The Battle of Frenchman's Butte, fought on May 28, 1885, occurred when the

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

Field Force attacked a force of

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

, dug in on a hillside near Frenchman's Butte. The battlefield is located in what was then the

District of Saskatchewan The District of Saskatchewan was a regional administrative district of Canada's North-West Territories. Formed in 1882, it was later enlarged then abolished with the creation of the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905. Much of the are ...

of the

North-West Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of the three territories in Northern Canada. Its estimated pop ...

, now the province of

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

Background

Members of a band of Cree led by war chief Wandering Spirit, living in what is now central

and

joined the

North-West Rebellion The North-West Rebellion (), was an armed rebellion of Métis under Louis Riel and an associated uprising of Cree and Assiniboine mostly in the District of Saskatchewan, against the Government of Canada, Canadian government. Important events i ...

of 1885 after the government forces' defeat at the

Battle of Duck Lake A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

. The starving fighters seized food and supplies from several white settlements and captured Fort Pitt, taking prisoners. Major-General

Thomas Bland Strange Thomas Bland Strange (15 September 1831 – 9 July 1925), known as 'Gunner Jingo', was a British officer noted for his service with the Canadian Militia during the North-West Rebellion of 1885. As a Royal Artillery officer posted to Canada, Stra ...

, a retired British officer living near

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

, raised a force of cowboys and other white settlers, added to them two units of

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory to ...

(NWMP), and headed north. He was reinforced by three infantry units from the east, bringing his forces to some 1,000 men. His column consists of the Sixty-fifth Battalion 232 soldiers; Winnipeg Provisional Battalion (92nd) 307 soldiers; Strange's Rangers (Alberta scouts) 50 men, and 67 NWMP policemen. While he left some of his force to provide protection for isolated white settlements along the way, he secured Edmonton then he led his column east to Fort Pitt. As he approached, Cree insurgents burnt the fort as they left and retreated to nearby hills. Over the next few days, Strange's scouts fought skirmishes with small groups of Cree and in pursuit of Big Bear, marched to the area of Frenchman's Butte. On the night of May 27, the Cree dug in at the top of a hill east of the

butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...

and waited.

The battle

Early on the morning of May 28, the Cree fighters divided into two groups. Wandering Spirit, the Cree war chief, led some 200 fighters to take positions in trenches and rifle pits on top of the hill, while Little Poplar and the other group remained to protect the camp, some 3 km (two miles) away. General Strange arrived opposite the Cree-occupied hill at six in the morning and opened fire with a small cannon. The Cree then opened fire with their guns on Strange's soldiers. Some of his soldiers started across the valley but found it soft going due to muskeg. As well, movement forward came under fire from Cree fighters on top of a steep, open hillside, making a

frontal assault A frontal assault is a military tactic which involves a direct, full-force attack on the front line of an enemy force, rather than to the flanks or rear of the enemy. It allows for a quick and decisive victory, but at the cost of subjecting the a ...

suicidal. Strange pulled his forces back and deployed them along the bottom of the valley. The two units of NWMP formed the left flank. To their right was the

65th Battalion, Mount Royal Rifles Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal is a Primary Reserve infantry regiment A regiment is a military unit. Its role and size varies markedly, depending on the country, military service, service, or administrative corps, specialisation. In Middle Ages, ...

, with the

Winnipeg Light Infantry Battalion The Winnipeg Light Infantry was an infantry regiment of the Non-Permanent Active Militia of the Canadian Militia (now the Canadian Army). In 1955, the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. Lineage The Winnipeg Light Infantr ...

in the centre, while the right flank was formed by Strange's Alberta scouts. The two sides exchanged gunfire for three hours. Cree rifle fire wounded some of the soldiers in the valley, while Strange's artillery put holes in the hillside, damaging the trenches where Cree sheltered. Eventually, General Strange ordered Major

Sam Steele Major-general Sir Samuel Benfield Steele (5 January 1848 – 30 January 1919) was a Canadian soldier and policeman. He was an officer of the North-West Mounted Police, head of the Yukon detachment during the Klondike Gold Rush, and commandin ...

to lead the NWMP north and outflank the Cree fighters. This manoevre was seen and Wandering Spirit and others moved along the crests of hills parallel to Steele and occasionally fired on them. This caused Steele to believe the Cree's lines were longer than they were, so he ordered his NWMP force to turn back. Around the same time, some Cree warriors outflanked the Alberta Mounted Rifles and almost captured the column's supply train. Afraid of being attacked from behind, General Strange ordered his force to retreat. Strange's troops withdrew to Fort Pitt. The Cree fighters slipped away later that day, and soon more than 1,000 soldiers resumed their search for Big Bear's band. H.A. MacKay later recounted the day's events and its aftermath. "On May 29, near Frenchman's Butte Inspector S.B. Steele made contact with an Indian scouting party. Steele's scouts called out to the party and were fired upon. Steele's troops returned fire and killed the first Indian casualty of the war. They rode down with a friend to view the remains and found his body on top the hill where he evidently had been dragged by the scout. His body was stripped of all clothing with the rope (cut short to about one yard in length) still around his neck, which had cut into his jaw. He was a huge fine-looking Indian, 'Ma-me-book' by name. The scout who had captured his mount (a swift-footed black stallion belonging to the HBCo) had galloped around the prairie with the rope attached to his saddle pommel, trailing the body in the grass in circles, the trails of which were still visible. He had thus been left exposed for days before being buried; and his body from the intense heat, was huge in size when I saw him. I requested to have him buried." H.A. MacKay, memories, HBCo archives and Glenbow Archives.

Conclusion

The battle was a victory for Big Bear's band, albeit a hollow one. It bought them time to escape from Strange, but continued resistance was hopeless. The Métis had been defeated at the

Battle of Batoche A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

three weeks earlier, and

Poundmaker Poundmaker ( – 4 July 1886), also known as ''pîhtokahânapiwiyin'' (), was a Plains Cree chief known as a peacemaker and defender of his people, the Poundmaker Cree Nation. His name denotes his special craft at leading buffalo into buf ...

's joint Cree-

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

force had surrendered. Big Bear's band fell apart during the retreat to the north after the battle. The

Battle of Loon Lake The Battle of Loon Lake, also known as the Battle of Steele Narrows, concluded the North-West Rebellion on June 3, 1885, and was the last battle fought on Canadian soil. It was fought in what was then the District of Saskatchewan of the Nort ...

on June 3 demoralized them further. By early July the rebellion was over. Big Bear had surrendered at Carlton and was in prison. Wandering Spirit was later executed along with seven others. General Strange retired back to his ranch, and the Alberta Field Force disbanded.

Legacy

In the spring of 2008, Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Christine Tell proclaimed in Duck Lake, that "the 125th commemoration, in 2010, of the 1885 Northwest Resistance is an excellent opportunity to tell the story of the prairie Métis and First Nations peoples' struggle with Government forces and how it has shaped Canada today". Frenchman Butte is a

national historic site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

, which locates the theatre of the 1885 battle staged between Cree and Canadian troops.

References

{{NHSC Frenchman's Butte Frenchman Butte No. 501, Saskatchewan Frenchman's Butte Frenchman's Butte Frenchman's Butte 1885 in Canada May 1885 1885 in the Northwest Territories

Background

The battle

Conclusion

Legacy

See also

References