Barely an hour after Crozier's detachment staggered back through the gates of Fort Carlton, a fresh force of 108 Mounted Police under Commissioner A.G. Irvine arrived, but Irvine prudently declared that Fort Carlton, more of a trading post than a defensive redoubt, was untenable, and on March 27 he ordered the 350 Mounties and civilians evacuated to the larger, stockaded settlement of Prince Albert. Dumont, well informed of the move, again proposed ambushing and slaughtering them, but again Riel forbade it.

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While jubilation reigned at Batoche, news of the Métis victory at Duck Lake stirred anger and alarm in eastern Canada, as well as anxiety as to its effect on the Indians. Riel had, in fact, sent emissaries to several chiefs, imploring them to support his cause. Crowfoot, influential chief of the Blackfoot, saw no profit in it, and the majority of Indians concurred. Two exceptions were Big Bear, and old Cree chieftain who had refused to sign any treaties with the whites, and Crowfoot's adopted son, Poundmaker, who had come to detest life on the reservation.

On March 28, the 500 settlers of Battleford, 100 miles west of Duck Lake, learned that 200 painted Cree warriors under Poundmaker were coming their way, and sought refuge in the Mounties' barracks with its 43-man garrison. After demanding food, clothing and ammunition, the Indians began looting the Hudson's Bay store and other buildings in town. The carnage spread to outlying farmhouses, which were sacked and burned. One settler who had tarried too long was murdered. Poundmaker then laid siege to the fort, but its defenders had stocked ample supplies of food and after three weeks the Indians gave up and moved on.

Meanwhile, 150 miles up the North Saskatchewan, a Cree war party led by Big Bear burst into the tiny hamlet of Frog Lake. Big Bear's war chief, Wandering Spirit, shot the Indian agent and incited his braves to kill the others over Big Bear's protests. Of the 13 white residents of Frog Lake, only three survived to be taken away as captives, while the Indian agent's nephew, Henry Quinn, escaped to carry news of the massacre to Fort Pitt, 30 miles away.

Canadian armed forces rallied behind renewed patriotic fervor. Regular troops and reservists in Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba were joined by locally organized volunteers with names like Rocky Mountain Rangers and Moose Mountain Scouts. Altogether, a North West Field Force of 8,000 men, nine cannons and two newly acquired American Gatlin guns was assembled. Against that force, the Métis rebels could count on a maximum of 1,000 men, mostly armed with old shotguns and smoothbore hunting pieces. Of the 20,000 Indians in the region, no more than 400 had thrown their lot in with Riel, and the government moved to placate the still-loyal Blackfeet, Stoneys and Saulteaux with fresh provisions of flour, beef, tea and tobacco.

Still, there existed the problem of transporting all those troops to the troubled area. The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railroad, which had been under construction since 1881, seemed to promise and answer, but a 250-mile stretch along the north shore of Lake Superior was still riddled with gaps where its builders struggled with the quaking rock ledges of the Canadian Shield. Until then, Prime Minister Macdonald and Montreal bankers had ignored the pleas of the near-bankrupt railroad for government loans. Now, seeing the North West Rebellion as a godsend, Canadian Pacific manager William Cornelius Van Horne offered to transport the troops to the prairie in 11 days, providing horse-drawn sleighs to shuttle the soldiers across the gaps, along with food and gallons of hot coffee at strategic points along the way.

Even with such accommodations, the trek along — and for a suspenseful eight-hour stretch, across — frozen Lake Superior was a harrowing ordeal, with snowblindness and at least one case of madness added to the more common occurrences of frostbite in temperatures that dropped as low as 35 degrees below zero. Nevertheless, by mid-April all units of the North West Field Force had reached their staging points along the railway beyond Winnipeg, and were ready to commence a three-pronged offensive into the heart of the Sakatchewan River territory.

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