By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
"BATTLEFORD REMEMBERS STOCKADE DAYS" reads the banner head running across the top of the page of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. A subhead breathlessly reveals that "450 Persons Sought Shelter in Stockade When Battle Flared." A blurb between the two decks explains that on July 24 (of 1935) "thousands of Western pioneers gathered near the old Stockade at Battleford in celebration of 50 years of peace after the Riel Rebellion."
A fourth deck enlarges: "ONLY ONE GUN, A SEVEN POUNDER, IN FORT AT BATTLEFORD; HAD TO GET WATER FROM RIVER; SETTLEMENT LAID WASTE."
True. Well, mostly. If this had happened in Weyburn, we too would have erected cairns to commemorate that terrible time. Viewed in the context of the Frog Lake Massacre that recently had occurred (even if embellished beyond recognition), one does not envy the predicament of a few hundred people crowded into the RCMP stockade with insufficient supplies and scant protection. We can feel their terror and empathize with their worst fears.
The opening paragraph further prepares one for horror:
"What of life in the stockade at Battleford during the Riel Rebellion, where 450 people sought shelter from hordes of infuriated Indians who terrorized the district and who, before aid could be secured, plundered and laid waste this pioneer settlement? What of its perils, its hardships, its heartaches?" One of the besieged, by the way, was Battlefords Rifles Cpl. Wilfred Latour, recently arrived from Quebec, and eventual father of Henri Latour, well known to many readers as a long-time French teacher at the Weyburn Collegiate.
Later one reads: "All food was supplied by the government and was rationed out. The barracks, built in the form of a T, provided separate quarters for the women and children, and in addition a number of them were housed in the superintendent's quarters. Consider their peril. There was only one gun, a seven-pounder, within the fort. It was built on a bastion in a corner, with lookouts on either side - 50 men to a garrison, and not a chance in the world in a four-square attack. Worse still, no water was obtainable in the barracks and if access to the river had been prevented by the enemy, their doom would have been sealed."
For Canadian civilians in any time frame during the last two centuries, the foregoing circumstances would be undeniably traumatic, and I, as one who has never been exposed personally to war or violence beyond a punch in the nose or a few deserved swats on the posterior, should be the last to trivialize it. As mentioned, the siege took place while the Frog Lake Massacre was on everyone's mind. But context affects perspective and significance, so I feel it appropriate to insert another assessment.
In "The Story of the Press" (the western Canadian press), a booklet given me by a friend a few years ago and quoted at length at the time, young, innocent inexperienced British immigrant Howard Angus Kennedy, practically railroaded into the role of war correspondent, arrived in Battleford only a few days after it was relieved by General Otter's force. He wrote, in part: "The whole population of the district (in the stockade) were believed to be in imminent danger. To what extent that fear was justified is not for me here to discuss."
He adds after a visit to the scene many years later: "According to the official inscription on the cairns erected in 1925, that town was 'sacked' by the rebel Indians. As a fact, though the inhabitants had taken refuge in the fort, their deserted homes were not touched (two houses were burned in 'the old town' south of the Battle River)." As noted in an earlier paragraph in which the siege was described, "if access to the river had been prevented by the enemy" the doom of those in the stockade would have been sealed. But obviously, the Indians took no such step.
So take your pick. The Indian rebels were no angels and had
I been one of the besieged, I too would have been terrified. But
in the event, the rebels may have shown humanity and restraint.
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