Blood Red the Sun: The War Trail of Big Bear

"I was present at the Frog Lake Massacre and escaped by the slim margin of one hundred paces the fate that overtook my hapless fellows. For months afterward the unexpected report of a gun put my heart in my mouth, painted savages plunged in my dreams at early dawn through belts of dark firs upon my flying footsteps, bullets sang in my ears or found their mark in my flesh, and I awoke gasping and unable in the first few seconds of consciousness to convince myself that it was not all a horrible reality. Looking back on that now distant date and thinking over the flow of perilous turns in events piling swiftly one on another, the more clearly than ever before I see how close was my brush with death and wonder that I came through it and lived."W.M. Bleasdell CameronThat wide and splendid land, dominated only yesterday by the elements, but now in thrall to the use of man, the pioneer West, has been the stage for many a grim and stirring drama. This is the story of one of them, the record of an event known today as the Frog Lake Massacre.Frog Lake, a shimmering expanse of blue water, lies ten miles north of the North Saskatchewan river, with which it is connected by a creek bearing the same name, in what is now the province of Alberta. The settlement—to dignify it by the name—lies at the foot of the lake.This is the home of the Cree Indians. The home of Chief Big Bear, his son Imasees, and the war chief Wandering Spirit, who took upon themselves to take revenge on this small trading post for not holding up their end of the treaty and wiped the settlement off the map for many years to come.Through a twist of fate W.M. Bleasdell was the only one to survive the massacre. Then subsequently held captive by the tribe for two months before being rescued by a troop of the North-West Mounted Police.The year of 1885 was a time of great unrest in this section of the North, known as theNorthwest Rebellions, when numerous uprisings against the Hudsons Bay Company and Canadian government took place.Originally published as"The War Tr