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"As-sinay-itomosarpi-akae-naskoy" - The Last Great Battle
When plains aboriginal tribes began to acquire horses and firearms in the 1700s, territorial rivalries became a fact of life. Among the bitterest of rivalries was that between the Cree and the Blackfoot con-federacies. Most elders could recall a time when warriors of either tribe took a vicious swipe at each other in hunting or trade competition. For a few years, though, at the behest of the missionaries and of Maskipitoon of the Crees, the bloodshed had subsided. By 1870, as traditional domains began to shrink, the prime times of both factions was waning, Relentless hunting pressure was beginning to dwindle the herds of buffalo. and in the midst of change, a Cree alliance made a last bid for territory at the expense of their foes.
In the spring of 1870, scattered bands of Cree (Nehiyawak), Assiniboine (Nakota) and the Salteaux-ranging from the areas of the Touchwood Hills, Wood Mountain and the open plains-gathered at the Vermilion Hills near the South Saskatchewan River, the gathered party numbering between 600-800, in-cluding women and children. Leaders of the assemblage-Big Bear, Piapot, Little Mountain and Little Pine held council and decided to launch an expedition into the heart of the Blackfoot territory, and estab-lish Cree dominance where the Blackfoot nations held sway from the Red Deer River south, far into Mon-tana. Their domination of the buffalo trade earned the envy of their rivals, and for decades, the Cree and Blackfoot played a chess game of counting coup, horse stealing and hit-and-run warfare. By 1870, the Blackfoot were in a favorable trade situation with the Americans operating on their turf.
But Big Bear and company had information their enemy was in a weakened state. The Baker massa-cre on the Piegan, and the Bloods had suffered the return of the dread smallpox. Camps were vulnerable to attack and horses available for the taking, according to that intelligence.
Through the summer of 1870, the bands followed the South Saskatchewan River upstream knowing its tributaries would bring them to their quarry's homeground. Somewhere along the way, possibly some-time after passing the forks of the Bow and the Belly Rivers, the Saulteax split off from the main caravan, and rode off to the south-west, probably following the high ridge above Chin Coulee, to scout the area to assess the defenses of the Blackfoot camps and the numbers of their horses.
A couple dozen miles northeast of their eventual target, the war party made camp near where the Lit-tle Bow River emptied into the Belly. That night Piapot had a fateful dream. Aboriginal culture takes their dreams very seriously, and base many decisions on such phenomenon.
A ten-year-old Cree boy, Iron Horn, told of the War Council he witnessed between Piapot and his soldiers. "My children, I had a dream last night. I saw a buffalo bull with iron horns goring, stamping and killing us. We were unable to destroy it. After long meditation, I have come to the conclusion that we must abandon this venture and return home, otherwise misfortune awaits us." The Council was stirred by Piapot's vision. Many heeded the warnings and turned back for home.
But a dissenting war chief, sought to rekindle the fires in Cree bellies, and ridiculed Piapot's notions: "My children, don't believe in a dream. Advance and capture the Blackfoot Nation, women and children. The smallpox killed off most of their fighters so we won't be opposed by any great number." Those who had come so far, and were so close to their goal, would not be dissuaded. The raiders had come for a fight, and a fight they would have.
In following the high points of the terrain, the Saulteaux would have aimed for the Milk River Ridge, and from there would have found Fifteen Mile Butte, a single high knoll. The landmark, named for its distance from Fort Whoop-Up. A plentiful underground spring running off the Butte made it a prime stopping point on the Whoop-Up Trail.
It was also the last camp for one unfortunate Blood family on their way to join the winter camp along the Belly. The Saulteaux found the camp and razed it, killing everyone in it. Or so they thought. A small boy hid underneath the bottom of a tipi, and was the only survivor. The lad followed the Whoop-Up Trail to the junction of the St. Mary's and Belly rivers, the flats known as Many Ghosts-in sight of Healy's fort. There he found a friendly encampment and warned that a group of hostiles was in the area.
The Saulteaux had also found the trail to Many Ghosts where the scouts found another small camp and took a few head of horses. But they did not linger, and some confusion abounded about the nature of their action at this point. Either the Saulteaux did not realize was that they were in the direct vicinity of Fort Whoop-Up, where Alf Hamilton and John Healy, were on mostly good terms with the Blackfoot.
There is a slim possibility that the main Fort may have been under threat of attack at one int. An un-documented source published in a popular western magazine purports that in a parley, the Assiniboine (not the Salteaux or Young Dogs in this account) asked for a gift of five kegs of whiskey and two bundles of hardware and dry goods. Healy refused, and ordered a cannon to be rolled to the gate of the Fort. The gun was fired, and landed a ball at the feet of the invaders.
For whatever reason, the scouts failed to notice the Piegan lodges of Mountain Chief, in the direct vicinity of the Fort. An even more crucial error was the failure to realize that all three bands were in settled into an elongated winter camp, scattered some 20 miles up the Belly River, as far as the junction of the Belly and the Oldman rivers. Such an arrangement was a common practice among the plains bands, a defensive measure designed to keep the number of lodges and horse herds at low concentration, yet still close enough that camps are within a short distance of each other in the event of an attack.
Riding north along the Belly, the Salteaux found a few lodges on the west side of the Belly. They did not make their presence known to that camp, instead carrying on the Little Bow camp, their observations supposedly complete.
The scouts reported 60 lodges, at what the Blackfoot called sik-oko-toks- "the black rocks," where coal deposits were found in the sides of the coulees. What the spies failed to understand was that they had merely located the middle core of a much larger encampment. The Bloods were a small part of the more than 200 lodges of an amassed Blackfoot Confederacy. The botched reconnaissance would be a fatal error.
Based on the faulty interpretations, it was decided that the attack was to be upon the sixty lodges at the Black Rocks. A war camp was set up on the Coyote Flats, scant miles from the target. In the dim pre-dawn hours of October 25, the war party followed Pyami Coulee, a feeder drain leading to the Belly River Valley, and then followed the river the few miles south to the scene of their attack.
The Cree-Assiniboine party attacked the Blood camp, located above the coulees along the Belly River, not far in distance from the St. Mary's River, and unknown to the attackers, a short ride away from the Fort Whoop-Up camp of the Peigan. A brother of Red Crow, destined to become the Blood chief, was killed, as were two or three women. The Blood warriors commanded by Bull Back Fat and Button Chief, counter-attacked, and engaged the enemy on the plains between the oxbow, of the Oldman River. Big Brave, a Peigan warrior said: "The Crees took their knives and slit the teepees of our village down the sides and then rushed in. When the Crees rushed into the teepees, they took everything they could lay their hands on, killing the women and children, and this made me mad. That was why I fought so hard that day."
Soon the Blood allies camped nearby were alerted to the dangers faced by their brethren. As the at-tack started, female messengers scampered off to the south, swimming the Belly River to alert the Peigan of the attack and bring them to the assistance of the Blood. One of the women of the camp picked up a tomahawk and single-handedly killed four Cree attackers. Among the Whoop-Up camp were the Black-foot Métis, Jerry Potts, later to be a Scout for the Northwest Mounted Police, and brothers Alex and Charles McKay, known respectively as Unborn Calf and The Bear. Jerry Potts, no stranger to gunfights in both the red and white man's world, did not hesitate to offer his services to the Peigan, and to his aboriginal roots.
A group of South Peigans, led by Big Leg, Black Eagle and Heavy Shield were encamped near Fort Whoop-Up as well. The Peigans were still stinging from an attack by the US Army on the Marias River earlier that year. Blackfoot warriors had had enough of invading aggressors, and soon the Crees were to suffer for the humiliations of the Baker massacre. Assistance also came from a small camp of Peigan at nearby Fort Kipp.
In scattered twos and threes, warriors for the defense of the Bloods appeared singing war songs, praying that if they were to die, to die as soldiers. Big Brave carried a shield that had been blessed by his Medicine Man, and sang as he carried the shield: "My body will be lying on the plains." When the al-lies arrived to reinforce the defense, the Cree realized they were now outgunned and outnumbered. Be-fore long the assembled defenders had the Cree backed into the coulees, where the hunters became the hunted. The fight became most intensive as the Cree used the coulees as breastworks, with which to snipe at the charging Blackfoot. Cree ponies were run into the bottom of the ravines, as their riders established a defensive position.
The Peigan secured a smaller coulee to the south, as the Bloods and Blackfoot attempted to control the high ground above, eventually they too were forced into the coulees. For four hours, the Crees and Peigans battled between their parallel positions, exchanging shots at any visible target. Mounted Police Surgeon George Kennedy, who in later years, treated Blackfoot participants for complications from war wounds wrote: "A head, a hand, anything was enough to shoot at." Two Peigan scouts were sent out on horseback, to ascertain numbers, and were quickly put out of commission. Some Peigan were able to get to the narrow tops of the coulees, and dropped heavy rocks onto the heads of their enemy.
Calf Shirt was a seasoned Blood warrior, well-trained in the arts of fighting and of revenge parties. He had just returned from a hunt when his father told him of the battle already in progress. Immediately he switched from hunter to defender, as his father painted him for war. Before departure, however, he promised his father that should he fall to a Cree arrow, he would not remove it. Calf Shirt got on to the battlefield in time to find the Crees trapped in one of the many coulees stretching from the prairie to the river. Among the beset Cree were a tall warrior, and another draped in a calfskin robe. The pair had al-ready killed several Blackfoot, and Calf Shirt was warned away from them.
True to his religious convictions, he grasped a knife that had been among the prized possessions in his Bear Medicine, bundle, an iron weapon, with a rare double edge. With only the knife in his I hand, and shouting a war song, Calf Shirt rushed the Cree stronghold. The tall defender deftly put an arrow into Calf Shirt's wrist, but the rushing Blood would not relent. Recalling the promise to his father, he ignored the wound, and with his injured hand, grabbed the bow of his enemy and fatally thrust his knife into the archer's midriff. Before the bowman's calf-skinned companion could aim his rifle, he too fell before Calf Shirt's spiritual weapon.
During the cross-coulee exchange, an estimated dozen Blackfoot were killed, with no known numbers available for the Cree. The fight was probably more evenly matched at this juncture than at any time during the entire battle. Soon that would change. Eventually; as Cree cover fire dwindled, the Peigan charged over the ridge of the coulees and overwhelmed the Cree position, forcing the attackers to retreat in a mass towards the Belly River.
An obscure factor in the scholarship of this battle was the exact role of the Whoop-Up traders. In the academic vein of "if it wasn't wrote down, it didn't happen" opinion, documentation of trader involvement is scant. Healy said nothing about it, but a couple of his comrades, in obscure newspaper accounts support a claim that the white staff of the Fort did more than lock the gates and hunker down when they knew an intertribal war was in their bailiwick.
Howell Harris said that he had a shack across the river from the original attack site, and observed the conflagration at a safe distance. Blood elders indicate that traders supported their customers in battle, and sat atop the east side of the coulees with long range rifles, such as the Sharps Big Fifty- in the vicinity of Harris' shack. It would seem logical that the traders would support the defense of their best customers. George Houk later married a Blood woman with the English name of Marie Simons, who was in the camp at the time of the attack. Marie told Houk that "the revengeful Bloods [were] assisted by white buffalo hunters, trappers and traders." Houk never mentioned though, whether he was among those assisting.
One Whoop-Up employee was surely in the thick of the fray. As the Crees fled, Jerry Potts ordered a Peigan charge down the hill. Potts later stated: "You could fire with your eyes shut and be sure to kill a Cree." Big Brave recalled, "I could not hear for the roar of the guns, and could not see for the smoke." Kennedy's findings confirmed the din heard in the valley "...filled with dust and smoke, the air re-sounded with the report of rifles and the deafening war cries of the Blackfeet, while thick and fast came the death yells of the Crees."
As the charge progressed, the Cree warriors reached the river and in attempting to cross were shot down indiscriminately by the Peigan. Blood warrior Prairie Chicken jumped his horse directly off a cut-bank into the Belly River to pursue his enemy; as the waters turned red with blood. Among the Cree killed at this point were two blond-tressed mixed-bloods, the Cree-Scot Métis, Yellow Hair and Curly Hair, sons of a Hudson's Bay trader, Hugh Sutherland. The Sutherland boys had been the most ardent to go on the warpath against the Blackfoot, and many young Cree warriors had been magnetically attracted to the words of these two blue-eyed fair-haired warriors. Before the excursion, Yellow Hair had told James Sanderson, "I have never been taught anything but fighting." In the end the Sutherland boys went out swinging, fighting with their knives even after they had been mortally wounded by Peigan bullets.
Big Brave was one of the warriors who would not allow the Cree to retreat. "The Blackfeet made an onrush for the Crees and 1 ran over two of them before they got to the river. As they were crossing the river, I jumped off my horse and stabbed one of the Crees between the shoulders. He had a spear and I took that away from him. I jumped off my horse again and just as I returned, there was a Cree who raised his gun to fire at me. I ran over him and he jumped up and grabbed my horse by the bridle. I swung my horse's head around to protect myself and took the butt of my whip and knocked him down. When I struck him he looked at me and I saw that his nose had been cut off. I heard afterwards that a bear had bitten his nose off. After that I knocked him down and killed him."
The accounts of the warriors make plain that the fate of the retreating Cree was entirely in the hands of the defenders. No quarter was given, none was taken, and the Peigans and Bloods were able to kill virtually at will. Mike Oka, a Blood youth at the time of battle, recalled: "Many of the enemy never reached the east shore of the Oldman River. They were killed and butchered in the water. I never saw so many scalps in all my life as on the next day in a victory war dance."
Several Crees made it across the river, still pursued by the Peigan. But on the east side of the river, the Cree were faced with a wide open plain, making it easy for their pursuers to hunt them down. With little chance of regaining lost ground and running for their lives, the would-be attackers were surrounded and fifty Cree were killed at that point on the wide open plain. In their zeal and confusion, some Black-foot may have been inadvertently gunned down by their own comrades.
The surviving Cree hurried across the plains into a clump of trees where ten of the group abandoned their horses, deciding to take cover and make a stand. The stance could not hope to be successful, and was effected merely to allow fellow warriors time to escape. The pursuers moved in and the sacrificial Cree, left with single wet gunpowder for their muzzleloaders, died like warriors. What remained of the Cree-Assiniboine party withdrew downstream into the heavily wooded Belly valley, the way they had arrived. Mountain Chief ordered a ceasefire and allowed their foes to escape, in order that they may bring the news of their rout to their camp. So informed, the Pyami Coulee and Little Bow camps were struck, and the Cree left the area to the north-east, wintering in the Hand Hills to the north of the Red Deer River.
The defending Blackfoot-Blood-Peigan suffered about 40 killed, 50 wounded. Despite his heroics, Calf Shirt repeatedly refused to allow his companions to remove the arrow from his wrist. He finally had to be tied to a travois and be dragged back to camp, where the shaft was cut and the head re-moved with brass tweezers. Big Brave was one of many soldiers who came home victorious. "When we returned I had taken nine different scalps." But this was the last time the Blackfoot Confederacy would attain such glories in battle.
While actual numbers are very difficult to ascertain, sources state that 300 of the attacking Cree-Assiniboine party were killed. The combined casualties of the Bloods and Peigans were about 40 dead, and 50-60 wounded.
The result of the battle mirrored the difference between the Cree and Blackfoot Confederacies. The attack was unsuccessful largely due to the poor scouting work, unfamiliarity with the surroundings and that the Cree had not yet gained the access to the repeating arms weaponry available to the Peigans and Bloods. The Cree with traditional ties to the Hudson's Bay, came armed with bows, spears and muzzle-loading trade guns, and cap-and-ball revolvers. With ties to American trade, the Blackfoot nations by this time possessed the Henry, Spencer and Winchester repeating rifles.
In the spring of 1871, exhausted by conflicts and epidemics, the warring bands came to an agreement. The Cree sent a tobacco offering to the Blackfoot, and a formal peace was concluded at a grand council of chiefs at the Red Deer River in the autumn. The bands agreed to a treaty, ending forever the centuries-old rivalry and the last inter-tribal plains war.
The site is referred to by the Blackfoot Confederacy as "assinietomochi" or "where we' slaughtered them. "A winter count, or painted buffalo skin by the warrior Crop-eared Wolf, depicts the scene as "As-sinay-itomosarpi-akae-naskoy" or "Assiniboins-when we defeated them-Fort Whoop-Up." It was the last great inter-tribal battle in North America.
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War Lance - "Simakatoo"
Circa 1960s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Lance - "Simakatoo"
Circa 1997
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Gun Case - "Aso'tsiinaamaa"
Circa 1980s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Gun Case "Aso'tsiinaamaa"
Circa 1950s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Arrows - "Apssi"
Circa 1940s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Bow and Arrow - "Aksipinnakssin"+ "Apssi"
Circa 1980s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Chokecherry Bow - "Aksipinnakssin"
Circa 1950s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Birch or Ash Bow - "Aksipinnakssin"
Circa 1950
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Transfer of the Cree Medicine Pipe "Assinai-Achkuineman"
1980
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Coup Stick - "Inaamaahkaan"
Circa 1860
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Quinn Pereverseff
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Whip - "Isstsipisimaa'tsis"
Circa 1910
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Quinn Pereverseff
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Riding Quirt - "Isstsipisimaa'tsis"
Circa 1930s
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton
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Riding Quirt - "Atsi'tsi" - of Mike Mountain Horse (Miistatosomitai)
Circa 1890
Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site
Credits:
Gord Tolton