Big Bear (7 page)

McDougall explained none of this. He simply repeated, “You are, like me, children of the Queen. We are all of the same blood; the same God made us and the same Queen rules over us. And these are the presents she sends you. Don’t worry, her commissioners will come next summer.”

Finally McDougall seemed to be finished. Every eye in Big Bear’s council circle met his, and everyone agreed. Elderly and dignified as he was, respected by many Plains Cree and Saulteaux and Assiniboine and Siksika and Blood and Peigan, the Reverend George McDougall could explain nothing because he was simply carrying a message. No one debates with a messenger; you give him a message to carry back. So Big Bear did that:

“We have heard your words, now here are ours. We want none of the Queen’s presents. 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. We want no bait. Let your chiefs come like men and talk to us.”

McDougall’s expression changed when Big Bear shifted so sharply from
Queen
to
fox-trap
; but what could he do? He reported to Morris that one senior Cree chief, Mista-wasis, had said, “My heart is full of gratitude” for the government
message and that Sweetgrass’s son had happily accepted all the presents for his father, who was away hunting. But Big Bear was not “reasonable in his demands” and “for years has been regarded as a troublesome fellow.” After quoting the chief’s exact words in response, he explained that the man was actually a Saulteaux. The Saulteaux were known as “shrewd men” and “mischief makers” and, he added, “the Cree would have driven them out of camp long ago, but were afraid of their medicine, as they are noted conjurors.”

If Big Bear had heard this report, he would have pointed out that the Cree wanted to drive him out so badly that he now had the largest Plains Cree following, larger than the senior Sweetgrass. McDougall visited twenty-two bands and estimated their population as 3,976; he did not mention that 600 of them called Big Bear chief.

Vast numbers of buffalo had to give their bodies for such a large band to live, and it was the respectful skill of Big Bear’s hunters that provided food from the scattered herds. The police had arrested or chased the whisky traders and wolfers back to Montana, which helped everyone not to waste their hunts on liquor. But the herds were so small now, and skittish, that Big Bear sometimes could only pray for mercy, especially for the little children trusting their parents for the happy life they lived so unawares. And he loved them
all, particularly his grandchildren and baby son Horsechild, when they gathered in his lodge and he told them winter stories until they laughed for happiness with him. But it was impossible to listen to a story when hunger tore at them, when their beautiful faces were pulled gaunt like aged spectres. O Great Spirit, pity us. O Buffalo Spirit, be merciful.

That winter (1875–76) they did not take the long trail north to Jackfish Lake, nor even to Fort Pitt. For the first time they wintered in the south among the willows and cottonwoods of The Forks valleys, where they hunted with great care the buffalo, deer, antelope, and other animals sheltering along the two rivers. They traded as little pemmican as possible for ammunition and tea, keeping everything for their own food and clothing, and then, as winter blizzards swept over them, they were safe in their circled lodges with plenty of wood for fires. And they heard again about George McDougall.

He and his son John were building a mission on the Bow River and, needing food, the men rode out along Nose Creek. On a snow-whipped day, they killed six buffalo. The older McDougall rode back alone to their camp, but when John and the others arrived later, his father was not there. Everyone in the area, Blackfoot and Métis and police at Fort Calgary, helped search; first they found his horse and, after
thirteen days, his body. As John told the story: “I saw the position in which he had frozen and I thought, Just like him; thoughtful of others even at his last moment. Feeling death was upon him, he had picked a spot as level as he could and laid himself out straight upon it, and crossing his hands, prepared himself to die. His face was perfectly natural.” The mourners carried him back to the mission and buried him dressed in his buffalo-hunting clothes above the frozen Bow River.

When he heard, Big Bear remembered why he respected the missionary: he lived what he was, a true, bearded White. Sadly, he had not been born a Person.

About the time McDougall died, Big Bear and a few of his band were at Pitt trading for winter ammunition when they met their first Queen’s police. Inspector Paddy Crozier had bristles sticking out wide under his beaked nose. He explained he had been sent to give presents to the Plains Cree and to tell them not to interfere with workers surveying for telegraph and railroad lines, that commissioners were coming this summer (1876) to talk treaty. Big Bear answered, as Crozier reported to Ottawa, that all the Plains People had already heard this, several times, and that “they wished to take nothing from government until the treaty was made.”

Crozier peered at him sharply, his whiskers lifting as though he could not quite understand what James Simpson translated. Then he said, The Blackfoot complain to us you Cree are squeezing them off their buffalo lands, back against the mountains and Montana.

Big Bear laughed. We have made peace with the Blackfoot, everyone just wants to live. The Blackfoot should thank you for making their rivers flow faster, dumping all that whisky into the water.

Crozier laughed too. They do thank us, and they’re getting fat, eating better.

Big Bear said, But there are still Americans with long Sharps rifles coming north. When they find buffalo, they sit all day on a hill shooting, then they rip off the hides and leave good meat to rot. Why don’t police stop them?

There’s no law against shooting buffalo and taking hides.

What is “law” for?

To protect everyone.

Then there should be a law stopping sharp-shooters. How many hides went to Montana last season?

Crozier pondered. Maybe two hundred thousand. You Cree sent plenty of them.

Every hide we trade, we eat all the meat.

But soon, Crozier said carefully, there will never be enough buffalo again. Some chiefs are growing food, out of the ground, and maybe more Cree should do that. There is very good food in the ground.

Yes, grass for animals to grow and give their meat to People. If Pakan and Mista-wasis want missionary potatoes and wheat, good, but my People, Little Pine’s People, are hunters. We don’t sit in one place waiting for food to poke out of the ground.

Crozier nodded as Simpson finished, looking over the log walls of Fort Pitt at the high banks across the North Saskatchewan folded into snow. He said, Sweetgrass, this winter, he’s thinking about potatoes too.

When Big Bear did not respond, Crozier continued, My assignment is to tell all Plains People about treaty.

I know … but
we
need to talk with commissioners.

Crozier remained stubborn; he would travel everywhere in such a hard winter. There was in him something beyond McDougall, a rigidity of orders, eyes fixed as if seeing only one spot at a great distance—where he would go.

Crozier is bull-headed Irish, Simpson told Big Bear over a last cup of tea. A trained soldier, he obeys orders even if they are stupid.

They say these are police, not soldiers.

Yes, but about orders they’re the same. They do what they’re told.

If all police are like Crozier, Big Bear thought, what will happen to them on the blazing winter prairie?

At sunrise the Cree left Pitt for The Forks. The sun burned blue in the sky, light falling like ice in the fierce cold, and they were forced to shield themselves from blindness by cutting slits in buffalo hide for eye patches. Next day the Neutral Hills emerged in the west, with The Nose a hump on the horizon beyond them, sacred places, Ribstone Creek and Battle River and Iron Creek and the high hill where once the Iron Stone had rested—land everywhere as familiar to Big Bear as the palm of the hand nearest his heart. He rode, continuing his prayer for guidance.

They crossed Eye Hill Creek and set their night camp beside the ice of Sounding Lake. When the fire burned in their travelling lodge, Horsechild crawled into his father’s lap. The chief folded him in his arms and told him the story of that place, so the little boy would remember it from before he could speak.

“When the Creator made the world, he showed People food for every season. The sweet sap inside poplar bark in spring. Turnip roots to cook in
summer. Prairie-rose hips for chewing after their sweet petals fall. And berries, from early summer to late fall, buffalo beans, strawberries, blueberries, saskatoons, choke, and pincherries—that was very good. But the Creator knew winter snow was coming, and People would starve unless they had meat.

“So, hidden deep under water in the ground, the Creator made herds of buffalo. He said to them, ‘People living on earth are hungry. If you are kind and give them your meat to eat, I promise that you will always have many strong calves.’

“And the buffalo cried, ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ and they began to run, charging upward to the light and air. It was here by this lake they came up for us, bursting out of the ground from under the water. And the sound of their coming was like the mighty thunder of Thunderbird, rolling. That is why we call this water Sounding Lake.”

And next morning there were tracks in the snow past their lodge. No one had heard a sound, not a dog had barked nor a horse whinnied, but the huge tracks with their five great claws came up from the ice of the lake and went south over the hills in the rising light. Bear had visited them, but had not stopped.

As they travelled south along Sounding Creek, Big Bear sensed he should vow to give a Thirst Dance, asking for guidance. The Queen’s commissioners were coming to talk treaty, and he had heard that so far all five treaties said exactly the same things. Was it possible to live with such agreements into a better future than these relentless cycles of disease and hunger and suffering and endless desperation about buffalo? Every spring there were fewer little calves on the prairie bunting their gaunt mothers. The great bulls wandered alone, as if longing to hide in some crevice where there were no bone piles to stumble over, no horned skulls with ridged eye-holes staring at them. Bear, can I dare to make the most difficult prayer for guidance? Will you help my People help me fulfill it?

Once before, after he was asked to become chief, the Cree People had gathered to his vow. But now, after such a hard winter, could he ask Sweetgrass and Little Pine and the other bands to join him for this communal prayer? Would the Creator grant enough buffalo for them to live together and pray and dance and sing and tell stories and give gifts so they could be truly happy? Happy as all People are, at every Thirst Dance, when at last the Thunderbird honours your fasting, thirsting days of prayer with the blessing of rain? And then a magnificent feast, food enough for everyone?
There were great trees along the rivers at The Forks, strong enough for a centre pole for the largest Thirst Dance Lodge, there were more than enough buffalo skulls for ceremony and cloths for offerings … but do I have the strength to be guided. Do I dare? Bear?

On the fourth day they saw Bull’s Forehead Hill rising white over The Forks, and they came down into the circle of home to cries of welcome and singing. Several days later a family arrived from the west and told them of McDougall’s death. Then a Young Man came from Little Pine’s band, wintering in the Hand Hills. He told them Crozier had gone crazy while giving them his message; they had to tie him down or he would walk into the night wearing only underwear, barefoot in the snow. Police Boss Macleod had ordered eight police to bring him to Fort Macleod.

Messengers. Crozier walking naked into night snow, but not freezing on the prairie like McDougall. Perhaps the Queen’s police had more power than a missionary. There were certainly many more of them, in every Company post, and even more in the far south where the Blackfoot had always burned everything White. But Red Cloud, senior chief of the Blood, had given Macleod permission to build his headquarters on an island in the Oldman River, a fort with a hundred police and horses and four huge cannons.
Big Bear had ignored missionaries all his life, but with police that might be impossible. Was that the track message Bear had given him at Sounding Lake after he talked with his first policeman: a warning for the future?

Spring came with a last chinook blowing warm as summer, but there were no herds for a Thirst Dance. That guidance had been given, and so the band moved up the twisting Red Deer River as the frogs—good for eating—sang in marshes and oxbows, and hunted nesting geese and pelicans, the swans and cranes flying north. Scouts searched the horizon from every knob and butte, in every creek bed or coulee. The hunters with Big Bear rode west until they climbed through Old Man’s Bed onto the crown of the Wintering Hills, but in half a day they saw nothing, so they continued south around Dead Horse Lake. Soon the ravines of the Bow River cut below them, its water bright as sky flowing from the glacial mountains. Nothing but bleached skeletons in three days’ hard riding. They looked at one another, then without a word rode down. They forded the river on a ridge under the water so clear that their horses had no need to swim. The horses grappled up the muddy bank, and they dismounted, deeper in Blackfoot country than any Cree should dare, but if they found buffalo near the river—well—they would then decide if they could risk the women coming across to butcher them.

Big Bear looked down. Beside his moccasin was a small bump in the river mud. He bent, probed with his fingers, and suddenly he knew what he was touching. He washed the stone in a spot of water and its white grain emerged: it bent around to two back legs, curved forward over a white shoulder hump and under a nose to grey front bumps. As wide as his left hand.
Iniskim,
the Blackfoot called this: buffalo stone.