Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 21

Whisky, Horses and Death:
The Cypress Hills Massacre and its Sequel

by Philip Goldring

Prologue

Late in the spring of 1873 the tranquility of the Cypress Hills was broken by one of the most extraordinary events in the early history of Canada's Northwest Territories. This was the Cypress Hills massacre, the killing of many Assiniboine by a small party of frontiersmen from Montana when a drunken fight followed the disappearance of a white man's horse. The Indian encampment, 40 lodges or more, was totally destroyed and the survivors scattered over the hills, leaving perhaps a score of dead in the fields and bushes. The whites paused long enough only to bury their sole casualty, a hapless victim of his own bravado; then they, too, left the valley.

The massacre story is properly part of the history of the United States frontier because the Cypress Hills in 1873 were on the fringe of American trade and settlement. There was no significant contact with Canada except through some Métis winterers, a thousand or more nomadic hide-hunters and part-time traders. Yet the sequel to the massacre story is an integral part of Canadian history. The massacre was a direct result of contact between the Plains Indians and the commercial venturers who pressed from the United States into the Northwest Territories, newly purchased and not yet occupied by Canada. The affair was unique: American incursions into Canada's Northwest were a relatively novel development, and the Dominion government was already taking steps to curtail and control them. But for a short span of years a century ago, laws made far away were unenforceable. The plains were a scene of anarchy, and violence was perpetrated by men who had no stake in preserving the general balance which had hitherto prevailed. [1] The pursuit of these men by Dominion officials showed the Indians that they could expect protection at least from individual crimes by whites, even if a broader question, the full cultural impact of white settlement, remained to be resolved.