The wolfers and a few hangers-on, 13 men in all, tramped down the defile to the Indian village on June 1, 1873. The air buzzed with angry rhetoric. The moment was tense, charged with expectation. And then, suddenly, a shot rang out in the late spring morning,followed by another and then another.That was all the inducement the wolfers needed, and they opened up, pouring volley after volley into the camp.Although the opposing parties had been trading taunts and jeers and even firing guns in the air, this burst of direct fire struck the Indians like a thunder clap and sent them scattering for cover. Some fought back with old trade muskets, but the repeating-rifle fire of the wolfers was overwhelming. The slaughter was over quickly, leaving at least 20 Indians dead and as many as 100 wounded. By contrast, just one wolfer was killed. Ever since that day this lovely section of hills in southwest Saskatchewan (then part of the North-West Territories) has carried the ignominious epithet of massacre.
The spark for the massacre at Cypress Hills flared up three weeks earlier when a party of wolfers—those who hunted and trapped wolves for their profitable pelts—camped along the Teton River a day’s ride from Fort Benton, Montana Territory. They were returning to the fort with their winter’s take of wolf pelts. Feeling secure this close to the post, the wolfers set up a relaxed camp with no sentries. It proved a bad idea. During the night a party of Plains Indians slipped in and made off with some 40 horses. The next morning the wolfers, hung over from a night of celebration, were furious when they discovered their horses stolen.
Forced to walk to Fort Benton, the seething wolfers vowed to retrieve their stolen stock and exact revenge. Inquiring at the fort, the wolfers concluded the thieves were Assiniboines, as many had recently passed through. Only later did it come to light the culprits were Plains Crees, who had slipped across the border on a horse-thieving foray.
Had the wolfers expected much sympathy or assistance in Fort Benton, they were in for a disappointment. The post commander claimed he lacked enough men to provide an escort. No one else was eager to help, either, which is not surprising, as wolfers were not exactly loved. They were rowdy, foul-smelling fellows who, over and above their personal hygiene, had earned the disdain of nearly everyone on the frontier for their habit of killing wolves by setting out buffalo organs laced with strychnine. Traders and Indians alike decried the practice. Particularly bothersome to the Indians was that many of their dogs were drawn to the poisoned meat and killed.
The wolfers did find a few willing posse men. And so, determined to retrieve their property, they and their associates set out north from Fort Benton. It was a rough bunch; some were Civil War veterans,and all had Indian-fighting experience. The Benton Record later characterized them as “good Montana citizens—thirteen Kit Carsons.” Some newspapers termed them American brigands,but the composition of the group was decidedly international, a mixture of Americans and Canadians. Commanding the motley force was John Evans, who that winter had led the “Spitzee Cavalry,”a coalition of wolfers opposed to traders who did business with the Indians.
Pushing north from Fort Benton, the wolfers followed an old Indian trail toward the Cypress Hills, where they hoped trader Abel Farwell might have news of their horses. Farwell’s whiskey was also an attraction.
The highest point in Canada between the Rockies and the Atlantic Ocean, the Cypress Hills were visible from a great distance. They took their name from the prolific jack pines—called cyprés in the Métis dialect—used by the region’s Indians to make lodge poles.
The hills had long been a favored spot of the Assiniboines and other First Nations people such as Blackfoot, Plains Crees and occasionally Teton Lakotas.These tribes revered the hills, and each had its own niche, which the other tribes respected. All were nomadic, buffalo hunting people who relied on the shaggy beasts for nearly every aspect of their culture. By the mid-1870s the Cypress Hills were among the last refuges of great herds on the northern Plains.
Perhaps no tribe favored the hills more than did the Assiniboines. Sometimes referred to as Nakotas, the Assiniboines were part of the greater Siouan family,whose tribal range extended into parts of present-day southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Assiniboines appear often as subjects in the works of early 19th-century illustrators George Catlin and Karl Bodmer. They were once a part of the Iron Confederacy, which included the Plains Crees, Ojibwas, Gros Ventresand Métis (the offspring of First Nations people and French Canadians).
By the 1850s white traders with a nose for profit in Indian trade (especially in whiskey) had pushed into the area. In the spring of 1873 two trading posts were open for business on Battle Creek. On the west bank was Fort Farwell, run by Abel Farwell, while a few hundred feet away on the opposite bank was Fort Solomon, owned by Moses Solomon. Both trading posts, but especially Far well’s, would play key roles in the June 1 clash of cultures and arms. Some 5 miles from Fort Farwell the wolfers made camp while Evans and a tough named Thomas Hardwick visited the trading post to see what information Far well might have. En route the wolfers had learned of a nearby Indian village and suspected this might be the camp they were after. Farwell told the men it was a village of Assiniboines under Little Soldier, who had only a handful of horses. However, other traders at the post told them local Indians had been unruly of late, leading the wolfers to suspect they might not be quite as innocent as Farwell had implied. Indeed, tensions in the hills were already running high when the wolfers arrived. Across Battle Creek, Moses Solomon’s trading post had become the object of Indian scorn after Solomon had reportedly cheated them. Meanwhile, Indian raiders engaged in liquor induced mischief had made off with some 30 of Abel Farwell’s horses, including the prized mount of a Canadian trader named George Hammond, a well-known loudmouth and braggart. As it happened, an Indian returned Hammond’s horse the very night the wolfers reached the trading post. The trader apparently rewarded the Indian with a bottle of whiskey. But the story didn’t end there.
June 1 opened with traders and wolfers imbibing freely from the stock at Fort Farwell. Nearby, Assiniboines bolstered their own courage with the traders’ firewater. During the drunken festivities at the fort Hammond stumbled in, shouting that his horse had been stolen again. Accounts vary as to the sequence of events that led to the confrontation at the Indian village. In one account Hammond confronted Little Soldier, who denied having stolen the horse and pointed to the animal grazing placidly not far off. The chief reportedly offered two of his own horses as a peace offering, but Hammond dismissed the offer out of hand. Another account suggests that Hammond, certain the same Indian had stolen his horse in a bid to get more liquor, grabbed his gun in anger and headed directly for the Assiniboine camp, followed by Farwell, who perhaps hoped to mediate the dispute.
Still smarting from their own run-in with horse thieves, and feeling little pain, the wolfers empathized with Hammond and filed out after him. Farwell was standing beside Hammond, pleading for calm from both sides, when the wolfers arrived at the Indian camp. Their presence angered some of the young Assiniboines, who acted threateningly, prompting the wolfers to seek cover in a defile that extended nearly to the camp.
As the situation reached the boiling point, the wolfers shouted for Farwell to get out of the way. Just who fired the first shot is unclear. Farwell claimed it was Hammond, while Métis eyewitnesses reported several random shots from the Indian camp. Regardless, after those first shots, the wolfers opened up, pouring a heavy volume of fire into the village. Assiniboine warriors recovered their composure enough to launch three attacks on the defile, only to be repulsed each time.
Meanwhile, Evans and Hardwick rode to the top of a low hill, from which they were able to fire down into the Indian camp. Far from discouraged, the Indians moved to flank the pair. As a party of wolfers rushed to their aid, the Indians shot one of them dead. Sobered by the killing, the wolfers withdrew to Fort Farwell, from which they continued firing on the camp throughout the day. Under cover of darkness the Indians fled.
The next morning the wolfers moved into the deserted camp, where they reportedly found Little Soldier drunk and hiding in one of the tepees. After killing the chief, they cut off his head and impaled it on a lodge pole. Rumors of further atrocities are harder to confirm. The wolfers then moved through the camp, collecting anything of value, pulling down the pees atop the Indian dead and torching the camp. Black smoke rose like a pall above the site as the wolfers rode off.
The wolfers resumed the search for their stolen horses, a trek that led them to Fort Whoop-Up, near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta, but the horses never turned up. What had begun as a futile quest to recover stolen stock instead wound up in the destruction of a blameless Indian camp.
Originally published in the April 2015 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.