Robert Alexander Innes
McMaster University
The annual report of the Department of Indian Affairs for 1884 was submitted to parliament by the Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, John A. Macdonald. In the report Macdonald details the “Yellow Calf incident” that took place on the Sakimay reserve (now known as Zagime Anishinabek) between February 18 and 23, 1884 and another incident that took place on a reserve in the Battleford area. Both incidents were caused by the lack of rations the government provided to First Nations people. On Sakimay, a group of armed men, led by Chief Yellow Calf forcibly took food from the warehouse after newly appointed farm instructor Hinton Keith refused their requests for rations. On the reserve in the Battleford area, a lone Cree man assaulted the farm instructor who refused to give him rations. The policy in place at that time was to give rations only to the old and sick. Young men were to be given ammunition for hunting. They could receive rations only in dire circumstances. Since the Indian Commissioner and Assistant Indian Commissioner (Edgar Dewdney and Hayter Reed respectfully) had deemed there was enough game and fish available they instructed officials not to provide rations to those they believed could fend for themselves. In both cases, the NWMP were dispatched to handle the situations. The lone man in the Battlefords was arrested and jailed. The situation on Sakimay was a little more complicated. Some two dozen Northwest Mounted police were sent to Sakimay, raising the possibility of armed confrontation. However, after some negotiation, violence was averted with a few of the men agreeing to be taken into custody and charged and convicted but received conditional discharges.
In the official report Macdonald crafted a narrative that portrayed the Saulteaux and Plains Cree men as the cause of the tensions and the NWMP as exercising restraint while exerting control that led to de-escalating the tensions. According to Macdonald, the real issue at Sakimay was that the previous farm instructor, James Setter, provided “aged Indians” with fewer rations than the younger band member who were “better able to provide for themselves.” When Keith replaced Setter, he was directed to adhere to government policy in which he strictly followed. On the Battleford reserve, the disturbance was caused when the farm instructor there refused rations to a Cree man unless he worked for them. At Sakimay, Indians “were well armed with Winchester rifles, were greatly excited and used very threatening language.” While at Battleford, the Cree man who assaulted the instructor was supported by “many of the young men [who] sympathised with the complainant, and proceeded to act in such an unruly manner.” According to Macdonald the presence of the NWMP lead to peaceful conclusions. As he states, “too much praise cannot be accorded to Col. Herchmer [at Sakimay] and Major Crozier [at Battleford] and the men under them for the manner in which they acted on the two trying occasions above referred to, displaying, as they did, much intrepidity and great forbearance.”
Excerpt from Annual report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended 31st December 1884.
However, letters, correspondences, and op-eds buried in the archives tell a different story. Isabel Andrews uncovered a wealth of materials that provides a glimpse into First Nations perspectives on what happened on Sakimay and shows that it was patience and diplomacy of First Nations leadership that resulted in a peaceful resolution.[1] Andrews first outlines the displeasure Indian Affairs official had with Setter as they considered his practice of providing food to starving people counter to department policy. Referring to correspondences in the Indian Affairs archives (Record Group 10) between Dewdney and Macdonald, Andrews quotes Dewdney as saying that Setter’s encouraged First Nations men to ‘do nothing for themselves.’ In response, Macdonald stated that, “very great looseness on the part of the agent and Instructor must be apparent to everyone”, and that “of course none but those who really earn rations by work should receive any, save under very exceptional circumstances.” To Macdonald’s comments Andrews asserts that “It should be noted that even if the “work for rations” philosophy had merit, there is no evidence of any kind of work which could have been carried out by the Indians in the winter of 1883-84.”[2] The fact that there was not enough work for First Nations to do to earn rations, it becomes clear that prior to the events that took place on Sakimay, Dewdney and Macdonald were attributing First Nations’ requests for rations to their reluctance to work (ie. playing on the lazy Indian stereotype) rather than on their ‘work for ration’ policy.
The documents that Andrews accessed show that the role of First Nations leaders played was instrumental in reaching a non-violent conclusion. Though the documents provide 2nd or even 3rd hand accounts, they still provide insights into the events. In a letter from Reed to Macdonald, on February 22, Reed notes that Inspector Deane of NWMP arrived on Sakimay and talked to Louis O’Soup, a headman for Cowessess First Nation. O’Soup told Deane that it would be difficult to settle the matter, “as the Indians considered themselves justified in their action in that they, or many of them, were in want of food at the time they took it, and that they had not had an opportunity of laying their grievances before the Lieutenant-Governor.” Reed than relates that the NWMP reached the house where most of the men who took part in the raiding of the storehouse were, noting,
there being apparently at least sixty souls … present; for the most part painted and adorned in War Costume. In reply to Inspector Deane’s representations that certain men of the band had broken the law and were required to answer for their Offence, three (3) different spokesmen set forth the views of the party to much the same purport as previously expressed by O’Soup.
Reed also describes that a day later with NWMP reinforcements, Indian agent Allan McDonald approached the house where,
… a gigantic savage in all his war paint and trappings carrying a double barrelled [sic]gun, emerged … and in an excited manner waved him back; Other Indians well armed some with Winchester rifles, simultaneously appeared in the doorway, unmistakeably [sic] prepared to resist intrusion. By this time the Police had dismounted from their sleighs, and stood awaiting orders. After a few minutes during which Yellow Calf who was unarmed, and seemed desirous of keeping the peace, intimated that the Indians would not allow themselves to be arrested.
The situation became tense with at one-point Yellow Calf apparently “held the gun of one Indian who was about to fire on the police.” On the advice of O’Soup, who was also present, the NWMP went to a nearby house and where O’Soup, Yellow Calf and a few other spokesmen met them to talk. Reed outlines that Yellow Calf said that when the men took the provisions their women and children were starving, and that his young men would not give themselves up to arrest, “that they would fight to the death – that they were well armed, and might just as well die then as be starved by the government.” However, Yellow Calf also stated that he would pay for the food that was taken.
As no one could be arrested as the police were over matched, Assistant Indian Commissioner Reed went to Sakimay himself. On February 25, Reed met with the leaders. O’Soup, who was greatly respected by his First Nations peers as an orator, was the spokesman for Yellow Calf’s men. According to Reed’s report to Macdonald:
O’Soup, justified the actions of the men who took the supplies by saying that, first: they or some of them were starving; secondly, when their request for rations had been refused by the officer in charge acting under regulations, they had no choice but to help themselves; thirdly, they understood that they were taking nothing but what rightfully belonged to them, and did not know they were doing wrong in taking rations when they were starving, since, “If … the provisions were not intended to be eaten by the Indians why were they stored on their reserve?”
Reed noted that his interpreter told him that O’Soup was “one of the most eloquent Indian orators he had ever heard.” Reed continued to relay in his report what O’Soup said in defence of Yellow Calf’s men:
Many of them were in a state of great distress – having been a hunter all his life he [O’Soup] knew that hunting had lately become impossible. Directly the surface of the snow became touched by a thaw no animal could be approached. So with fishing, it was not possible now to catch a single fish – well then – if hunting and fishing were out of the question and the rations allowed were not sufficient to keep them alive what were they to do? They were very glad that I had come there to talk the matter over in a quiet way.
Yellow Calf followed up by repeating his offer to pay the of the food that was taken. As Andrews points out, Reed knew his best course of action at this point was to reach a compromise. He told the men that he would drop the charge of armed resistance, if some men would agree to surrender to the police with a charge of theft. Yellow Calf and three other men agreed if the police agreed to not handcuffed them and to not cut off their hair.
In his report Reed stated that, “There is no doubt that O’Soup, who is an able orator and shrewd Councillor [sic] is the man to whom the Indians look for guidance…” Nonetheless, he was not prepared to acknowledge their claims of starvation and therefore that government policy was the real cause of why they raided the storage house:
That the actual rioters were in a condition near starvation, I cannot admit for a moment, their appearance belies the supposition; and if their appearance did not, the well-filled Cartridge belts, and Winchesters would imply some means of provision; but it is certain that many of the Comparatively well to do, suffer from their Charity to the indigent and infirm.
Even though Reed had heard what O’Soup, Yellow Calf and other leaders had to say about the causes of the raid and had agreed to lessen the charges, nonetheless, in his report he dismissed the idea that hunting and fishing was poor and that people were starving. He implicitly told Macdonald that the real reason was due to the laziness of Yellow Calf’s men as he maintained they were starving because they refused to hunt or to work for rations.
Andrew provides much evidence that that counters Reed’s assertions. For example, she provides an except from Nathaniel McKenzie’s book. McKenzie was an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company and stationed at the Crooked Lakes post between 1881 and 1892. He had many interactions with folks from the four Crooked Lakes reserves including Sakimay. He recounts his perspectives of the events that took place that February:
New year had brought all my hunters of last winter (mainly She Sheep’s group of Sakimay Reserve) back with big hunts again. This winter many of the others who tried to hunt have killed little or nothing, and are going to be very hard up before spring as there are no rabbits at all and the snow is now very deep, and the weather very cold. Keith has written to the Indian Commissioner at Regina for instructions to assist some of the families that have returned without any hunt, and have no means of support for themselves and children. All these newcomers had been receiving a fairly adequate ration, and with what they were able to hunt was sufficient to keep them going, but this being a very hard winter, and no rabbits or anything else which they could secure for food, put them on the verge of starvation, at least they were very hungry. When Keith’s instructions came from the Assistant Indian Commissioner they were not to increase, but rather reduce the amount of rations he was issuing. There had been grumbling all through January. Now it was well on into February. The Indians were making stiffer demands on Keith every ration day for more grub. Keith told me what his instructions were, and that he intended to carry them out. I said: “Keith, for God’s sake, do not reduce their rations any lower, or there will certainly be trouble.” He carried out the Assistant Commissioner’s instructions. A few of the Indians died. The others came time and again asked for more grub which they were denied. Finally they broke into the Government storehouse, threw out as much flour and bacon as they wanted, and threw Keith out on top of it.
Excerpt from Nathaniel McKenzie, The Men of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1921.
Andrews also presents letters of Edwin J. Brooks who lived in Indian Head, SK about 80 km from Sakimay. In a letter written to his wife on February 26, 1884 he wrote:
There are lots of them dying on the reserve. They are really in a good many cases starving to death through the neglect of the Government to furnish them supplies. The Indians say they are going West next summer even if they have to fight for it, as they say it is better to die fighting than to be starved. Fifty miles east of here [Crooked Lakes] the Indians are giving a good deal of trouble through hunger.
Andrews refers to several newspaper articles that talked about the incident. For example, she provides the Regina Leader’s defence of the criticism leveled against the Indian Commissioner, Edgar Dewdney by Toronto Globe over his handling of the situation. As the editorial notes:
The Globe accuses Governor Dewdney of pursuing a long continued course of deceit and ill-treatment towards the Indians, and attributes to this, the acts of insubordination which Yellow Calf and his band were guilty of, first, in breaking into the Government store on their reserve near Broadview, and secondly in resisting the police or threatening resistance when they went to make arrests.
Nonetheless, even in their defence of the government, the Leader’s editorial conceded that there was at least one thing the government could do to help prevent other types of incidences:
We are quite prepared to admit that it is of the first importance that means should be taken to prevent a repetition of these occurrences … And we would suggest as the easiest means of bringing about such a result, in the first place to feed the Indian population well…
The government’s official word on what happened in Saskatchewan (then known as the North-West Territories) was that First Nations people were starving because they did not hunt for their own food and because they refused to work for rations. Canadians for the most part accepted the government’s explanation. However, Andrews was able look deeper into the archival documents to find evidence that shows that in fact game and fish were depleted in the area and that there was not enough work that could sustain the number of people who needed food. In addition, the government’s story that the work of government officials and the NWMP prevented violence from occurring. Andrews showed that First Nations diplomacy and desire to avoid violence had a great deal to do with achieving a peaceful resolution. However, this story was left deep in the archives and not told to the public.
[1] Isabel Andrews, “Indian Protest Against Starvation: The Yellow Calf Incident of 1884,” Saskatchewan History 28. No. 2(1975): 41-51.
[2] Ibid. 42.