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

The Tragedy

Morning broke on the little cluster of tents and forts on Battle Creek, the beginning of a clear Sunday, 1 June. With daylight came the 12 companions of Hardwick who settled down to cook a rough breakfast on campfires a stone's throw from Fort Farwell. The men at Soloman's noted the unusual activity and sent George Bell over to invite the new arrivals to the fort for a visit. Van Hale and a few others waded across the creek with Bell and met the rest of Soloman's party, who told "horrible tales of how the Indians had abused them, had shot through their windows, and were repeatedly threatening to kill them all." [1] Relations between Soloman and the Indians were very bad just then for the latter believed the traders had cheated them. An intoxicated Indian had fired at the fort a few days previously and Soloman had forbidden the natives to enter his post. [2] He seemed determined, however, to stay at his fort until his supplies were exhausted before winding up his business. His visitors did not stay long on Sunday morning; after Hughes and Harper bought some liquor, the newcomers went back to their camp beside Farwell's [3] and settled down to enjoy their purchase.

During the morning, different activities occupied the men around Farwell's. The members of the Benton party, having no business that day, were undoubtedly drinking. Lebombard was counting robes and passing them on to the Métis who packed them into carts. The measured pace of this activity was ruptured about noon when George Hammond came roaring out of the tort, complaining that his horse had been stolen. This horse had already had a chequered career: it was one of three stolen by the Stonies in April and had been returned to Hammond only the day before. Hammond had rewarded the Indian who brought it in with two gallons of whisky, a blanket and some tobacco. [4] Now it appeared to Hammond that the Indian had so liked the exchange he wanted to repeat it. In truth, the horse had merely strolled through an open gate and was grazing peacefully with some others in brush a few hundred yards from the fort.

Hammond may well have been drunk; it was most unlikely that Indians had slipped unnoticed into a fort surrounded by armed men and then escaped, stealing three horses. Nonetheless, he stormed around, cursing vociferously in French and English and inciting the Benton men, "They have stolen my horse again; let us go over and take theirs in return." [5] The others crowded around, particularly sensitive just then about the subject of stolen horses, and most of them agreed that the Indians should be taught a lesson. Farwell heard the men threatening to seize the Indians' horses or even to "clean out" the camp. He thought this talk was just bravado, but he hastened to smooth Hammond's ruffled feathers. "These Indians brought the horse back and gave it to you," he pointed out, "and if they had wanted it they would have kept it." [6] Hammond remained unconvinced and returned to the fort for his gun. Then, with all but three of the Benton men striding along behind him, he moved off toward the Indian camp. Just as this party gained the east bank of the creek, Lebombard saw Hammond's horse being led back into the fort. He called out to Hammond in French, but the latter just looked back quickly and then ignored his call and pressed on toward the camp. By this time Farwell was already among the Assiniboines, where he had rushed in advance of the hostile party, determined to act as peacemaker. [7]

The Indian camp was in even greater turmoil than Farwell's post. Inihan Kinyen had visited one of the traders in the morning and had been warned that his people could expect trouble from the new arrivals from Benton. He instructed his band to break camp. but a rash man named Wincanahe mocked the chief, belittled his fears and convinced the band to stay where they were. As if to drive away fear, the Indians then turned to the whisky jugs and as one of them (a boy of 12 at the time) recalled years afterward, "Whiskey flowed like water in the camps and by mid-day the tribesmen were all hopelessly drunk." The whites on both sides of the creek could see the Indians dancing about the camp, giving out excited shouts and cries. Then disorder turned to panic when two Métis witnessed the belligerent preparations at the camp of the Benton party and rushed to the Indians to give the alarm. They warned the Indians they might not live till sundown and urged them to lie close to the ground. Immediately the camp was full of frenzied activity as women picked up their children and fled to the surrounding bushes and men, faking only their weapons, followed close behind. [8] Even the dogs sensed the panic and fled in all directions.

It was into this chaos that Hammond strode, took two horses from behind the camp and attempted to lead them back toward the creek. He was stopped by an Indian named Bighead, who seized the horses. Hammond then turned and joined the main party of whites, now standing impatiently in the coulee between the camp and Fort Soloman. The whites were watching with irritation as Farwell, surrounded by Indians, was trying to make himself understood. [9] He was apparently trying to work out a deal with one of the lesser chiefs to hold two of the Indians' horses as a token of their good intentions until Hammond's horse should be found. The group in the coulee, which included most of the Benton party and some of Farwell's friends, grew impatient with such methods and looked apprehensively at the threatening gestures made by some of the natives. One Assiniboine aimed a gun at Farwell, but a woman knocked it away and hurried the man into a lodge. Farwell, meanwhile, returned to the party in the coulee, told them he had worked out an agreement with the chief and countered their scepticism by offering to get Lebombard to confirm his report. Hammond, Hardwick and the other men in the coulee were hardly inclined to wait. The Indians were still milling about in apprehension and confusion, and some of the bolder or drunker men among them were challenging the whites to a fight. The flight of the women and children was quickly interpreted by the whites as a sign that the Indians anticipated a battle. Farwell claimed that Hammond fired first; other witnesses were equally sure that both parties fired preliminary challenge shots into the air. In any event, the Benton party and the handful of men from Fort Farwell took advantage of the shelter of the coulee to fire repeated murderous volleys through the camp. [10]

The foregoing is a reasonable reconstruction of the start of the massacre, based on statements of witnesses for both sides in the hearings and trials which followed the slaughter. In these legal proceedings the prosecution always alleged premeditation on the part of the whites, but never proved it. Even Farwell, the major witness for the prosecution, always maintained that he felt firing would have been avoided if the Indians had possessed Hammond's horse and had willingly given it up. [11] It is also fully possible that the defendants told the truth when they alleged they were afraid for their lives when they opened fire. Nonetheless, responsibility for the affair must rest with the white party, as an American jurist. Commissioner W.E. Cullen, pointed out after he discharged five of the Benton party at an extradition hearing two years later:

The preponderance of testimony is also to the effect that the Indians commenced the firing, though they were doubtless provoked to this by the apparently hostile attitude of the whites. Some of the Indians were intoxicated, and with all their savage fierceness intensified by drink, it would require but little provocation to induce them to commence hostilities. An armed party menacing their camp, no matter for what purpose, was by no means a slight provocation.

After this amateur dissertation on Indian psychology, the commissioner turned to examine the white men's motives and actions: [12] It would seem from the testimony that the most that was contemplated by the defendants . . . in this aggressive movement was to intimidate the Indians . . . . It was sheer folly and wantonness on their part, but it they went for no other purpose than that of intimidation, it amounted to no more than an aggravated trespass, and the killing at most was but manslaughter.

The Indians, for their part, were relatively blameless victims of the whisky trade and of the trigger-happy whites' misinterpretation of the confusion in the camp. Up to the outbreak of shooting many of the Indians tried to ignore the menace of the party in the coulee and to make peace through Farwell; others fled. Parley and flight were clearly their only hopes for salvation for their superiority in numbers over the whites was no match for the advantages the latter enjoyed. The Indian leaders (and most fighting men) were incapacitated by drink; they and their homes were fully exposed to fire from the shelter of the coulee. Muzzle-loading muskets were a hopeless mismatch against the Henry and Winchester repeaters of the whites, and the members of Benton party were assisted by the guns of some of Soloman's party, firing into the camp from the roof or from in front of Fort Soloman, [13] It is hardly surprising that the whites were able, without a single casualty, to drive the Indians out of their encampment and to wreck it completely. It was a fight only in the sense that the Indians may have unintentionally provoked the firing and later tried to avenge it by shooting from concealment. The traditional description of the affair is apt: it was a massacre.

After the Indians had scattered, Hardwick took a small mounted party across the creek to shoot down upon the Indians who were hidden in the bushes around the mouth of the coulee and on the opposite bank. Farwell came out of his fort and stopped them, confronting Hardwick with the fact that the missing horse had not been stolen and was now in the fort: it was therefore pointless to continue the fight. Hardwick reportedly snapped back, "We've started in, and we'll clean them all out if we can." [14] He misjudged his harried opponents for there were Indians hidden on the hill above the fort; these drove the whites back toward the creek. A small party of whites then left off sacking the camp and dashed back to Hardwick's relief. They tried to cross the creek right where a number of Indians were hiding; one of these managed to put a bullet through the heart of Ed Legrace. The Indian was promptly shot, but this action had cooled the whites' enthusiasm for fighting and the massacre was over. [15]

After the Indians had scattered, a few of the whites swept through the camp tearing up lodges and murdering the few remaining inhabitants. An exception was made for four women (one of them with a small child) who were captured and held overnight at Fort Soloman before being turned over to Mary Farwell in the morning. Little Soldier was one of the last Indians found in the camp. He was awakened from his stupor by his wife, who tried to lead him to the supposed safety of one of the forts. He said "I will die here," and turning, saw the body of his father. He called out to the nearest Americans, "White men, you will know what you have done today, you never knew a 'woody mountain Assineboine' indian to harm a white man." Vincent shot him. After his wife and her mother were led away, an old Indian named Wankantu was clubbed to death with a hatchet and his severed head was raised on a lodge-pole, a hideous trophy for the assassins of the band. [16]

Quiet returned to the valley as the evening sun slid behind the western wall of the valley. From Fort Soloman men took a blanket down to the creek bank where the body of Legrace was wrapped and carried on Vincent's back to the kitchen of Soloman's post. A sad little procession moved through the small room and somebody took a few boards and put together a rough wooden coffin. Later that night or early the next day a shallow grave was dug beneath the floor of Soloman's cellar and the crude coffin was buried. [17] This was the only burial. All over the valley were the bodies of dead and dying Assiniboine and their bones lay there for years.

Harper, Hardwick and Lange joined the debauchery at Fort Soloman that night with the captive Indian women. Little Soldier's wife recalled that a white man had led her into the fort, grabbed me by the arm and ravished me, he remained with me all night and had connection with me many times, every time he did, he told me I would not live till morning . . . . The three (3) old women were in different rooms and myself and another young woman were in separate rooms, the other woman can tell more than me as she had many men with her, there being only one with me. [18]

Aside from the three Benton men who stayed at Soloman's, the rest of the party recrossed the creek to spend the night at their temporary camp by Farwell's. The trader asked them to stay one more day: he had not yet finished packing and did not know how many Indians might still be in the vicinity, waiting to take revenge on any white man imprudent enough to leave himself unprotected. [19] (He need not have worried — the broken remnants of the Assiniboine camp scattered until they were taken in by sympathetic Métis. [20]) Then the two trading parties hastily packed up their remaining goods and returned to Fort Benton. As the leading wagons disappeared over the hills, an unknown hand set fire to the forts, a custom in the hills since the Indians often burned deserted posts anyway. While the Benton party stayed at Farwell's behest, they amused themselves by stripping the Indian camp of its few remaining poor possessions, piled all the lodges in a heap and set fire to them. Then they split up. Two members of the party returned to Fort Benton. The rest were still determined to pursue their stolen horses and so continued on their search, the venture which had already brought death to the Cypress Hills and a name to Battle Creek. [21]

The story of the massacre, like an ugly stain, spread slowly across North America. The two wolfers who returned immediately to Fort Benton related their exploits around the saloons of the frontier town. These reports were picked up by the Helena Daily Herald, the major newspaper in the territorial capital. The story, judging by all later accounts, was severely distorted — it claimed that the Indians had met the Benton party arrogantly on the night of their arrival, had told them their horses had been stolen by Crees and said that since the Crees were their allies, the white men could have a fight if they wanted it. Then (the story continued) the whites sheltered for the night in one of the trading posts and at the break of day attacked the encampment "on the Indian plan"; that is, without warning. The death of Edward Legrace was noted and the extent of Indian casualties was grossly, even boastfully, exaggerated: "The 16 or 17 whites attacked and effectually wiped out the forty lodges, very few escaping." [22] It is unclear how far this account sprang from the imagination of the Herald's correspondent, but it was not repudiated by the Benton party until various legal authorities began to talk of the affair as murder and not as a salutary lesson courageously taught to nefarious savages.

The slaughter caused a stir of interest and concern beyond the saloons of Fort Benton. At the end of June a worried citizen, J.J. Wheeler, sent information of the massacre to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington. [23] A few days later Garry Bourke accompanied Abel Farwell to the latter's hometown of Fort Peck, where they gave their version of the story to the Indian agent there, Major A.J. Simmons. This was the agency to which the murdered Assiniboine nominally were attached and Simmons sent an anxious report to his superiors: Hardwick and others, he wrote, "attacked a camp of 40 lodges of peaceful Assiniboines who were almost entirely defenceless, and killed 16 of their number, men, women, and children, and mutilated their bodies in a most outrageous and disgusting manner." Simmons sent Farwell and Bourke to the Board of Indian Commissioners in Bozeman, where a formal deposition was taken. The board's secretary was particularly incensed at the apparent nonchalance with which the participants publicly treated the massacre: "The parties engaged in the Massacre do not attempt to palliate it, thinking the fact of those murdered being Indians, a justification for the outrage."

By the middle of August this file of correspondence had followed J.J. Wheeler's letter to the desk of the American secretary of the interior. [24] His department referred the matter to the attorney general for possible legal action. The latter reported that he was unable to touch the matter since the alleged murders had taken place in British territory. The whole dossier was therefore forwarded to Hamilton Fish, the secretary of state, who immediately dispatched it out of the capital to the vacationing British minister, Sir Edward Thornton. Thornton read through the papers and sent them on 21 August to the Canadian governor general in Quebec City, inviting the Canadian government, in the restrained official terminology of the day, to "cause such steps to be taken in the matter, as may appear to you proper and expedient."

This information reached Ottawa late in August or early in September, by which time it was already stale news. A copy of the Helena Daily Herald story had reached Fort Garry about 20 August and Lieutenant Governor Morris immediately forwarded a copy to the minister of the interior. The Winnipeg newspapers picked up the story and it was telegraphed to the Ottawa Daily Citizen later the same week; it was the Citizen which first published the story in the East, with a succinct report datelined Fort Garry. "A number of Americans attacked a band of Indians on British Territory, murdering twenty-two men and women and children six hundred miles west of here." [25 ] A longer and more detailed statement was written out for the information of the North West Council by Edward MacKay, a respected Métis hunter and trader who had passed through the Cypress Hills shortly after the massacre. MacKay was summoned before the lieutenant governor to give further particulars and these, too, were set down in an official dispatch to Ottawa. [26] The whole matter was taken up in cabinet on 6 September, a little over three months after the massacre.

The entire situation, as Morris warned the government on more than one occasion in the ensuing month, could prove a watershed in the history of Canadian expansion into the Northwest. Hitherto the government had had to deal only with the relatively settled tribes of the Red River and Lake Manitoba regions. Treaties would soon have to be made with the less placid tribes of the Qu'Appelle and Saskatchewan valleys, tribes which were, as Captain Butler had pointed out two years before, restive and suspicious of outsiders. It was essential, the lieutenant governor thought, to show these Indians that the Dominion would not imitate the disastrous native policy, or lack of effective policy, which had pushed forward the American frontier at the cost of some bloodshed and total lack of communication between the Indian occupants of the land and the white usurpers. The problem in Canada had hitherto been an abstract one: the Indians were alarmed by occasional rumours, but had no vivid cause for grievance. The massacre wrought a stark change in this situation, the Indians were to be dealt with in peace and mutual confidence, it was essential to show that the Cypress Hills massacre was an event the like of which would not be seen again, that Canadian acquisition of Indian lands would not be the prelude to an ill checked abuse and slaughter of the tribes. "If American borderers put the Indians to death in the summary manner described," wrote Morris, "the Dominion Government will soon find itself involved in Indian difficulties of the gravest character." [27]