Big Bear (9 page)

Chief Sweetgrass sends you greetings, he said. He says the governor will not travel before he talks to you in the morning.

Thank your chief, Big Bear said. We will come over to meet him at sunrise.

Next morning the treaty chiefs, in their red jackets with silver medals hanging from their necks, walked with Big Bear in his black buffalo robe into the square at Fort Pitt, where, throughout his life, his band had come for ceremonial welcomes and trade. But this ceremony went far beyond any regular summer barter with the Company; Simpson watched from aside, and a small man in a dark blue uniform and the much larger Chief Factor William Christie sat in chairs surrounded by the Queen’s scarlet
police snorting air out of their curled instruments. The log buildings rattled echoes.

When they were finished, everyone except Sweetgrass seated themselves on the ground facing the governor, and, as Commission Secretary A.G. Jackes recorded: “Sweet Grass [to Lieutenant-Governor Morris]: ‘We are all glad to see you here, and we have come to say good-bye.…’”

Morris replied with a similar greeting to the treaty chiefs and “The Bear.” The other two translators had already left and so John McKay—whose Plains Cree words often got tangled with Woods Cree—was left to fumble through Morris’s reply. Then Sweetgrass nodded to Big Bear and sat down.

Silence lengthened, and the governor stirred impatiently. Big Bear looked at him. His face was grey; he seemed ill, and very tired, as if the softest Company bed had not helped him sleep. Morris’s blue eyes stared at him unblinkingly, and Big Bear slid his glance aside, beyond the wooden roofs to the unchanging river hills. Jackes continues:

“Big Bear: ‘I find it difficult to speak, because some of the bands are not represented. I have come off to speak for the different bands [Plains Cree and Assiniboine] that are out on the plains.
It is no small matter we were to consult about. I expected the chiefs here would have waited until I arrived.… The people who have not come stand as a barrier before what I would have had to say; my mode of living is hard.’

 

“Sweet Grass: ‘My friend … I feel as if I saw life when I see the representative of the Queen; let nothing be a barrier between you and him.… Think of our children and those who come after, there is life and succor for them; say yes, and take his hand.’

 

“ [Pakan]: ‘We have all taken it, and we think it is for our good.’

 

“Big Bear: ‘Stop, stop, my friends. I have never seen the Governor before; I have seen Mr. Christie many times.… I said … when I see [the governor] I will make a request that he save me from what I most dread, that is: the rope to be about my neck—hanging, it is not given us by the Great Spirit that the red man or white man should shed each other’s blood.’”

No doubt the words Jackes recorded (and Morris also) were what McKay translated; the question is, are they
exactly what Big Bear said? For more than a century the Cree oral tradition has cast doubt on their accuracy, and since 1966, historians have questioned their meaning as well. As Dorothy Thunder, sessional lecturer in Cree at the University of Alberta, corroborated in 2008: “Translations into English have always been very complicated as one loses the in-depth/deeper meaning while translating.” She then explained that the Cree expression
esakâpekinit
means “I am being led by him/her using a string/rope,” but the somewhat similarly pronounced
ehakotiht
means “s/he is being hung by the neck.” Did McKay mistake this crucial sound difference or simply not know the expression and added the word “hanging” as an explanation? It would seem that Big Bear’s powerful image—after all, he was an orator and a horseman—of fearing that the treaty would control his life, make him lose his freedom just like a horse can be forcibly led about by a rope around its neck, was mistranslated into an elaboration on the White practice of hanging criminals. Beyond that, since the Cree considered the soul of a person to reside in the nape of the neck, the metaphor of a rope around the neck was even more meaningful to them: it implied destruction of the soul.

While Big Bear spoke to his fellow chiefs, McKay had been translating for Morris. But now, before any other chief
could respond, the governor began a harangue. To quote Jackes:

“Governor: ‘It is given us by the Great Spirit, man should not shed his brother’s blood, and it was also spoken to us that he who shed his brother’s blood, should have his own spilt. No good Indian has the rope about his neck. If a white man killed an Indian, not in self defense, the rope would be put around his neck.… The good Indian need never be afraid; their lives will be safer … the redcoats, they were here to protect.…’”

Big Bear listened to McKay’s translation, but could not comprehend why Morris was responding so strangely. He had created a picture for the chiefs of his dread of the treaty controlling him like a roped horse, of it killing him by choking his very soul—but Morris interrupted to lecture them on the White punishment for murder!

So Big Bear tried to explain himself again, to the governor as well as the chiefs:

“Big Bear: ‘What we want is that we should hear what will make our hearts glad, and all good peoples’ hearts glad. There were plenty things
left undone, and it does not look well to leave them so.’

 

“Governor: ‘I do not know what has been left undone!’

 

“Big Bear said he would like to see his people before he acted: ‘I have told you what I wish, that there be no [rope around my neck].’

 

“Governor: ‘Why are you so anxious about bad men? The Queen’s law punishes murder with death, and your request cannot be granted.’”

And Big Bear realized that, somehow, between what he had said and what the governor understood, something profound had shifted. Perhaps it was McKay struggling with the endless cycle of translation, a struggle Big Bear understood very well from circling among Cree and Saulteaux or Assiniboine or Blackfoot. Once you translated a deep word aloud, it could not be taken back. That word fixed itself in memory, even after you spoke a hundred more to try to explain it. He glanced at Simpson leaning against a house wall. His friend shook his head sadly: nothing to be done about the governor’s stubborn thinking.

Neither of them could know that Big Bear’s expressions would be unambiguously recorded as “hanged” in Morris’s reports and thereby in the government’s eyes brand Big Bear as a cowardly man who was fearful that Indians—including himself—would probably commit murders and consequently be condemned to execution under the Queen’s law. Clearly a “troublesome, very bad” Indian.

So Big Bear abruptly stopped speaking about treaty control and loss of freedom by turning to another problem.

“Big Bear: ‘Then these chiefs will help us protect the buffalo, that there may be enough for us all. I have heard what has been said, and I am glad we are to be helped. Why do these men not speak?’

 

“ [Cut Arm]: ‘We do not speak, because Sweet Grass has spoken for us all. What he says, we all say.’”

The governor rose, and the chiefs on the ground before him knew the meeting was over. Stumbling, McKay gave them Morris’s last, immovable, words.

“Governor: ‘I want The Bear to tell … the other chiefs [on the plains] what has been done, and that it is for them, as if they were here. Next year they and their people can join the treaty and they will lose
nothing.… The North-West Council is considering the framing of a law to protect the buffaloes, and, when they make it, they will expect the Indians to obey it. The Government will not interfere with the Indian’s daily life, they will not bind him.…’”

(Ahhhhh, Big Bear thought, he did understand one thing about rope … but how do prairie hunters have a daily life without buffalo?)

“‘They will help him to make a living on reserves by giving him the means of growing from the soil, his food. The only occasion when help would be given, would be if Providence should send a great famine or pestilence upon the whole Indian people included in the treaty. We only looked at something unforeseen and not at hard winters or the hardship of single bands.…

 

“‘And now, I am going away. The country is large, another governor will be sent in my place. He will live among you. I trust you will receive him as you have done me, and give him your confidence.… Indians of the plains … I never expect to see you again, face to face When I go back to my home
beyond the great lakes, I will often think of you and rejoice to hear of your prosperity. I ask God to bless you, and your children. Farewell.’

 

“The Indians responded with loud ejaculations of satisfaction … each shook hands with the Governor … elevating his hand as they grasped it, to heaven, and invoking the blessings of the Great Spirit.

 

“The Bear remained sitting until all had said goodbye to the Governor, and then he rose and taking his hand, said, ‘I am glad to meet you. I am alone; but if I had known the time, I would have been here with all my People. I am not an undutiful child, I do not throw back your hand, but as my People are not here, I do not sign. I will tell them what I have heard, and next year I will come.’”

Morris said, tightening his hand, “Yes, come next year with all your people and accept it.”

That is not what I said, Big Bear thought. But he knew that for this year words were finished; staring Morris was already in the canoe crossing the river to his carts, already enduring eight hundred miles of prairie horizon that would finally lead him,
exhausted, to Red River. Carrying the English Treaty Six with all its X marks to Government. Would the Cree ever see, in their language, everything that had been said here?

He greeted Simpson but could not pause for talk: Sweetgrass and Pakan were waiting with Lone Man, the many Cree lodges set against the valley hills and Young Men riding the skyline. Momentarily he felt that all could still be right in the Creator’s world.

Then Sweetgrass spoke beside him, walking, his deep and gentle voice, You remember the letter Christie wrote for us, in Edmonton—now at last they came. I see nothing to fear. Some of us will clear land and learn how to grow food, and we can all, hand in hand, protect the buffalo.

The must of red cloth coats drifted in the autumn air, but Big Bear was thinking land. He asked, How will we keep the land?

Sweetgrass avoided answering directly; he said, Mistawasis and Ahtah-kakoop already chose theirs, north of the river at Carlton, and One Arrow at Duck Lake.

Pakan added, Red Pheasant wants his place in the Eagle Hills.

All of them far apart, little pieces?

Wherever we want it. You could go to Jackfish Lake, one square mile for every five People.

How much is that, “one square mile”?

Simpson will know.

He would. But it sounded very small. How would you feed hundreds of People on land you could probably walk around in three days? Maybe enough territory for two cow moose and four yearlings, maybe a bull now and then, and once they were killed … to live year after year, you could not choose one bit of hunting land, and gardens only grew well on certain soil. Abruptly he realized how White he was thinking, and his council voice burst out deep and angry:

One square mile! We belong everywhere here! Big Bear’s arms waved to the hills, river, sky. Wherever we lean our lodge-poles together and build a fire, there is our home!

No one said a word; they walked as if their feet together in the grass felt the same Earth memory.

Big Bear said quietly, Three years ago the Americans set aside, for the Blackfoot, the Judith River basin and all land north of the Missouri to the border, from the mountains to east of Poplar River, more than fifteen riding days long. And it’s full of buffalo, huge herds.

Sweetgrass nodded. But I also heard White soldiers won’t let the Sioux hunt there; they chase and kill them.

If they can find them.

Pakan said, Those Long Knives will never leave the Sioux alone, now that they killed Yellowhair Custer.

Fighting Whites with guns is stupid, Sweetgrass said. Whites have endless soldiers, they never stop shooting, and there are only a limited number of People. That’s why we had to make treaty.

Pakan spoke, in his careful way: I told the governor I wanted a big reserve, big enough for all the Plains Cree, from Whitemud River to Dog Rump Creek along the North Saskatchewan River, everything north to the Beaver River.

That might almost be enough land, Big Bear said. But the buffalo are all south of the South Saskatchewan.

Pakan asked, How can Cree live with buffalo when they’re all in Blackfoot country?

The Crow hunt mostly at peace in that Blackfoot Missouri country. Maybe we have to decide, do we live with Blackfoot, or do we try to live like Whites.

Maybe, Lone Man offered, all the Plains Cree should take land together, in the south there with the buffalo.

The Cypress Hills? Pakan asked. I’ve never hunted that far south.

They were near the Sweetgrass lodges; children ran to greet them, and the venerable old chief looked up from his hands and laughed to see them come. While they walked,
talking, he had been turning the beautiful rifle Morris had given him for signing the treaty over and over in his hands.

Sweetgrass said, You heard them say it, the Grandmother has big breasts. She’ll feed us if starvation comes.

To this day the Cree oral tradition repeats that Fort Pitt breast story. Historian Neal McLeod quotes five different informants who elaborate on this metaphor concerning the iconic mother “who would provide for the Indians as the earth once had.” Isabel Smallboy was alive when the treaty was signed and said it most directly: “The Queen’s tits are very big and you will never eat them all, that’s how rich they are.”

Whether or not Queen Victoria ever heard the story is not known.