| Subject: |
1885, Resistance, Military, First Nations, Métis, Poundmaker, Riel, Louis, Mounted Police, Fort Pitt |
| Description: |
In this appendix to "Resumé of the Riel Rebellion”, dated April 29, 1885, Lieutenant Colonel A.C.D. Pigott transcribed a correspondence between Poundmaker and Louis Riel. This may be a fictionalized account – a common literary canon of the nineteenth century – that was used to fill in missing narrative when telling a story; it may be a transcription of a real correspondence, that may have fallen into the hands of the army; or this was a second-hand account, possibly based on a discussion that Pigott may have had with Poundmaker after the chief’s capture. Pigott scribbled on the document that Poundmaker was “ a very fine Indian”. In this document Poundmaker is asking Louis Riel for assistance, and alludes to the Resistance as being “God’s work”. He also mentions a false account of a Blackfoot uprising in which 60 mounted police were supposedly killed, as told by a Métis scout, which may have been fabricated in order to get Poundmaker to join the Resistance. Lieutenant Colonel A.C.D. Pigott wrote “Resumé of the Riel Rebellion” during various engagements of the 1885 Resistance. This is one of only a few first-hand accounts by any member of the Canadian army during the 1885 Resistance. Pigott chronicled the 1885 Resistance from the March 26, 1885 skirmish at Duck Lake to the campaign against First Nations warriors from Big Bear’s and Poundmaker’s camps. These pages focus largely on battling the First Nations and list troop movements and the advance of columns by Generals Otter and Strange. This document also contains a number of appendices, not numbered in sequential order, including a map of the Battle of Fish Creek and a second-hand transcription of a correspondence between Big Bear, General Middleton and Louis Riel. This document, part of A.C.D. Pigott’s 1885 personal correspondence, is part of the A.C.D. Pigott Collection, which was acquired by the Gabriel Dumont Institute in October 1991 by the Ted Pappas family of Vancouver, British Columbia. The collection includes: Louis Riel’s English-French dictionary, Lieutenant Colonel Pigott’s 1885 Resistance battlefield manuscript, and a number of artifacts taken off the battlefield including: an inscribed watch, a pipe, a bullet maker and a buffalo powder horn (both from the Métis trenches), a carved wooden container taken from Big Bear’s camp, a First Nations decorative bracelet and horsehair braiding, which may have been traded for food by somebody captured by the Boulton’s Scouts. |
Resistance