Out of the Gloom.

Besides James K. Simpson and myself, there were in the camp two white women, the wives of the murdered Gowanlock and Delaney. These unfortunate ladies were dragged from the bodies of their dying husbands by the savages and taken to camp, where they were purchased from their captors by John Pritchard, Quinn's half-breed interpreter, Adolphus Nolin and Pierre Blondin. Pritchard deserves all praise for his unselfish and loyal part, for had the Indians retained possession of the women it is not difficult to divine the fate before them. A few words from their stories of the massacre will be found of interest. Mrs. Delaney says:

"The first we knew of the uprising was on the 2nd of April at five o'clock in the morning. Two of Big Bear's Indians entered our house and told us our horses were stolen by the half-breeds, though they themselves were the thieves. Soon after, some thirty more, armed and mounted, came to the house and forced their way in. They took all the arms and ammunition they could find, telling us they were short and required them. They said they wished to save us from the half-breeds. They took us first to Mr. Quinn's, where they had a long talk about holding together to keep back the half-breeds when they came to take the provisions. From Quinn's we were taken to the church, where mass was being celebrated, but they would not permit the priests to finish and ordered them to return with us to our house. We were left to ourselves for about an hour, the Indians surrounding the house. It was then about half past nine in the morning. Big Bear came in and told my husband he feared some of the young men intended shooting the whites, but that he, at least, would be safe.

"A little later they ordered us all to go to the Indian camp. We departed, my husband and I with the others, taking only what we had on our backs, as we expected to be only a short time away. Before we had gone far the Indians began to shoot down the whites. Mr. Quinn was shot first, though I did not see him killed. All the shooting was behind my husband and me, and until otherwise informed I supposed it was into the air. I saw Mr. Gowanlock fall. As he dropped Mrs. Gowanlock leaned over him, putting her face to his. As two shots had been fired at her husband, I thought she had also been hit.

"After Mr. Gowanlock fell I saw some frightful object, an Indian hideously painted, aiming at my husband. Before I could speak he staggered away, but came back to me and exclaimed: 'I am shot.' He fell then. I called to the priest and he came towards me. Then the same Indian fired again. I thought the shot was meant for me, and I laid my head upon my husband and waited; it seemed an age, but the ball had been for my poor husband and he never spoke afterward.

"Almost immediately another Indian ran up and ordered me away. I wished to stay, but he dragged me off, pulling me along by the arms through the brush and briar and through the creek, where the water reached to my waist. I was put into an Indian tent and left there until nightfall, when John Pritchard came and purchased my release with horses, and I believe both Mrs. Gowanlock and myself owe to him our escape from terrible treatment and subsequent death.

"I was terribly stricken down. I seemed demented and could hardly tell on one day what had occurred the day previous. I went on and on as in a fearful dream, but seemed conscious all the while of my home at Aylmer, and my longing for it seemed alone to keep me up. I was afraid to ask for my husband, but the half-breeds told me later that they had buried him.

"As I was being dragged away I saw the two priests shot. Father Fafard fell first; then Father Marchand. "On four different nights Indians approached our tent, but the determination of Pritchard and some other half-breeds saved us."

The following is from Mrs. Gowanlock's story: "When we left the Delaney's house no one knew what was about to happen and I do not think it was supposed any of us were really in danger. We all started at the same time. We had gone only a few paces when the Indians began firing. When I saw Mr. Williscraft fall in front of us I knew all were being killed and became greatly alarmed. I saw an Indian aiming at my husband by my side. In a moment he fell, reaching out his arms toward me. I caught him and we fell together. I lay with my face resting upon his and his breathing had scarcely ceased when I was forced away by an Indian. I was almost crazed with grief, but I remember seeing the two priests shot and Mr. Delaney. They were before me. One of the priests was leaning over Delaney. It all seemed like some horrible dream. I went through it dazed and stunned, with power enough left in my limbs only to follow, as the Indian dragged me after him through coarse brush and sloughs, which wet me and tore my clothes and flesh. I must have suffered intensely, but grief and terror rendered me unconscious of pain.

"I asked to be put with Mrs. Delaney, but the Indian, who understood sufficient English to know what I meant, answered no and pushed me into his tent. The squaws inside noticed I was shaking with cold and took off my shoes and dried them and offered me something to eat. Blondin came a little later and bought me for a horse and thirty dollars. I was then permitted to join Mrs. Delaney in Pritchard's tent. Like Mrs. Delaney, I dread to imagine the treatment to which we would have been subjected had it not been for Pritchard.

"Big Bear came frequently into the tent to see us. Mr. Pritchard would interpret and the chief professed sorrow, telling us it was the fault of his braves whom he could not control."

The unutterable sadness on the faces of these two poor women is ineffaceably stamped on my memory. We could offer them little beside our sympathy, and when I first saw them after the massacre I doubted if they would survive for a fortnight the fearful ordeal through which they had passed.

Nine men were killed in the massacre: Thomas Trueman Quinn, a native of Minnesota, thirty-eight years of age, of mixed Irish, French and Sioux blood, successively interpreter, clerk and agent in the Canadian Indian service.

John Delaney, farming instructor, a native of Ontario, about forty years of age.

John C. Gowanlock, from Parkdale, Ontario, about twenty-eight years of age.

George Dill, about forty years of age. He came from Muskoka, Ontario, to Frog Lake in the fall before the massacre as my partner in a trading business.

John Williscraft came to the West from Southampton, Ontario. He was a mechanic, about sixty years of age.

William C. Gilchrist, clerk for Mr. Gowanlock, about twenty-one years of age.

Charles Gouin, a Columbia River half-breed, employed at Frog Lake building the agency stores and houses. He was about forty years of age.

Rev. Leon Adelard Fafard, a native of Quebec, where he was born in 1849.

Rev. Felix Marie Marchand was born in France in 1858.

In addition to shooting Quinn, Wandering Spirit was first to shoot Father Fafard. The priest was hit in the neck. He fell on his face, and Papamakeesik, who had been brought up by the priest, stepped out and finished him with a shot in the head.

Dill and Gilchrist ran. They were followed on horseback by Little Bear, Maymayquaysoo, Kahweechetwaymot, and Iron Body, overhauled and shot down about three hundred yards away.

The bodies of the two priests and of Gowanlock and Delaney were placed in the cellar beneath the church and the earth walls thrown in upon them. Quinn and Gouin were buried in the cellar of Pritchard's house. Within a day or two of the massacre all the buildings had been burned by the Indians, including the two that were the sepulchres of the murdered men.

The church was burned by Four-Sky Thunder, who received a sentence of fourteen years for his act.

There are those who, with no personal knowledge concerning the details of the massacre at Frog Lake, or of the events leading up to it, pose as authorities, asserting that but for the obstinacy of Quinn in refusing to leave his post at the agency at Wandering Spirit's behest and go to the Indian camp, the tragedy would never have occurred. This despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Let me list some of the items in this evidence:

1. The Indians entered the houses in the morning and seized all weapons before the occupants were awake.

2. A few minutes before the massacre Wandering Spirit and Miserable Man plastered across their eyes and mouths bars of yellow ochre. This without doubt was a prearranged signal that the hour for the butchery had struck.

3. At the reports of the first shots Miserable Man, for whom I had just filled an order from Quinn, dashed out of the shop and to the opposite hill, where he finished Gouin (already wounded) by a bullet through the chest. It is quite clear that this Indian knew of the impending slaughter and hurried to reach the defenceless whites in order to play his assigned part in it.

4. 'Wandering Spirit (as I heard him a few minutes after the massacre) walked through the Indian camp proclaiming. loudly that he had killed "Kapwatamut". If, as these defenders of the murderers contend, the butchery was not premeditated, is it to be supposed that the war chief would be openly boasting of the murder of the Indian agent as a meritorious act of which he was justly proud? Any contrary idea is preposterous.

5. The comment of Imasees (the real instigator of the massacre, as Wandering Spirit told me in his cell the night before he was hanged) at sunrise of the very day it was committed, and which is given later, shows conclusively that the killings were deliberate and planned in advance.

Goulet and Nolin had spent the night of April 1st at Frog Lake and next morning before sunrise they met at Gowanlock's, two miles below the settlement, on the way back to their camp at Moose Creek. Gowanlock and his wife were still up at the Delaney's and Gilchrist was alone. The half-breeds dismounted, tied their horses outside and entered. Gilchrist was up and they accepted his invitation to breakfast.

They were seated at the table, when the door was burst ("The Indians liked Gilchrist," Goulet explained. "I suppose if he had said he sided with them they would have tried to spare him." It struck me that Goulet might have helped the white man here, but as he has since told me, he was too confused at the time to think of this.)

The balance of his story I shall try to tell in Goulet's own words.

"Pretty soon" (said Goulet), "I meet Charlie Gouin. I say, 'Charlie, where's your rifle?' Charlie says, 'De Injun take it at my house, 'fore I'm up.'

"Well, dat don' look ver' good. Dere's goin' be trouble, sure, I'm say to myself. And dere is. You know how it go-at Quinn's office, at de church, over on de hill 'front to Johnny Pritchard's house. No use to tell 'bout dat. You been dere-you see. Me, I'm ,t'ink I'm going 'scape away, ba gosh! But I'm never get de chance.

"Quinn an' Gouin's standin" front to Pritchard's. Wandering Spirit's comin' up, order Quinn go on de Injun camp. Dere's little patch de snow side to de hill yet.

"Quinn take few step; he's want to pass by dat patch de snow. Wandering Spirit say, 'Go straight!' Quinn go on roun'. Wandering Spirit say: 'You always want go your way. Do w'at I tell you-go my way!' Quinn smile, keep on. Den Wandering Spirit t'row up hees gun an' shoot an' Quinn fall."

(Goulet's story here hardly corresponds with my own. I think Goulet did not remember clearly just what occurred at this time; I should be surprised if he did. He was alarmed for his own safety, thinking of escape. My own account of these details comes from the war chief himself, from what I myself heard less than half an hour after the massacre, when the murderer strode up and down through the camp and I listened while he cried out his own report of what he had said to Quinn, the agent's replies and of what followed. I scarcely think Wandering Spirit would have given a wrong version of an event of which he was then boasting.)

"Dat half-crazy feller you know," Goulet went on, "run up, hol' his gun on me an' say: 'Give me your money!' I'm say: 'I got no money."Well, give me your horse,' he say, 'Quick!'

"Of course, I give anyt'ing-dat dam crazy feller goin' killed me, sure! 'All right!' I say.

"It's den I run on de pries' stable to get my horse, Waychun running 'long protect me, de time you see me. "But w'en I get on de stable, she's empty; an Injun outside, he's sit on my horse. Dat's de same feller's take Charlie Gouin's rifle; he got it on hees hand. Well, I'm pretty darn scare'. I'm run up, grab dis feller on de leg an' give him swil' hois'. He's land on hees head, odder side my horse.

"You bet dat feller's mad like hell! He's jump up, swear de bes' he know how on Cree an' shove bees rifle on my face. I'm get dam close shave dere, Cameron! But Waychun step 'front to me-shove hees gun on dat feller's face. So of course he don' shoot. Dat's twice on few minute Waychun save my life. I don' forget dat, you bet! Many sack flour I give Waychun after dat."

From there Goulet, still accompanied and protected by Waychun, struck for the Indian camp, passing me on the way as already related, and it was the "half-crazy feller," riding the half-breed's horse, who halted me about the same time and instead, as I anticipated, of shooting me, to my unutterable gratitude, told me to "Go on!"