Big Bear Scores His Followers.

For the first few days after the massacre the Indians gave themselves up largely to feasting and dancing. Some four hundred head of work cattle and milk cows, supplied to the Wood Crees in the district, were rounded up and herded near the camp. Besides the provisions and other goods obtained from the two posts, they had looted the dwellings of the missionaries, government officials and settlers at Frog Lake and in the surrounding territory. Every day for the first few weeks eight or ten head of cattle were shot, and besides beef, there was flour, tea, sugar, bacon and tobacco in plenty. The Indian revelled in the unaccustomed abundance and it is not to be wondered at that he grew wasteful. To the prisoners, on the other hand, these were days of supreme wretchedness and anxiety.

The oxen had been supplied to the various bands for agricultural purposes and the cows were intended to form the nucleus of a herd which it was the plan of the government to distribute among the Indians as they became sufficiently trustworthy properly to care for them. The animals before the outbreak had been in the keeping of some of the more progressive men of the three Wood Cree bands at Frog Lake. These Indians still asserted a personal property in the cattle and soon bad blood began to show itself between them and Big Bear's men, who refused to recognize any individual interests in the herd and slew the animals as their whims and appetites dictated.

The two hundred lodges composing the camp were pitched in an oblong circle enclosing a considerable space. One evening about sundown, while strolling through the camp I noticed two Indians, one armed, the other not, disputing hotly a short way in front of me. Suddenly the man with the gun clubbed it and brought it down in a vicious swing on the other's head, laying him flat. He then walked off.

In a few minutes, the other got up, howling with rage and pain, blood streaming down his face, and staggered to his lodge. He reappeared immediately with a gun and, still howling, started in the direction of the Plains Cree lodges at the upper end of the camp. Two of his friends stole up behind him, seized his arms and took away his weapon. Had he reached the other man's lodge he would, of course, have been killed. In a second encounter, his assailant would not have hesitated to substitute the load in his gun for the barrel. I afterward learned that they had quarrelled over some cattle claimed by the Wood Cree.

There was danger and excitement in the camp when the cattle were slaughtered each day. It brought back to the Indian's old times and the buffalo hunt. They ran the cattle on horseback and shot them and were not always careful about the direction of their bullets. If a steer dodged among the lodges, the man on horseback followed and fired at the first opportunity. Sometimes the bullet hit the steer; sometimes it went through a lodge - to the consternation of the inmates.

I walked over occasionally to see them dispose of an animal. As soon as it fell it was bled. Then it was turned on its back and skinned down either side, the hide being spread out to cover as much ground as possible and serve as a table on which to lay out the meat. Squaws and children, interested spectators, crowded about the carcass. The butcher parcelled out the animal, handed a piece to each and they went away happy. In the earlier part of my captivity, I never wanted for beef.

One bright afternoon, three or four days after the massacre, I was lying in Patenaude's lodge when I heard Big Bear speaking. The Indians had danced and orated daily since the outbreak, but I had kept away from them, knowing that their talk was only of violence and bloodshed. When I heard the old chief, however, my curiosity was excited. He had seemed depressed ever since the rising; he had avoided these dances of Wandering Spirit and the young men and so far as I knew had not yet publicly spoken his mind to his band on the outrages. I was anxious to hear what he had to say.

The warriors to the number of sixty were seated in the form of a horseshoe on the ground at the upper end of the camp. Big Bear occupied the centre. At the top sat Wandering Spirit with the other councillors, and I stretched myself at the open end opposite them where I could observe the war chief, towards whom my eyes were irresistibly drawn whenever he was in sight. Big Bear spoke in Cree and I caught only the close of his speech. He said:

"Kias I was a chief. Long ago, when we fought the Blackfoot, not a man among you could do what I did. All the South Nations - the Bloods, Peigans, Blackfoot, Crows, Sioux - knew Big Bear; that he was head chief of all the Crees. At that time if I said anything you listened to me - you obeyed me. But now I say one thing and you do another!"

He bent over and swept his arm in the faces of Wandering Spirit and the other councillors, who sat with lowered eyes and pointed in the direction of the smouldering ruins of Frog Lake. The old man stood for a moment in this dramatic pose, his face quivering with emotion; then he folded his soiled grey blanket about him with an air of impressive dignity and strode away, a pathetic but still commanding figure. He entered Mr. Simpson's tent and I followed. He had noticed me as he walked off and looking up as I came in said, with a wave of his hand:

"I have got the name of being a bad man, but Missa Jim here, my oldest friend, can tell you that is not true. In the old days, when the Company sold rum and I drank it, I did not get ugly and wish to make trouble like the others. To sit quietly and sing - that was what I liked, as Missa Jim knows. I have always been the friend of the white man. I am sorry for what was done. I am more than sorry for my brother, Delaney. Had I only been near when the shooting began, I should have saved him, at least."

The Indians were preparing to go down and attack Fort Pitt. Mr. Simpson and I thought this a good opportunity to suggest to Big Bear that the police under Inspector Dickens and the handful of settlers who had fled to the fort for refuge, be allowed to leave Pitt unmolested, in consideration of their abandoning the place without a fight. Pitt was a fort in name only - really, a group of unprotected wooden buildings - and we knew that it would be impossible for the little garrison of thirty men to hold out for any length of time against the three hundred armed hostiles. Big Bear readily agreed to call a council and urge upon his band the adoption of our advice, before they left for Fort Pitt.