The proceedings of the Canadian Eclipse Party, 1869

At once a party of twenty Sioux rode out to meet them.

There seemed to be nothing for it but to go peacefully. Three, James Whiteford, one of the three McGillis boys in the party, and one Malaterre, [ 25 ] were held by the Sioux. Falcon and Lafleche called the hunters together; with the boys of twelve years old, there were seventy-seven men who could handle a gun. They insisted that they had no warlike intentions and that the three captives would be freed on the morrow. They protested that they were hard up, and in need of help. They would come the next day with the prisoners and only a small party, in the hope of receiving some presents.

They therefore began to make ready to receive an attack and when three Sioux horsemen were seen approaching, they sent ten mounted men to meet them and keep them from observing the camp and its defences. The customary courtesies were exchanged, but the Sioux were kept at a distance and departed. The decision was now taken to fight without further parley, even if this meant, as they feared it did, that the three captives would be killed.

It was thought better to sacrifice them and save the party than to risk all. They therefore resolved to sell their lives dearly, and if possible to hold out until succor came from the main party. The carts were placed in a circle, wheel to wheel, with the shafts tilted in the air.

The poles carried to make the frames on which the buffalo meat was dried were run through the spokes to make the carts immovable. The purpose of the barricade of carts was not to form shelter behind which the hunters would fight. It was meant to fence in the cart ponies and oxen and to break up the charge of the Sioux horsemen. For that purpose trenches were dug under the carts and here the women and children took shelter. But the men dug trenches, or rifle pits here one meets the rifle pits of Batoche out in front of the barricade.

Their purpose was to hold the Sioux out of range of the carts and of the draft animals. After darkness two men were sent to carry the news of the threatened attack to the main party and to ask for help. The camp police kept an especial guard that night, but Lafleche and the hunters stayed up to watch the eclipse of the moon, of which he had warned them, spread its black shadow over the silver slopes of the Coteau.

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When these final preparations were completed, the scouts were seen to signal that the Sioux were coming. When they appeared along the crest of the Coteau, it was not the few horsemen promised the night before, but an army, the whole man power of the great Sioux camp, their war ponies of piebald and pinto and chestnut vivid on the skyline, their gun barrels and spear points glinting in the fierce sunlight of the plains. At a signal the Sioux host halted.

Was it possible they did not mean to attack? Now thirty of the hunters rode out to accost the Sioux and warn them to keep their distance from the camp. In the midst of the Sioux the three prisoners could be seen. Daring as was his action, he was in terror and besought his friends not to laugh at his being afraid. There were, he gasped, two thousand Sioux who meant to attack them. The Sioux ignored both the presents and the request. They could and would take all the camp had to yield, and brought out some carts to haul away the booty.

They began to push forward. The Sioux tried to head them off, hoping to overwhelm the camp by entering with the hunters in their retreat. But they were too slow, and the hunters re-entered the cart circle, left their horses and ran for their rifle pits. The Sioux came charging in, hoping to brush aside the flimsy barrier of the carts and break up at the circle.

Here and there a Sioux warrior whirled from his saddle and tumbled into the grass; the others pulled their ponies around and galloped back to the main body. Inside the circle Lafleche had donned his surplice with the star at the neck, and had taken his crucifix in his hand. His tall white figure passed around the carts as he encouraged the warriors and soothed the children. All through the fight he prayed amid the fighting and exhorted his people from a cart rolled into the centre of the circle, a prairie Joshua. A brief pause followed the first charge, but was ended almost at once.

Whiteford and Malaterre were guarded by an American living with the Sioux. He would, he said, only pretend to shoot at them.

Whiteford suddenly put his horse, perhaps the best runner on the plains, to a run and rode, weaving and swaying through a poplar grove, down the slope towards the camp. Malaterre, knowing his horse was too poor to carry him clear, first shot at the nearest Sioux and actually hit three.

He then rode for his life, but was soon brought down by a storm of balls and arrows. His body, bristling with shafts, was dismembered and mutilated and his remnants waved at the metis to terrify them. But Whiteford escaped unharmed; and with true metis bravado, he checked his flight and shot down a pursuing Sioux.

Then he was welcomed wildly within the cart circle, where he joined the defenders. His old mother, who had been weeping for a son she believed doomed, ran to him and said: Let me fire a shot at those rascals out there! There was no time for sleep for anyone. The mass of the Sioux now closed in and surrounded the camp, as Lafleche wrote, like a waistband. They crept forward, sniping; they made sudden dashes; now and then excited braves would come charging in on horseback, and swerve off shooting from the saddle, or under their horses necks.

It was exciting, it was dangerous, but it was not the one thing that might have brought victory to the Sioux, the overwhelming of the metis by their numbers. The metis were therefore able to hold them off from the cart circle, firing steadily as targets offered, themselves offering no target.

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Most of the Sioux bullets fell short of the cart circle; all their arrows did. Only occasionally did a horse rear, or an ox bellow as a shot went home.

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And up the sun-scorched slope, the Sioux began to feel the bite of the telling metis fire. The fight was too hot for them. Indians, and even the warlike Sioux, would never suffer casualties as Europeans would. It was not a matter of courage, but of the conventions of warfare.

In battle the Indian saw no merit in death, however brave. The Sioux now drew back to take account of the nature of the contest they had engaged in. Their shame grew as they viewed the small numbers of the metis and the fragility of their defences. Their shame turned to anger. Whooping and yelling, the infuriated warriors charged in on their straining ponies, swerving, checking, striving always to kill or stampede the stock in the corral. But their fury produced no giving way.

Lafleche still cheered his people, from the cart in the corral. Falcon, steady, earnest, fired with his men, and moved among them to keep them steady. With him was his sister Isabella; when he went around the rifle pits, she took his gun and fired for him, not without effect. The second assault failed like the first, and still the Sioux had not used their numbers to make a mass charge and overrun the gun pits and the barricade of carts.

Sullenly the Sioux began to withdraw, one by one or in small groups. The more stubborn or more daring kept up a sniping fire and tentative sallies from time to time. But after six hours all were wearied of the unrewarding battle. A chief was heard to cry: We shall never come to the end of them. They had also to regain their courage and replenish their ammunition.

But when the Sioux withdrew, the hunters rode out over the battle field, where they saw many traces of the hurt inflicted on the attackers. Eight Sioux had been killed and many wounded, as was shown by the blood-stained grass and the waters of two nearby ponds. They buried him there on the prairie. On the next day, 14 July, the Sioux were expected to attack. A council was held and the decision was taken to try to join the main party as they had not withdrawn far, and kept raising the war whoop around the camp during the darkness of the night.

It was a decision to retreat in the face of an enemy yet undefeated and in overwhelming numbers, one of the most dangerous operations of war. Four mounted parties were sent out a mile from the line of march, one ahead, one behind, and two on the flank towards the Sioux. They were to signal any approach of the Sioux by two scouts galloping past one another on a butte, the best known of all the plains signals of the buffalo hunters.

The carts were to advance in four columns, so placed that by two columns wheeling quickly, one left and one right, a square could be formed rapidly. Then the cart corral could be formed, the barricade stiffened with the poles, and the hunters fan out for the fight. The Sioux, who had been shouting around the camp during the night were in pursuit. At the signal the columns halted and wheeled into position, the ponies and oxen were taken out of the shafts, and the carts run into the circle.

The cart ring was now formed of two lines of carts, then at three chains from the barricade of carts the hunters hastened to throw up their rifle pits well out from the cartring. The Sioux were perhaps less numerous and less fiery than the day before, but they closed in none the less on the cart corral and pressed the attack for five full hours. Finally the firing slackened and the war cries died away. University of Queensland Library. Open to the public ; Online: Not available for loan Book; Illustrated English Show 0 more libraries This single location in Queensland: None of your libraries hold this item.

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