Some years ago a well-known Senator told me that he was at a dinner party in Sir John Macdonald's house in Ottawa, when a telegram was delivered to the Premier at the table. He read it and put it under his plate. Nothing could be gained by throwing that bombshell in the midst of his guests. But in a few minutes, as the friends were saying good-night, Sir John came to the door with the Senator and said, "Mac, there's the very mischief to pay in the North-West." The wire had communicated the news of the Duck Lake fight, by which the rebellion, under that mad egoist, Louis Riel, was publicly staged in its opening act. And the Senator told me he recalled for all the years that followed the look on the Premier's face as one of pained surprise and unexpected shock. If the Senator was a good reader of faces and read that expressive countenance aright, he could doubtless see indications of pain, for Sir John was a tender-hearted man. But, if he saw surprise on the face of the Premier, it is proof positive that official pigeon-holes in the West had not divulged their secrets to Ottawa, or that his subordinates were hoping to quell the discontent of the half-breeds on the Saskatchewan without worrying the "old chieftain" unduly.

And this we say because the outbreak of rebellion was a surprise to Western residents only in the sense that the resort to arms was considered unlikely. But every one knew something of the discontent. The Mounted Police saw it coming to a head, and Superintendent Crozier, who was in command at Fort Carleton, on the North Saskatchewan, has reported in July, 1884, some eight months before the outbreak, that Riel had been brought from Montana to champion the "rights" of the half-breeds. Superintendent Gagnon, who understood their language well, reported as to Riel's presence and the discontent of the half-breeds more than once. The causes of the discontent were not far to seek. Many of the half-breeds on the South Saskatchewan were the same who had taken part in Riel's first rebellion on the Red River fifteen years before. They were not people of a settled temperament. They did not take naturally to the farm. There was enough of the Indian blood in them to make them nomadic hunters rather than settlers, and enough of the fiery volatility of French blood to make them susceptible to the appeals of aggressive agitation. And Riel, though not specially anxious to fight himself, was a past master in stirring others up to get into conflicts. And when Superintendent Crozier notified the Government that this hot-headed, vain but magnetic agitator had come amongst his old compatriots, steps should have been taken to deport him, or otherwise put him where he could do no harm.

Gagnon was quite right when he stated later that the main cause of the discontent amongst the half-breeds was the introduction by the Government of the rectangular survey of land on the prairie. Under this system settlers had to hold their farms in square blocks of 160 acres or more, and in consequence such settlers would be necessarily some distance apart. This was not to the mind of the half-breeds, who were more given to social gatherings than to agriculture, and who preferred the old survey that they knew on the Red River and the Assiniboine, where their holdings were in narrow strips fronting on the river and running two miles back. To introduce this on the prairie, the Government contended, would lead to confusion, and so it was easy for the agitator to stir up discontent amongst these inflammable people who had always been accustomed to the freedom of the plains. It was easy for the orator to say that the Government was trying to break up their old social customs, and when such a statement was followed up by saying that their patents giving them title to land were being long delayed, and that possibly they would never be granted at all, a live coal had fallen on material as combustible as the dry grass on the prairie. And once the half-breeds began to consider revolt it was not hard for them to stir up certain bad Indians with the proposal that by combining they could drive out the whites and have the country to themselves again.

In any case our main interest in this book is the story of the Mounted Police, and we repeat that they did their duty in warning the authorities a long distance ahead. When their warning was not heeded and the flame of rebellion broke out, they, as this story will show, did more than their share in putting out the fire where it had started, and in preventing it from spreading, as it might have done, over the whole country.

We have quoted Superintendent Crozier's warning. Let us notice also the testimony of another experienced officer, Superintendent Sam B. Steele. It appears that in 1884, when Steele was still in command at Calgary, Mr. Magnus Begg, Indian agent of the Blackfeet, reported that the former friendly attitude of those Indians seemed to be changing to one of sulkiness and hostility. Steele asked him about a certain half-breed who had been with Riel in Montana, and Begg, on being given the description, said he was in the camp with Chief Crowfoot. Steele sent and had this half-breed arrested, but he escaped by making a leap from the train. And when next day Colonel Irvine and Superintendent Herchmer came to Calgary to take over the command from Steele, who was under orders for duty in the mountains, he reported the facts to them with his conviction that the half-breed was one of Riel's runners trying to stir up the Indians. They asked Steele to stay over and arrest him in Crowfoot's camp, and taking two men with him, Walters and Kerr, well known for their strength and reliability, he went to the camp, and, through L'Hereux, the interpreter there, demanded the half-breed, whom he found in Crowfoot's tent. Crowfoot, with the half-breed beside him and his chief men around him, had evidently been imposed upon by sinister Riel propaganda, and seemed to be quite hostile. He sprang up and faced Steele threateningly as he entered the tent, but the giant policeman waved him back and told him it would be the worse for him if he started anything, because he had come for the half-breed and that he was going to take him, as the Police always did when they started after a man. Then Steele, suiting the action to the word, seized the half-breed by the back of the collar, whirled him round, and, dragging him out of the tent door, handed him over to the two stalwart constables, who lifted him into the buckboard and drove away. Steele remained behind for a while, and told Crowfoot that he had been misled by the half-breed, and addressing also the hostile-looking band of Indians present, the Superintendent told them that the half-breed had spoken to them with a forked tongue, and that it would be sensible for them to remain friendly with the Government and the Police. Steele told Superintendent Herchmer, when he came back to Calgary, that he was sure Riel was going to make serious trouble, and that he had runners like this half-breed in other places amongst the Indians, and the sooner the Government knew it the better. So the Police were doing their part to forewarn the authorities, but the men at Regina and Ottawa either did not get all these warnings, or else they treated them too lightly.

And, accordingly, Riel, down at Batoche on the South Saskatchewan, kept up the agitation, and in the atmosphere of the adulation of his half-breed admirers his characteristic vanity asserted itself till, refusing to acknowledge the authority of either Church or State, he looked on himself as a sort of Divinely ordained leader. Rattle-brained as he was, he possessed elements of strength and magnetism enough to get a large following in a short time, and, assuming the name of "Louis 'David' Riel, Exovede," he took the aggressive by plundering some stores, arresting the Indian agent and others, and sending a flamboyant message to Superintendent Crozier to come with his men and surrender to the rebel chief. Crozier, who had done splendid service at Wood Mountain, Cypress Hills and elsewhere, was not the kind of man to surrender, but with the hope that he might avert trouble and incidentally give the Government time to mobilize the long-delayed reinforcements, he offered personally to meet Riel and discuss the whole matter with him. Riel, however, would not venture out, and so Crozier sent Mr. Thomas McKay, a well-known Prince Albert man and native of the country, to see him at his headquarters. When McKay reached Riel's council room at Batoche he found things at white heat. Riel told him excitedly that there was to be a war of extermination, during which the "two curses," the Government and the Hudson's Bay Company, and all who sympathized with them were to be driven out of the country. "You don't know what we are after," shouted Riel to McKay; "we want blood, blood—it's blood we want." McKay had a cool head and so sparred for time, till the rebel sobered down somewhat and then McKay left and returned to Carlton, where he reported to Crozier. Next day, in answer to a request from Riel, McKay and Mitchell, a merchant of Duck Lake, with Crozier's consent, met two of Riel's men, Nolin and Maxime Lepine (a brother of Riel's adjutant in the Red River revolt), who demanded again the surrender of Fort Carlton. This, of course, was refused, and in a few days rebellion was rampant, with this man, half-knave, half-madman at its head.

The first clash came on March 26, 1885, when Crozier sent out a small detachment of Police with a few civilian volunteers from Prince Albert, under the general direction of that experienced and fearless frontiersman, Thomas McKay, above named, to bring in to Fort Carlton some Government stores from Mitchell's trading place above mentioned. This little detachment, of some twenty all told, were met when near Duck Lake by that mischievous Indian, Chief Beardy, with his warriors and Riel's fighting Lieutenant, a famous half-breed plainsman, Gabriel Dumont, this rebel force being estimated by Duck Lake residents at between 300 and 400 men, all well armed, though all did not appear then on the field. A confab took place, Beardy and Dumont being very insolent, and endeavouring evidently to get Crozier's men to begin hostilities so that the rebels might wipe them out. But McKay, though boldly standing his ground, would not be drawn, and after a somewhat stormy interview, retired to Carlton, daring the rebels to follow.

In the meantime, the Commissioner, Colonel A.G. Irvine, a careful and conscientious officer, who had succeeded MacLeod in command of the Police in 1880, wired from Regina to Ottawa and got orders to take all available men, less than 100, and proceed to Prince Albert, as that whole section of country was exposed to the utmost danger. Irvine made a record march through slush and snow, outwitted Riel's forces at South Saskatchewan by going through their zone, and arriving at Prince Albert with horses so used up by the spring roads that a day had to be taken to get them able to go further. He had received word from Carlton that there was no immediate likelihood of trouble, but he lost no time in pressing on to that point, reaching there in the afternoon of March 26, only to find that Crozier had gone out that day to Duck Lake with his handful of police and civilian volunteers and had just returned after experiencing a reverse.

At that time, and later in his formal report, Irvine expressed keen regret that Crozier, knowing the Commissioner to be within 50 miles with reinforcements, had not waited. But Crozier had been true to the Police record of not counting odds when duty seemed clear. And so, when his first small detachment, under Thomas McKay, had come back, the Superintendent doubtless felt that unless he acted at once, the rebels would say that the Police could be bluffed, and would thus be able to call to the cause of the revolt hundreds of half-breeds and Indians, who would take courage from the apparent apathy or weakness of the Government forces. Besides this, it became known later that the volunteers from Prince Albert were anxious to settle the rebels, as their homes were menaced by the uprising.

So the Duck Lake fight took place between Crozier, Inspector Howe, with Surgeon Miller and fifty-three men of the Mounted Police, aided by forty-one civilian volunteers from Prince Albert, under Captains Moore and Morton, a total of ninety-nine on the one side against Gabriel Dumont, Chief Beardy and a force of nearly 400 half-breeds and Indians on the other. The rebels first used a flag of truce, and under cover of conference partially outflanked our men on the one side, while the rest of their forces were well concealed under cover of log buildings and brush. The thing was too unequal, and our men, after fighting in the open with the utmost coolness and courage against a practically hidden enemy, gathered up their nine dead and five wounded, who needed care, and retired in good order to Carlton. The loss of the rebels, who concealed their dead, was not known, but Gabriel Dumont was wounded by a bullet which plowed along his head and felled him to the ground. A few years later Mr. Roger Goulet, a famous loyalist French half-breed land-surveyor in Winnipeg, who was on the Commission to inquire into the question of half-breed rights, said to me: "The Duck Lake fight was worth while, because Gabriel Dumont's wound, which I saw later when he took off his hat to make an affidavit, cooled his ardour to such an extent that he was timid for the rest of the campaign, or the rebellion might have lasted much longer." Goulet's theory possibly accounts for the fact that Dumont, whose judgment was for a night attack on Middleton's camp at Fish Creek, gave up the idea rather swiftly when Riel did not seem to see its advisability. When Colonel Irvine reached Carlton, as related, and found out how things stood, the immediate thing to settle was as to whether he should hold that post or not. This was not hard to decide. Carlton was simply a Hudson's Bay post without population, while Prince Albert was the largest white community in the whole region. The people there must be protected as a first duty, and it was only fair to the Prince Albert volunteers, who had left their homes and came so splendidly to the aid of the little body of Police, that the latter in turn should not leave those homes exposed to the barbarities of the rebels now intoxicated by a certain success. Accordingly, Fort Carlton was abandoned. It took fire from a hospital mattress and an over-heated stove, just as the Police were leaving, and burned to the ground. Irvine and his men, with their wounded, arrived in due course at Prince Albert, which they found full of refugees from surrounding homesteads as well as the town. Most of these refugees were in the church there, which they had surrounded with a wall of cordwood in dread of attack. The women and children were wild with apprehension of possibly falling into the hands of Beardy's tribe. And there was a band of Sioux to the north that it was feared might at any moment assert their traditional love of the warpath.

COL. T.A. WROUGHTON.
Asst.-Commissioner in command at Vancouver, B.C.
Photo. Steffens-Colmer, Vancouver.

LIEUT.-COL. AYLESWORTH BOWEN PERRY, C.M.G.
Commissioner since 1900.
Photo. Rossie, Regina.

COL. CORTLANDT STARNES.
Senr. Asst.-Commissioner, Ottawa.
Photo. Topley, Ottawa.

HEADQUARTERS STAFF, 1921.

R.N.W.M.P. WOOD CAMP. CHURCHILL RIVER.

The Duck Lake fight, with its balance in favour of the rebels, encouraged Big Bear up near Fort Pitt to rebel and do all the damage he could, starting in with the massacre of nine white men, Government agents, etc., on the reserve and imprisoning the rest, including the Hudson's Bay factor and his family, who gave themselves up to the Indians at Fort Pitt. It stirred up the powerful Cree element under Poundmaker at Battleford, where depredations were committed, and where the white people barricaded behind stockades suffered siege and the imminent danger of famine and attack for many weeks. It sent its echoes down into the south-west part of the territories where the warlike Blackfeet confederacy had its centre. At each of these points, as at Prince Albert, the few Mounted Police that were on duty became a literal tower of strength. At Battleford, Inspector Morris, with his few men, organizing also a home guard, guarded nearly 400 women and children who sought refuge inside the stockade. And Constable Storer, riding out alone from that stockade, when all the wires were cut, though pursued for 60 miles, carried the dispatch to the relieving column at Swift Current. At Fort Pitt, in the Big Bear country, Inspector Francis Dickens, son of the famous novelist, with a mere handful of men, one of whom, young Cowan, was killed by the Indians, and another, Loasby, was wounded, held that Hudson's Bay post until the factor and his family and employees gave themselves up to the Indians, when Dickens, having no farther object in staying there, dropped down the river to Battleford and took part in the fight against Poundmaker. And away in the south-west, where the whole region was charged with the electricity of revolt, the masterly hand of Superintendent Cotton, a cool, courageous and diplomatic officer, ably assisted by Inspector Antrobus and Surgeon Kennedy, was able to restrain the most dangerous of the Indian tribes in the West. Superintendent McIllree commanded at Maple Creek and Medicine Hat, and kept a constant eye by scouting parties on the Cypress Hills region, and Inspector McDonnell's services at Wood Mountain were of much value. Superintendent Deane was in charge at headquarters in Regina, and did a great deal of important work in recruiting men and using his influence for peace amongst Indians, such as Chief Pie-a-Pot and others. Northward, in the Edmonton country, where there were great numbers of Indians, amongst whom Riel and Big Bear had runners, that experienced soldier, Inspector A.H. Griesbach, "the father of the Police Force," as he was often called, accomplished tasks of first importance by holding Fort Saskatchewan, where many settlers took refuge, and by assisting with the organization of the Edmonton Home Guards, as well as patrolling the whole region round about. No one who knew the situation as it really existed at that critical hour, could ever dream of apportioning honours differently to men who were actually in action and those who stood guard over helpless settlers, or prevented by determined diplomacy the uprising of the Indians in their localities.

Some who did not know the situation—arm-chair critics at a safe distance—levelled some darts of fault-finding at Colonel Irvine at Prince Albert, and I write a paragraph or two in reply, because I know whereof I speak. I have some reasons for claiming to know Prince Albert, which was founded as a mission and named by some of my relatives in 1866. At the time of the rebellion there were two brothers and a sister, as well as many other relations there whom I saw on my way down the Saskatchewan after the rebellion was over. They knew that some people in the East had raised the question as to Irvine remaining at Prince Albert during the rebellion. But they spoke with indignation in regard to all such critics, and said if these people who were talking in that way only knew what panic would have ensued if the Police had been withdrawn, and how likely it was that the whole settlement would have been pillaged and probably wiped out, the criticism would cease. If the British way is "women and children first," then the duty of protecting them against death or worse comes before the desire to save oneself from possible criticism. The Mounted Police, in over ten years' previous service on the plains, had established an unprecedented reputation for courage under all circumstances, and wherever in the rebellion time they had opportunity in the field, they shone out conspicuously as men who had no thought of self when fighting was the duty of the hour. In proportion to the numbers engaged, more men of the Mounted Police were killed or wounded than any other military body in the field. But when savages were on the warpath, and defenceless people, principally women and children, rushed for refuge to Prince Albert, Battleford or any other point, nothing could be so un-British, not to say inhuman, as to abandon them for the more exciting life on the field. Not only on Western plains, but in India and other such portions of the Empire, has this been exemplified. This much is said from the viewpoint of the ordinary sensible and chivalrous onlooker. But more can be stated.

When the rebellion started with the fight at Duck Lake, the Government dispatched General Middleton from Ottawa to the West. The plan of campaign outlined had three objectives. General Middleton was to attack Riel at Batoche, where the rebel headquarters were; Colonel Otter was to march from Swift Current to the relief of Battleford, where Poundmaker's band was in arms; and General Strange, a veteran of many years' service, was to mobilize at Calgary whatever forces he could muster and go northward into the Big Bear country, to relieve the Edmonton district, settle with Big Bear and release the prisoners he had taken at Frog Lake and Fort Pitt. Middleton, a good soldier and a brave man personally, was in the supreme command of all the forces in the field, including the Police, and it is not too much to say that he asserted that fact very strongly all through the campaign, partly because of natural disposition and partly because he under-estimated the value of the "raw soldiers" of Canada, as he called them in a famous dispatch. Withal, while he was totally unaccustomed to the kind of warfare he was facing, he was not given to receive counsel from those who did know, and from close personal contact with the situation at the time, as well as from careful study since, I feel that General Middleton rather resented the dominant place of the Mounted Police in the mind of the West, and was more ready to make some slighting remarks about them than to take their counsel. And this I say without seeking to disparage the general quality or the personal valour of the officer in supreme command.

Hence it was that General Middleton never intimated in any way to Colonel Irvine that he or any of his men should leave Prince Albert and come to the seat of war at Batoche. On the contrary, Majors Bedson and Macdowell, who made their way to Prince Albert from Middleton's camp by way of Carrot River, told Irvine that the General wished the Police to stay where they were and look out for the scattered half-breeds. And one day, when things were quieted around Prince Albert and Irvine made a reconnaissance in force to the south as far as Scott's, some 14 miles out, he was met by one of Middleton's scouts with a message to return to Prince Albert.

That the above represents General Middleton's general attitude is further attested by the fact that when Riel's stronghold fell and Middleton was on his way by Prince Albert to close the campaign by proceeding against Chiefs Poundmaker and Big Bear, he declined Irvine's offer to go with him with his men, who knew the country and the Indians at first hand. Irvine offered to take his men, carrying their own rations, and go a day ahead of the General, or to go on the other side of the river, but was refused. Yet orders came back to Irvine a few hours later to go to Carlton, which he did, arriving there before Middleton, and sending out scouting parties in search of Big Bear's band that, as we shall see in a later page, had been scattered by Strange's column. It was not long before one of these Police scouting parties had captured Big Bear with some others and landed them in the jail at Prince Albert. And it is rather interesting to recall that it was big Tom Hourie, a Police interpreter, accompanied by two Police scouts, Armstrong and Diehl, who captured Riel and took him into Middleton's tent at Batoche. It is also interesting at this point to reproduce an overlooked extract from a letter written by the Earl of Minto, who, as Lord Melgund, was chief of General Middleton's staff, and who, therefore, wrote out of personal knowledge of the situation. After speaking of our three main columns, this fine soldier, who was wounded on duty, says:

"Besides these three columns there was another force in the field—the North-West Mounted Police detachment, under Colonel Irvine, the value of which has always seemed to me underrated. The fact of Colonel's Irvine's force being at Prince Albert afforded a safe refuge to many outlying settlers, and, if it had not been there, the task General Middleton had to solve would have been quite a different one. Hampered, as Colonel Irvine was, by the civilian population of the settlement and by a difficult country, the possibility of successful junction with Middleton must always have been doubtful, whilst the moral effect of the force at Prince Albert was certain."

I have gone ahead of the history in mentioning the capture of Big Bear, the pursuit of whom is the record of General Strange's column which, as already noted, mobilized at Calgary. In addition to the 65th Rifles of Montreal, the Winnipeg Light Infantry, with whom I served, and some irregular scouts under Major Hattin and Osborne, we had two Mounted Police detachments, one from the mountains under Inspector Sam B. Steele, and the other from Fort MacLeod under Inspector A. Bowen Perry, the present able Commissioner of the Force. Both these officers, coming at that time under the command of General Strange in the Militia, were given the Militia rank of Major. Steele enlisted a number of men, mostly ex-Mounted Policemen, as scouts, his whole corps, thus augmented, being generally called Steele's scouts. Perry, who was selected by Superintendent Cotton on account of special fitness, brought with him a nine-pounder gun, which did unique service in demoralizing and scattering Big Bear's murderous and pillaging band, to whose outrages we have already referred. These two Police detachments became the tentacles of our column and the mainspring of its ultimate success.

Of the two officers Steele was the senior in years and in length of service. He had been in the Red River Expedition, and was in the School of Gunnery at Kingston, when he enlisted in the Mounted Police at its organization and worked his way up from the ranks. Powerfully built, he had all the appearance and carriage of a frontier soldier, accustomed to unexpected situations and always ready for any action that might be necessary. Perry attracted me first by his stalwart appearance and fine horsemanship. Even in a country where riding was a fine art, Perry was a distinguished figure on a horse, and later on I discovered that he made a point of doing everything well. He was a graduate of the Royal Military College, and had served with the Royal Engineers before joining up with the Mounted Police, where his genius for thorough administration and his general popularity raised him to the highest position in the Force.

The news from the North coming to us at Calgary, indicated that the whole country north of the Red Deer River to Edmonton and beyond was full of rather surly and hostile Indians, who would rise at any moment if they thought there were any chances of success. Hence, General Strange, a thorough-going soldier greatly beloved by all of us, determined to push on to Edmonton with all speed accompanied by Steele. We of the Winnipeg Light Infantry waited a few days till Perry could reach us from MacLeod, and then we also started north under his guidance. We forded the Bow River, but when we got to the Red Deer we found it flooded by the spring freshets into what our Adjutant Constantine, who later did such splendid service with the Mounted Police, called, in warning the men, "a wide, swift-flowing and treacherous stream." Strange had crossed before the river rose, but how we were to get over was a problem. Our chances of getting on to the north looked slim. It was well that Perry, whose service with the Royal Engineers meant something, was along in command of the column. He decided to throw a rope across with the little skiff, which was the only thing in sight and then construct and cross by a swinging raft. The raft was constructed under his direction, and his own detachment of Police, with the gun and ammunition and harness put on board. Of course, he went himself, as he never asked his men to go anywhere without him. Things went fairly till near the other side, when the rope made out of the picketing lines of the horses broke by binding round the tree, from which it was being paid out, and the raft began to go down the raging current. At the risk of their lives Perry and Constable Diamond, grasping another rope, plunged into the torrent and managed to reach the shore and fasten it to a tree. But the current was too strong and this rope gave way. The boat went down a mile or so and, being caught in an eddy, was beached, and the stuff on board dragged up a steep cut bank. Then Perry commandeered lumber from a primitive saw-mill down the river, and built a ferry on which, in a day or two, we crossed. In the meanwhile, as we were in the hostile Indian country, Perry had accomplished the difficult task of crossing the 65th Regiment in the little skiff, taking a whole dark night to do it. He kept our regiment on the south side till the ferry was built. He thus had both sides guarded against any attack. Once over the river, we made a quick march 100 miles to Edmonton, where General Strange paid a high compliment publicly to Major Perry for the splendid way in which he had overcome obstacles and got our relief column through in such good time. The people of Edmonton gave us a hearty welcome, as their position in the midst of a big Indian country was very serious for a time.

Big Bear, with the prisoners, was now treking away to the north, and it was our business to overtake him. The Infantry went down the river, while the Mounted Men went by trail near the river bank, or our clumsy, open flatboats might have come under fire. Forced marching, from Fort Victoria by Frog Lake to Fort Pitt, brought us to the scene of the Big Bear's atrocities, as we saw from the Sun-dance Lodge, the mutilated body of Constable Cowan and the charred remains of the nine white people who had been massacred at Frog Lake reserve. Fort Pitt was burning, but we saved two buildings. Big Bear and his marauding band in large force had kept up their retreat and vanished, but whether it was on the north side of the river, or the south side where they would effect a junction with Poundmaker could only be ascertained by scouting parties. Accordingly, General Strange at this point detailed Major Perry and seventeen men of his detachment (keeping the rest for the nine-pounder gun) to cross the river to the south side and move towards Battleford. It was not an enviable duty, and as the men crossed the river in the darkness and started their ride through a region that was supposed to be infested with hundreds on the warpath, it looked rather like a last patrol. However, after a hard ride they made Battleford to find that Poundmaker had surrendered, Middleton having just then arrived. Perry reported to Middleton with the information that Big Bear must be on the north side, arranged for a steamer to go up with supplies, which we needed very badly, and got on the steamer to return with his men. When part of the way back he got word that we were engaged with Big Bear, and so he landed his men and sent the steamer back to Battleford for reinforcements. After one of the most severe and risky rides of the campaign, Perry and his men rejoined us to find that his gunners under Sergeant O'Connor, and the nine-pounder, had made fine gun practice, and had been mainly instrumental in demoralizing the forces of Big Bear, with whom we had been in contact for two hot days. General Strange was much pleased with the way in which Major Perry had carried out the difficult reconnaissance with a handful of men.

Meanwhile, after our fight with Big Bear and his flight from Frenchman's Butte, where he had a strong and well-fortified position, Major Steele, with his mounted detachment, had made a rush to Loon Lake, where, in a rattling encounter during which Sergeant Fury was severely wounded, he completed the defeat of Big Bear. Two days or so afterwards our scouts crossed Gold Lake in birch canoes and secured the release of the remaining prisoners of Big Bear, the others having come in to our lines after the fight at Frenchman's Butte, where Constable Donald McRae, still happily surviving, was wounded, but refused to leave the field till he had exhausted his ammunition.

On the disbanding of the Alberta Field Force General Strange, who had served ever since the Mutiny, warmly commended the Infantry, and expressed the opinion that he had never commanded better soldiers than were in the Mounted Police detachments, ready for all kinds of duty.

Preceding the surrender of Poundmaker, already mentioned, at Battleford, the fight at Cut Knife Hill had occurred. Colonel Otter had made a swift march from Swift Current to Battleford and relieved the beleaguered garrison and civilians there. With Otter came Superintendents W.M. Herchmer and Neale with a few Mounted Police. And when Otter decided to go out and attack Poundmaker these, with the few who had been at Battleford, and those who had come from Fort Pitt under Inspector Dickens, made up seventy-five Police, who went on that errand with Otter, and some 200 of his infantry and artillery. Just why Otter went out has never been very clear, except that he possibly wished to punish the band of Indians and prevent a possible junction of Poundmaker and Big Bear. Anyway, the Police were under his command, and they went in obedience to orders, as was their fashion. And the Police, being the advance guard to Cutknife, and both the advance and rear guard on the return, as well as in the hottest part of the fight for seven hours, where they behaved with great gallantry, lost heavily in killed and wounded in proportion to their numbers. It is not any reflection on the gallantry of the other corps, who were totally unused to Indian warfare, to say that it was the masterly tactics of the Police which extricated the column from the ravine after Colonel Otter saw that it was not advisable to continue the conflict against the large force of Indians who had every advantage in position. A few days after this Poundmaker, who was a very splendid-looking Indian, and who had given the order to cease fire when Otter was retiring, came in and surrendered to General Middleton, and the rebellion was practically over, though it was still a few days before Big Bear was captured, as already related.

Perhaps there is no finer summing up of the services of the Mounted Police during the rebellion than that given by Dr. A. Jukes, Senior Surgeon of the Force, in his report at the end of that year. He says, "While I must leave to those whose duty as combatant officers it more especially becomes to record with sorrow, not unmingled with pride, the names and services of the gallant men who have fallen unflinchingly in the path of duty, I cannot withhold my humble tribute to the courage and fortitude of the mere handful of Mounted Police who, fewer in numbers than any battalion engaged in active operations, and generally far over-matched by enemies wherever it was their privilege to meet them, have left beneath the bosom of the prairie of their dead, 'killed in action,' a number greater than that of any battalion in the field, save one whose record, at least, they have equalled."

And one cannot close this chapter without emphasizing what has often been overlooked by those who do not know Western affairs at first hand. Looking back now over the years, one is not surprised to have to see that the collapse of the rebellion, instead of leaving the Mounted Police Force carefree, actually added to their burdens and ushered them into a period of pronounced and continuous strain. The Militia, which was made up of several thousands of men—infantry, artillery, cavalry—all were withdrawn and scattered to their homes in various parts of Canada. The Mounted Police stayed at their posts or moved from place to place, as required in a readjustment period. The defeated rebels and many of the Indians were in a sullen mood, the year had been wasted from the standpoint of producing anything for food, the Indians were off their reservations in some cases, in others the reservations had been laid waste, and the buildings that had been erected for their comfort had been burned or wrecked by themselves when the spirit of destruction arose as they went on the warpath. Yet the officers and men of this remarkable corps, without any cessation or furlough, took up the ravelled skein of human life around them, and with great patience, skill and tact, soon had things running smoothly again. It was a wonderful piece of reconstructive statesman-like work and, as it proceeded, both the half-breeds and Indians who had been disaffected began to regret deeply the action they had been misled by agitators into taking contrary to the advice of the men in the scarlet tunic, who had always been their friends, and who always had stood for the square deal for every one. It was not only not the fault of the Mounted Police, but largely through ignoring their long-repeated warnings to the Government that the rebellion had taken place. While it lasted these Police did their duty like men at great cost without ever saying, "We told you so." And when it was over they so comported themselves in the midst of a distracted population that it could never occur again.