The Rising Of The Red Man Part 1

The Rising of the Red Man.

by John Mackie.

PROLOGUE

The 16th of March, 1885, was a charming day, and Louis David Riel, fanatic and rebellion-maker, was addressing a great general meeting of the half-breeds and Indians near Batoche on the Saskatchewan river in British North America. There were representatives from nearly every tribe; Poundmaker and his Stonies, who were always spoiling for trouble, being particularly well represented. Round the arch malcontent were a score of other harpies almost as wicked if less dangerous than himself. Among them were Gabriel Dumont, Jackson, Maxime, Garnot and Lepine. Riel's emissaries had been at work for months, and as the time was now ripe for a rising he had called them together to decide upon some definite course of action.

The weather was comparatively mild, and the Indians sat around on the snow that before many days was to disappear before the sudden spring thaw. Their red, white, and grey blankets against the dull-hued tepees [Footnote: Wigwams.]

and the white wintry landscape, gave colour and relief to the scene. Two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun shone brightly down as he always does in these lat.i.tudes.

Riel knew exactly how long it would continue to shine, for had not the almanac told him and all the world--with the exception of the ignorant half-breeds and Indians whom he was addressing--that there was to be an eclipse that day. The arch rebel knew how strongly dramatic effect appealed to his audience, so he was prepared to indulge them to the full in this respect, and turn the matter to account. Being an educated man there was a good deal of method in his madness.

The red-bearded, self-const.i.tuted prophet of the _metis_ [Footnote: Half-breeds.] stood on a Red River cart and spun out his pleasant prognostications concerning that happy coming era in which unlimited food, tobacco and fire-water would make merry the hearts of all from the Missouri in the south, to the Kissaskatchewan in the north, if only they would do as he told them. As for Pere Andre and his fulminations against him, what did they want with the Church of Rome!--he, Louis David Riel, was going to start a church of his own! Yes, St. Peter had appeared to him in a vision, and told him that the Popes had been on the wrong tack long enough, and that he--Riel--was to be the new head of all things spiritual and temporal. He promised them a good all-round time when this came about, as it certainly would before long.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and looked anxiously at the sun. What if, after all, the compilers of the almanac, or he himself, had made a mistake, and he had called this his most vital meeting on the wrong day? The bare idea was too terrible. But, no, his keen eyes detected a dark line on the outer edge of the great orb, and he knew that the modern astrologers had not erred. His grand opportunity had come, and he must seize it. He stretched out his hands and dramatically asked--

"But O, my people, tell me, how can I make manifest to you that these things shall be as I say? Shall I beg of the Manitou, the Great Spirit, to give to you a sign that He approves of the words his servant speaketh, and that these things shall come to pa.s.s?"

From the great crowd of half-breeds and Indians there went up a hoa.r.s.e, guttural cry for confirmation.

Yes, if the Manitou would give a sign then no one in the land would doubt, and those who were feeble of heart would take courage.

Riel bowed his head, lifted off his beaver-skin cap, rolled his eyes about, and by his melodramatic movements claimed the attention of all. He, however, found, time to shoot a quick glance at the sun. Those almanac people were wonderfully accurate, but he must hurry up, for in another minute the eclipse would begin. In a loud voice he cried--

"You have asked for a sign, and it shall be given unto you; but woe unto those to whom a sign is given and who shall pay no heed to the same. Their days shall be cut short in the land, and their bodies shall burn for ever in the pit of everlasting fire. The Great Spirit will darken the face of the sun for a token, and a shadow, that of the finger of the Manitou Himself, shall sweep the land."

The knavish fanatic closed his eyes and raised his face heavenwards. There was a rapturous look on it, and his lips moved. He was calling upon the Almighty to give them the sign which he obligingly indicated. The new head of the church was already distinguishing himself. As for the half-breeds and Indians, they sat around with incredulity and awe alternately showing upon their faces.

It was something new in their experiences for the Manitou to interest himself personally in their affairs. A great silence fell upon them; the prophet mumbled inarticulately and proceeded with his hanky-panky.

Then a great murmur and chorus of "Ough! Ough's!" and "me-was-sins!" [Footnote: Meaning good or approval.]

arose from the Indians, while many of the half-breeds crossed themselves. Incredulity changed to belief and fear, and the simple ones raised their voices in wondering accents to testify to the potency of the "big medicine"

that was being wrought before their eyes. The hand of the Manitou was slowly but surely pa.s.sing over the face of the sun and darkening it. The shadow of that same hand was already creeping up from the east. The rapt prophet never once opened his eyes, but he knew from the great hoa.r.s.e roar of voices around him that the almanac had not erred. And then the clamour subsided, as the face of the sun was darkened, and the ominous shadow fell like a chill over them ere pa.s.sing westward. The Indians shivered in their blankets and were thrilled by this gratuitous and wonderful proof of their new leader's intimacy with the Great Spirit. But what if the Great Spirit should take it into His head to darken the face of the light-giver for ever! It was a most alarming prospect truly. Louis David Riel opened his eyes, glanced at the sun, and said--

"The Manitou is pleased to remove His hand and to give us light again."

Then, as it seemed more quickly than it had been darkened, the blackness was removed from the sun's face, and the shadow pa.s.sed.

The murmur and the shout that went up from the wondering throng must have been as music in the ears of the arrant fraud. He looked down upon the deluded ones with triumph and a new sense of power.

"The Great Spirit has spoken!" he said with commendable dramatic brevity.

"Big is the Medicine of Riel!" cried the people. "We are ready to do his bidding when the time comes."

"The time has come," said Riel.

Never perhaps in the history of impostors from Mahomet to the Mahdi had an almanac proved so useful.

CHAPTER I

IN THE GREAT LONE LAND

It was the finest old log house on the banks of the mighty Saskatchewan river, and the kitchen with its old-fashioned furniture and ample s.p.a.ce was the best room in it. On the long winter nights when the ice cracked on the river, when the stars twinkled coldly in the blue, and Nature slept under the snows, it was the general meeting-place of the Douglas household.

Henry Douglas, widower and rancher, was perhaps, one of the best-to-do men between Battleford and Prince Albert.

The number of his cattle and horses ran into four figures, and no one who knew him begrudged his success. He was an upright, cheery man, who only aired his opinions round his own fireside, and these were always charitable. But to-night he did not speak much; he was gazing thoughtfully into the flames that sprang in gusty jets from the logs, dancing fantastically and making strange noises. At length he lifted his head and looked at that great good-natured French Canadian giant, Jacques St Arnaud, who sat opposite him, and said--

"I tell you, Jacques, I don't like it. There's trouble brewing oh the Saskatchewan, and if the half-breeds get the Indians to rise, there'll be--" he glanced sideways at his daughter, and hesitated--"well, considerable unpleasantness."

"That's so," said Jacques, also looking at the fair girl with the strangely dark eyes. "It is all so queer. You warned the Government two, three months ago, did you not, that there was likely to be trouble, but still they did not heed? Is not that so?"

"I did, but I've heard no more about it. And now the Police are beginning to get uneasy. They're a mighty fine body of men, but if the half-breeds and Indians get on the war-path, they'll swamp the lot, and--"

"Shoo!" interrupted the giant, again looking at the girl, but this time with unmistakable alarm on his face. "Them Injuns ain't going to eat us. You've been a good friend to them and to the metis. So!"

Jacques St. Arnaud had been in the rancher's service since before the latter's child had been born down in Ontario, some eighteen years ago, and followed him into the great North-West to help conquer the wilderness and establish his new home. He had a big heart in a large body, and his great ambition was to be considered a rather terrible and knowing fellow, while, as a matter of fact, he was the most inoffensive of mortals, and as simple in some ways as a child.

"Bah!" he continued after a pause, "the metis are ungrateful dogs, and the Indians, they are mad also. I would like to take them one by one and wring their necks--so!"

The rancher tried to conceal the concern he felt. His fifty odd years sat lightly upon him, although his hair was grey. His daughter had only been back from Ontario for two years, but in that time she had bulked so largely in his life that he wondered now how he could ever have got along without her. She reminded him of that helpmate and wife who had gone hence a few years after her daughter was born, and whose name was now a sacred memory. He had sent the girl down East to those whom he knew would look after her properly, and there, amid congenial surroundings, she grew and quickened into a new life. But the spell of the vast, broad prairie lands was upon her, and the love for her father was stronger still, so she went, back to both, and there her mind broadened, and her spirit grew in harmony with the lessons that an unconventional life was for ever working out for itself in those great, unfettered s.p.a.ces where Nature was in the rough and the world was still young. She grew and blossomed into a beautiful womanhood, as blossoms the vigorous wild-flower of the prairies. When she smiled there was the light and the glamour of the morning star in her dark hazel eyes, and when her soul communed with itself, it was as if one gazed into the shadow of the stream. There was a gleam of gold in her hair that was in keeping with the freshness of her nature, and the hue of perfect health was upon her cheeks. Her eighteen years had brought with them all the promise of the May. That she had inherited the adventure-loving spirit of the old pioneers, as well as the keen appreciation of the humorous side of things, was obvious from the amount of entertainment she seemed to find in the company of Old Rory. He was an old-timer of Irish descent, who had been everywhere from the Red River in the east to the Fraser in the west, and from Pah-ogh-kee Lake in the south to the Great Slave Lake in the north. He had been _voyageur_, trapper, cowboy, farm-hand in the Great North-West for years, and nothing came amiss to him. Now he was the hired servant of her father, doing what was required of him, and that well.

He was spare and wrinkled as an old Indian, and there was hardly an unscarred inch in his body, having been charged by buffaloes, clawed by bears and otherwise resented by wild animals.

"Rory," said the girl after a pause, and the softness of her voice was something to conjure with, "what do you think? Are the half-breeds and Indians going to interfere with us if they do rise?"

"Thar be good Injuns and bad Injuns," said Rory doggedly,"

but more bad nor good. The Injun's a queer animile when he's on the war-path; he's like Pepin Quesnelle's tame b'ar at Medicine Hat that one day chawed up Pepin, who had been like a father to 'im, 'cos he wouldn't go stares wid a dose of castor-oil he was a-swallerin' for the good of his health. You see, the b'ar an' Pepin used allus to go whacks like."

The girl laughed, but still she was uneasy in her mind.

She mechanically watched the tidy half-breed woman and the elderly Scotchwoman who had been her mother's servant in the old Ontario days, as the two silently went on, at the far end of the long room, with the folding and putting away of linen. Her eyes wandered with an unwonted wistfulness over the picturesque brown slabs of pine that const.i.tuted the walls, the heavy, rudely-dressed tie-beams of the roof over which were stacked various trim bundles of dried herbs, roots and furs, and from which hung substantial hams of bacon and bear's meat. As she looked over the heads of the little group on the broad benches round the fire, she saw the firelight and lamplight glint cheerfully on the old-fashioned muskets and flintlock pistols that decorated the walls--relics of the old romantic days when the two companies of French and English adventurers traded into Hudson's Bay.

She had an idea. She would ask the sergeant of Mounted Police in charge of the detachment of four men, whose little post was within half-a-mile of the homestead, what he thought of the situation, and he would have to tell her. Sergeant Pasmore was one of those men of few words who somehow seemed to know everything. A man of rare courage she knew him to be, for had he not gained his promotion by capturing the dangerous renegade Indian, Thunder-child, single-handed? She knew that Thunderchild had lately broken prison, and was somewhere in the neighbourhood waiting to have his revenge upon the sergeant. Sergeant Pasmore was a man both feared and respected by all with whom he came in contact. He was the embodiment of the law; he carried it, in fact, on the horn of his saddle in the shape of his Winchester rifle; a man who was supposed to be utterly devoid of sentiment, but who had been known to perform more than one kindly action. Her father liked him, and many a time he had spent a long evening by the rancher's great fireside.

As she thought of these things, she was suddenly startled by three firm knocks at the door. Jacques rose from his seat, and opening it a few inches, looked out into the clear moonlight. He paused a moment, then asked--

"Who are you, and what you want?"

"How!" [Footnote: Form of salutation in common use among the Indians and half-breeds.] responded a strange-voice.

"Aha! Child-of-Light!" exclaimed Jacques.

And into the room strode a splendid specimen of a red man in all the glory of war paint and feathers.

CHAPTER II