officers of the North-West Mounted Police—Commissioner James Macleod and his wife, Mary, and Assistant Commissioner Irvine—together with a fresh intake of horses and eighty-one new men, recruited in the East as police reinforcements. Almost the only notable who won’t be here is the fort’s commanding office, Inspector Walsh, who is focusing his time and attention on the Lakota camp at Wood Mountain. Evicting a few dozen whiskey traders had been nothing compared with the challenge of getting a few thousand unwanted Indians across the border. With the Sioux now at the forefront, Fort Walsh has recently been upgraded to serve as Mountie headquarters, with an official residence for the commissioner, barracks for a garrison of up to 150 men, and an armory of seven-pound field guns, or small cannons.

Celebrating their first Christmas in their roomy new mess hall, the men of “B” Division had sat down to dinner beneath a portrait of their absent commanding officer, his handsome visage framed in greenery and bracketed by a festive display of six-shooters, carbines, and lances. Under the picture, ingeniously worked with curb chains and bits against a background of black cloth, someone had outlined the triumphant words “Sitting Bull’s Boss.”

On the subject of the “American hostiles,” Commissioner Dewdney’s instructions are clear. He is to keep Ottawa informed of their whereabouts and do whatever he can to hurry them back across the border. Under no circumstances is he to authorize an issue of rations. “Sitting Bull and his people, seeing that the buffalo is failing them in our territory, will go back to their own country,” Ottawa has decreed, “the only other alternative being starvation for themselves, their wives, and their families.” 9 But this hard line obviously cannot be taken with Canada’s “own” Indians, at least not with those who, by taking treaty, have recently accepted the hand of the Queen in friendship.

Although Dewdney is not a greenhorn—fifteen years in British Columbia had put paid to that—he knows nothing about the prairie or the buffalo or the people who depend on them. (When he’d pointed this deficiency out to Macdonald, his boss had been unmoved. “Indians are all alike,” the prime minister had assured him.10) Yet despite his ignorance of local conditions, Dewdney knows trouble when it stares him in the face. “Continually meeting hungry Indians,” he’d noted in his journal on the way up from Fort Benton. “Saw a few [pronghorn] antelope, but no buffalo,” he’d scribbled the following day. “Lots of old dried carcasses all over the prairie.” 11 So he isn’t surprised to find a large number of gaunt-looking Indians congregated at the fort, waiting for him and Macleod to put in an appearance. And he is gratified two days later when a delegation of Nakoda men ride up in procession, looking “very pretty” with their treaty flag flying overhead, and acknowledge his importance with a display of precision horsemanship.

Like many an immigrant before and since, Indian Commissioner Dewdney is a man on the make. (A child of the English tenements who has somehow managed to pass as upper class, he will die a wealthy man, enriched by kickbacks on government contracts and insider land transactions.) For the moment, his fortunes depend entirely on implementing Macdonald’s Indian policy and making it a success, and he doesn’t waste any time in getting down to business. All the Aboriginal leaders who have gathered, including Siksika “visitors” from Treaty 7 and Crees and Nakoda from Treaty 4, are called together to confer with Colonel Macleod and the new government chief.

The Siksika, Crees, and Nakoda have come to the fort with an urgent agenda to press. In the short term, they desperately need supplies to sustain them until they can reach the main herds of buffalo, now south of the Milk River and under assault by all the subsistence and market hunters on the continent. In the longer term, they entreat the government to fulfill its promise (made explicitly in Treaty 6 and implicitly in all the rest) to provide emergency assistance in times of famine. In reply, Colonel Macleod speaks of the government’s “great sorrow” at their suffering but reminds them that they must not expect assistance every time their stomachs growl. There is a difference between mere hunger, he informs them, and starvation. In the long run, the government expects them to “work and earn their own living,” 12 and that is why Mr. Dewdney has been sent to concern himself exclusively with their interests. He has come, Macleod tells the Indians, to show you how to live.

When the conference reconvenes the following day, “Whitebeard,” as the delegation quickly nicknames Dewdney, outlines the details of the government’s plan. He explains that he has brought two farmers with him from the East, with others to follow soon, and that they will immediately set to work breaking the soil and raising crops for seed and food. In addition, he tells his attentive audience, the government will send instructors to show you how to farm, so you can work the soil the same as the white man does. If only you will settle down, in two or three years—it’s a promise—you will be independent and have plenty to live on, without any need for handouts from the government.

There are nods all around at this prospect, and two of the leading chiefs—Cuwiknak eyaku (The Man Who Took the Coat) for the Nakoda and Ka-wezauce (Cowessess or Little Child) for his mixed community of Saulteaux and Cree—rise to express their assent. They are eager to choose their reserves as soon as possible, somewhere in their home country of the Cypress Hills, and settle to the task of becoming farmers. But meanwhile, what they all need are rations to take them south to the herds. “Gave them some Beef & Flour,” Whitebeard notes in his journal after the meeting has adjourned. “They are awful beggars, but I think they are really hungry.” 13

No sooner has this business been settled than another large group of people arrives at the fort. Here is another opportunity for Dewdney to turn on his voluble charm and advance the government’s ambitions. The newcomers are non-treaty people, followers of the Plains Cree leaders Minahikosis, or Little Pine, and Mistahi-maskwa, known in English as Big Bear. More discussions are convened, and Dewdney repeats his pitch: Choose your reserves, take advantage of the government’s generous assistance as you learn how to farm, and your future will be secure. Two days later, on July 2, 1879, Little Pine, with his 324 followers, enters the fort to sign an adhesion to Treaty 6. With him—taking advantage of Dewdney’s new edict that any leader with a hundred followers can take treaty as a chief—is a headman from Big Bear’s band, Papewes, or Lucky Man. It is not easy to resist a hand held out in generosity when your children are starving.

“Gave some Beef, Tobacco, Tea & Sugar to those who took the Treaty,” Dewdney notes in his diary that night. “Big Bear would like to come in but he is afraid of being laughed at.” 14 Yet even in the face of Dewdney’s derision, even as rations are handed out to their friends, Big Bear and his remaining supporters hold strong in their dissenting position.

“We want none of the Queen’s presents,” Mistahi-maskwa had once told a government official. “When we set a fox-trap, we scatter pieces of meat all around. But when the fox gets into the trap, we knock him on the head.” 15 Always dubious about the adequacy of the treaties and the government’s sincerity in entering into them, Big Bear remains polite but steadfast in his discussions with Whitebeard.

“He wanted more land and more money,” Dewdney reports to his masters in Ottawa, after the two have met. “He said he wanted to see how [the treaties] worked with the other Indians.” 16

Still, even if Big Bear hasn’t been brought onside, Dewdney has to admit to a grudging admiration for him. “I have not formed such a poor opinion of ‘Big Bear,’ ” he confesses, “as some appear to have done. He is of a very independent character, self-reliant and appears to know how to make his own living without begging from the Government.” 17 All in all, the Indian Commissioner’s ten-day visit to Fort Walsh has been time well spent. As he clambers back into his buckboard to continue his tour of the West, he is confident that the government’s new Indian policy will prove a splendid success.

From our vantage point on the hillside, we watch as the Indian Commissioner rattles over the western rim of the valley and disappears from sight. The sun is low; there’s a chill in the air. It’s going to be a long night.