| Description: |
Lieutenant Colonel A.C.D. Pigott wrote this document entitled “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. On page 14a of this document, Pigott writes, obviously sometime after the Resistance concluded, an account of Wandering Spirit’s role in the 1885 Resistance and discussed how Riel tried to get the First Nations involved in a future uprising in Canada. Pigott writes that Wandering Spirit was “the bad man of Big Bear’s band”. A second-hand account of an interview, which Wandering Spirit gave an interviewer regarding Louis Riel, is also related. In the story, Riel, while in the Montana Territory, tried to convince Big Bear, Imases and other chiefs that they should join him in an uprising in Canada. Pigott also indicated that Wandering Spirit tried to kill himself when captured. He also lists all the First Nations warriors that were hanged in Fort Battleford in reprisal for the Frog Lake killings. This document, part of A.C.D. Pigott’s post 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