Burned in Effigy: The Vagaries of Symbolic Arson

Nothing voices disapproval like building a mannequin, parading it about town under abuse, and torching the thing in public.  When it comes to over-the-top antagonistic symbolism, it is hard to beat the power of incineration.  And who doesn't like a roaring bonfire?

Over the years Canadians have taken to the streets in protest for scores of reasons.  Most often, politicians are the source of public ire, and so scarecrows in their likeness have faced the flames.  At other times, the more creative members of unruly mobs have worked artful metaphor into the performance.  A handful of protests over a hundred years of Canadian history prove that economics was often a cause that brought the torch to the tinder.

Revolutionary Lego Men protest British Taxation
without Representation.
Cooperman Brick Foundry

While trade and tariffs may not seem like a topic that could kindle the ritualistic arson, the student of Canadian history will know the subject has raised ire since the colonial era.  One need not be an expert to know that taxes have provoked their fair share of revolt over the years.

An early account of symbolic arson arose in the colony of New Brunswick when the British mercantile system was teetering on the breach.  Timber became a profitable export after Napoleon's European blockade halted the supply of Baltic wood to Britain.  After the War of 1812, the lumber barons of New Brunswick were quick to press authorities for a preferential tariff against non-imperial timber so they could still turn a profit.
 

"View of the Town of St. Andrew's with its magnificent Harbour and Bay", ca. 1840.
 Coloured lithograph by William Day (Day and Son Lithographers) after a sketch by Frederick Wells. Credit: Library and Archives Canada/C-016386.Family Heritage

An 1831 description of pyrotechnics in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, shows the great enthusiasm for news of a British ruling which maintained the tariff.

A boat said to be Baltic built, was filled with a cargo of combustibles and ... towed into the harbour, where she was moored. The Effigy of a distinguished supporter of the Baltic interests was suspended from the mast with a paper in his hand bearing the superscription "Baltic Timber Bill" - several pounds of gunpowder were concealed under his waist coat, and there was a large quantity in the boat. The combustibles were set fire to, and in due seasons, poor ______ was blown to atoms." (Cited in Graeme Wynn, "On the Margins of Empire", Illustrated History of Canada, 2007, p.199)

The protectionism of Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy proves tarriffs were still a pressing issue after confederation.  In the Conservatives last electoral victory with The Old Chieftain, reciprocity in trade (free trade on many goods) was on the receiving end of a symbolic scorching.  Historian D.J. Hall noted that when John A. Macdonald's Conservatives won the 1891 election, supporters in  Brandon, Manitoba, hit the streets in a victory parade.  The procession included the burning of a bin of "Liberal" rubbish labelled "Unrestricted Reciprocity."   Hall notes that "the Liberals were consoled when, despite the Tories' best efforts, it resolutely refused to ignite." (Hall, The Young Napoleon, p.50)

Glenbow Museum and Archives File number: NA-3561-1
Title: Social Credit rally poster, Fort Macleod, Alberta.
Date: July 2, 1935

During the deprivations of the Great Depression, there is no wonder that ordinary people again vented their frustrations at an economic system that had left them desititute.  When Alberta's Social Credit party under William "Bible Bill" Aberhart won an astounding majority in the provincial election of 1935, the village of Chancellor was witness to a conflagration.  As John Irving notes in his work The Social Credit Movement in Alberta (1959),

To celebrate the victory they piled up packing cases, boards, and poles in the main street and built a huge bonfire.   They made a straw man, to represent the former member and defeated U.F.A. candidate for Bow Valley, Jonathan M. Wheatley.  Around this effigy they wrapped the election posters of all the opposing parties, and heaved it into the flames with a pitchfork.  This act, they explained, was not to be understood as an attack on Mr. Wheatley.  They meant nothing  personal: they were burning the monetary system. (Irving, 332)

Mr. Wheatley's reaction to his stunt double's use in this fiscal allusion is not recorded.  The crowd's sentiments suggest the specious dogma of Social Credit financial ideology had taken a firm grasp of the Albertan psyche.  Wheatley's treatment shows there could be sinister undertones to such pageantry, with the threat of violence directed at the effigy's mold.

Protest of Maine Liquor Laws in Saint John N.B.
featured burning effigies of US authorities.

Economics and symbolic arson is just one theme in the fascinating history of Canadian public ritual.  When the mob takes to the streets one never knows what allegories the more creative participants may procure.  Fire is a powerful symbol in all cultures, and has the added bonus of offering a little light in the days before electrification.  While the burning of figures as economic symbols seems innocent enough, a more malevolent side to these rituals arises with the burning of models of politicians or local people.  No matter how jovial a crowd of revellers may seem, one MUST feel attacked when observing one's own likeness go up in flames!

Airminded Patriotism: Second World War social history takes flight

Studies of the Canadian home-front in the Second World War are becoming increasingly frequent, indicating that military historians in the country are becoming comfortable with the previously terrifying methodologies of social history. The wartime citizens of Saskatoon, Winnipegand Verdunhave all been the subject of recent scholarly examination and the University of Calgary has a brand new edition to the literature in Sarah Sewell's masters thesis, "Making the Necessary Sacrifice: The Military's Impact on a City at War, Calgary, 1939-1945."

A rising star in the constellation of published works is Jeff Keshen's Saints, Sinners and Soldiers, which is finding its way onto the lists of graduate seminars and comprehensive examinations alike. Keshen's work is a mirror image of your typical Second World War survey, as it crams the fighting overseas into a single chapter, a treatment traditionally reserved for the impact of the war at home. Keshen challenges the notion of a patriotic consensus, showing resistance to growing government control by farmers and workers, along with the selfish actions ofprofiteers. In Keshen's account, "The Good War" loses much of its moral lustre.

Another recent work by an undisputed heavyweight champion of Canadian military history, who has long sparred with social theory, is Jonathan Vance's Maple Leaf Empire. Vance's work is beginning to be assigned as an undergraduate text, as it conciselysurveys the Canadian military relationship with Mother Britain from confederation to the Second World War. While Vance does touch on moments of dissent, noting friction and misunderstanding between Canadians and Britons in the early years of the second war, his account is largely focused on Anglo-Canadian solidarity. The major Canadian presence in Aldershot, the Vale of York and Londonderry, are shown as a kind of reverse colonization, where, (especially after those damn Yankees arrived), the Canadians were welcomed with open arms.

Members of the "Eager Beavers" entertainment troupe from Montreal, who are visiting Aldershot, England, 4 July 1945.  Lieut. Arthur L. Cole / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-152136

Vance notes that one expression of solidarity with Britain on the Canadian homefront was particularly air-minded. With the major threat to Britain in the early war coming from the Luftwaffe, it is no surprise that Canadians wished to purchase aircraft to do their part in defence. In 1939 the Wings for Britain Fund was established to channel patriotic contributions to the Air Ministry, and in August 1940 the cause was given a great leg-up by Canadian millionaire Garfield Weston. Upon hearing of the loss of 16 Spitfires in August 1940, Weston signed a cheque for ₤100,000. Weston claimed, "As a Dominion man, I've dug deep into my jeans to help with the war [...] But I've got my money on a winning horse." (Cited in Vance, p. 164) Others soon stepped forward, with the publisher of the Montreal StarJ.W. McConnell donated $1 million for a whole squadron built in Canada.

Even prisoners contributed! Globe 1940

Elites were not the only ones to respond to the call for money for machines. A particularly novel approach came from one Dorothy Christie of Montreal, who sold some of her finer apparel to start a mailing campaign to every other "Dorothy" she could find. Her card's read, "Is your name Dorothy? If so, rally around and help buy a Spitfire for Britain." (Vance, p. 166) Dorothys across the country held some 20,000 tea parties, concerts, car washes and yard sales.  Presumably the presentation Spitfire named "Dorothy of the Empire and Great Britain" was the result.

The UK film "The First of the Few" was known as "Spitfire" in the United States. http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.ca/2013/01/blog-post_808.html

Wings for Britain eventually purchased more than 2,200 aircraft, including 1,600 Spitfires, speaking to that model's ability to capture the public imagination. Similar campaigns such as the Buy-A-Tank campaign, capitalized on the popular fascination with the machines of war, and contributed to a discourse of mechanization which pervaded the era. Added incentive for those that purchased a whole plane (the Air Ministry put the cost of a fighter at ₤5,000 for fighter, which actually only payed for the airframe), was selection of the name of the craft. Vance notes a puzzling choice of one Herbert Morris, who dubbed his spitfire "Dirty Gerty Vancouver"!

Advertisements featuring "Canada's New Mechanized Army", stirred the imaginations of young Canadians as well. As Cynthia Comacchio notes in her chapter, "To Hold on High the Torch of Liberty: Canadian Youth and the Second World War." in a recent edited volume, Canadian youth supported the war effort with an eye to the skies. Around 40,000 high school boys worked on modelling ninety different aircraft for British Commonwealth Air Training Plan purposes. (Comacchio, p. 43) The models were to be used to familiarize aircrew with a variety of allied and enemy planes. Comacchio notes that girls got in on the building as well, perhaps tiring of knitting socks for soldiers overseas. In some schools girls protested that boys were delegated modelling duties, and demanded participation. As Saturday Night magazine noted, "In these cases the knitting needles are idle while the young ladies cut patterns and paint up the finished models." (Saturday Night, 19 December 1942, as cited by Comacchio) Comacchio, as can be expected for a scholar with a keen eye for the construction of gender roles, notes, "Their participation, however, clearly stayed within the domain of traditional feminine skills."

The "Little Happy Gang" children's knitting club, who are knitting for Canadian soldiers and for the Canadian Red Cross Society.  Victor Bull / National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque / Library and Archives Canada / C-053880

These patriotic responses offer a counter to Keshen's mirror image of the "Good War".  Far from offering a black or white picture of the conflict, however, new works show that, despite the tankers of ink spilled examining the Second World War, complex new approaches may still be found. For Vance, "The speed and efficiency with which the Canadian community in Britain mobilized to support charitable causes like the Wings for Britain Fund demonstrates that Canada's empire in Britain from the First World War had never really disappeared." (Vance, p. 166) With a nod to Veronica Strong-Boag's A New Day Recalled, Comacchio's study notes that "what imprints individual and collective memory, is not the universality of experience so much as the fundamental elements of age and life stage." (p.28) War could become a shortcut to adulthood, yet also "inspired generational solidarity". (p.56) There is no questioning that the shared experience of the war shaped the Class of '45 in schools across the nation.

Further Reading:

A article from Legion magazine further elaborates on the Spitfire funds and patriotic contributions:

http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2012/09/the-gift-of-air-power/

One of the Garfield Weston spitfires was discovered in an Irish bog:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009347/Spitfire-recovered-Irish-peat-bog-70-years-crashing-Ireland.html 

Hayes, G., M. Bechthold, and M. Symes. Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honor of Terry Copp. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012. http://books.google.ca/books?id=ksabpwAACAAJ.

Keshen, Jeff. Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada’s Second World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy051/2004541329.html

Vance, Jonathan.F. Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars. OUP Canada, 2012.

Scorched Earth: Kitchener's Boer War Counterinsurgency

A large group of horsemen of the Imperial
Yeomanry galloping over a plain. © IWM (Q 72318)

The old myth of the Boer War as one of the last gentlemanly wars, tied to romantic visions of honourable combatant knights, has long been revised and retired.  The conflict had no lack of ferocity and destruction, and the line between combatants and non-combatants was very much blurred.  The guerilla tactics of Boer commandos from 1900 posed a serious difficulty to the British Army. Attempts to curb the mobility of small groups of mounted riflemen included the use of blockhouses and barbed wire, with mobile columns attempting to press the Boers towards these defences. Ian Beckett notes in Modern Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies(2001) that a more controversial method was the establishment of “concentration camps”, the destruction of houses and crops and the removal of livestock.

After the fall of Bloemfontein in the spring of 1900, Field Marshal Lord Roberts had ordered the protection of Boer property and allowed Boers considered loyal to return to their homes. After guerrillasbegan to emerge in the summer, however, Roberts ordered the destruction of houses close to vulnerable communications infrastructure. Other efforts to detract from guerrilla attacks were collective fines and the compulsion of Boer civilians to ride on trains.
 

Kitchener

Roberts policies may be deemed moderate. He rescinded less discriminate policies, and ordered the destruction of only those houses which were proven to be used by Boer fighters. From December of 1900, however, Roberts' successor Lord Kitchener extended the internment system to includeboth military prisoners and civilian refugees. Kitchener attempted to remove the entire Boer population from the veld. As he wrote in March 1901, "The refugee camps for women and surrendered boers [sic] are I am sure doing good work[;] it enables a man to surrender and not lose his stock and movable property . .. The women left in farms give complete intelligence to the boers of all our movements and feed the commandos in their neighbourhood". (Krebs, History Workshop, No. 33, p. 41)  

Kitchener’s internment policy was aimed at women as well, who were thought to be key figures in motivating the Boers. Women were originally rounded up to prevent them from spying for the Boers.  Yet as Paula Krebs suggests, this motivation was kept quiet, as it would admit that the women were incarcerated due to their military activities.  (Krebs, p.42)  Liberals and Irish M.P.s had been arguing that those in the camps were prisoners of war, not refugees.  In March of 1901, an exchange in the House of Commons evoked the gendered nature of imperialism.  Irish M.P. John Dillon asked, "What civilised government ever deported women? Had it come to this, that this Empire was afraid of women."  (Krebs, p.42)
 

"Garden of Remembrance, Aliwal North" 

Concentration Camp Memorial

License Creative Commons

Some rights reserved by G Bayliss

Beckett suggests that some women were held hostage to provoke Boer surrenders. Many women and children were condemned to a nomadic existence when their homes were razed.  Inside the camps, Boer children were subject to colonial indoctrination.  Research by Paul Zietsman notes that education provided in concentration camps attempted to Anglicize Boer children, which shows parallels with colonial aboriginal policies of assimilation behind residential schools. These policies invoked further political controversy back in Britain, especially when poor management of the camps led to the deaths of nearly one quarter of the 116,000 civilians detained.  When camp tents began to be populated by women and children, Britain, and especially British women, were alerted to a potential cause. 
 
After the uproar regarding the camps, Kitchener still claimed that their functional value outweighed the dissent.  In 1901, Kitchener claimed, "I wish I could get rid of these camps but it is the only way to settle the country and enable the men to leave their commandos and come in to their families without being caught and tried for desertion." (Krebs, p.43)

Typical group of Boer farmers at "Compensation" claims tent after war.Rodolphe Lemieux / Library and Archives Canada 1902-1903.

The success of these efforts is still debated among military historians.  It would not be the last time that the tactics of counterinsurgency led to political turmoil domestically.  Curiously, the tactic of burning farms was not as controversial as the camps themselves.  By May of 1902, somewhere in the range of 30,000 homes had been razed along with many acres of crops.  Larry Addington noted that Kitchener's tactics were very "un-Victorian", and observes the "systematic sweeps through Boer country foreshadowed American 'Search and Destroy' tactics during the Vietnam War nearly seventy years later." (Addington, Patterns of War since the Eighteenth Century, p.124).  Death rates are a matter of some debate, but figures of 25,000 Boer deaths, along with 12,000 black Africans.  The conflicts' brutal policy against non-combatants and domestic outrage at the harder facets of suppresion, resonate with students of twentieth-century counterinsurgency.

Review - James Wood's "Militia Myths"

James Wood.  Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier,
1896-1921.  Vancouver  University of British Columbia Press, 2011. 
368 pp.  $35.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7748-1766-0.

Reviewed by William Pratt (University of Calgary)
Published on H-War (December, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The patrimony of the Canadian militia myth is conventionally traced back to the first Anglican bishop of Toronto, John Strachan (1778-1867), who attributed British success in the War of 1812 to the stalwart Loyalist militia. The notion that citizen soldiers were the best way to defend the country has resonated in the country ever since. Indeed, Jack Granatstein's survey _Canada's Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace_ opens with the statement that, "the central myth in the history of Canadian arms is, and always has been, that the colonists and citizens provide their own defence."[1] In the twentieth century, the old story of a Canadian Expeditionary Force composed of sturdy woodsmen, farmer's sons, and other pastoral citizenry that answered the call of Britain in 1914  has long been refuted by Canadian military historians. A recent work in the Studies in Canadian Military History series, co-published by the University of British Columbia Press and Canadian War Museum, proves, however, that Canada's militia myth has a much longer intellectual genealogy, and was by no means a static concept. As its author writes, "Although Canadians retained their confidence in citizen soldiers throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, the range of justifications they expressed in defence of that faith points not to a single all-encompassing militia myth but, rather, to a collection of competing and even contrary ideas by which they ordered their understanding of war" (p. 143).

James Wood's _Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921_ examines the ideal of the trained militiaman in military rhetoric of the day, and the eventual replacement of this icon after the First World War by the archetype of the untrained civilian. The idea of the citizen soldier is defined by Wood as "a belief in the conviction that good citizens should provide for their own defence" (p. 10). Wood focuses largely on the literary and cultural elements of Canadian military journals, especially rhetoric found in the _Canadian Military Gazette, _which is systematically analyzed here for the first time_. _The work stems from the author's dissertation at Wilfrid Laurier University supervised by Roger Sarty, which is indicated by exhaustive citation and academic prose.

In search of the lineage of the militia myth, Wood delves much further than the War of 1812 into the traditions bestowed to the North American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, regular soldiers were regarded with a "mix of contempt and fear" (p .5). Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army connected standing armies to tyranny in the minds of many, and such ideas, when transplanted to North American soil, encouraged praise for the British North American militia in the War of 1812, and later the Dominion of Canada's nascent military exploits in the late nineteenth century. After noting these British antecedents, however, Wood writes that "In its Canadian context, the militia myth refers to a dangerously faulty memory of the War of 1812 and the ill-founded confidence of Canadians in the abilities of amateur citizen soldiers" (p. 11).

“Militia Training on the King’s Birthday,” by C.W. Jefferys, from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History, Vol 2. Toronto : Ryerson Press, 1945, p. 116. http://1812.kfpl.ca/war-of-1812-may-5/

In the Dominion this myth did not go unchallenged. The small instructional cadre of the Permanent Force and representatives of the British Army (especially the British General Officer Commanding the Canadian Militia) fought against the notion that partially trained citizen soldiers were enough for the purposes of Canadian defense. To these groups, Wood adds "an identifiable group of professionally minded militia officers whose efforts Canadian historians have mostly overlooked," who did not call for a professional standing army, yet railed against public apathy towards defense (p. 6).

Before the Boer War, the Canadian militia ideal was rooted in the home defense tradition, and strongly connected to marksmanship. Public apathy was shaken with the Venezuela Crisis of 1895-96 and the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. A revival of military interest emerged in the early years of the Laurier government. This enthusiasm was largely expressed in the proliferation of rifle shooting, both in paramilitary rifle clubs, and as formal training endeavors. Military reform was stifled by an aversion to standing armies until general officer commanding, Major General Sir Edward Thomas Henry Hutton, skillfully used the rhetoric of a "national army" to promote change. Hutton is shown to leverage a national appeal for the militia, working hard to popularize it in Quebec. He urged Canadians to take up universal military training on the Swiss model and encouraged marksmanship. Wood argues that while Hutton was successful in invigorating militarism in Canada, he was influenced by ideas that were already rooted in the debates of colonial militiamen. 
Despite this awakening, before the Boer War, the Canadian militia was, "more deeply involved in its social role than its military function" (p. 29).

The Boer War itself fostered notions that an armed citizenry could best regular soldiers, yet raised the problem of deploying a home defense militia overseas. Instead of the notion in the historical literature which suggests that militia officers believed in an untrained citizen soldier, the debate after the Boer War was instead focused on what degree of training was required (p. 94). The Dominion Militia Act of 1904 enshrined ideas that the colonial troops had performed well in the Boer War, and promoted the idea of a citizen army.

Wood argues that despite the contentions of historian C. P. Stacey, the period before 1909-10 was characterized by a conception of home defense against an American invasion. With the outbreak of the Great War, the focus shifted from a home defense force to an expeditionary force, and the eclipse of the active militia in popular esteem by the Canadian Expeditionary Force. In the years before the war, rhetoric increasingly dwelt on the responsibilities of citizenship when promoting military participation. As Wood notes, "Conditioned before the war to accept military service as a duty of citizenship in time of war, when the war in Europe turned into a national crusade and the CEF became a symbol of the nation-in-arms, this pre-war understanding of a citizen's duty became one of the foundations of conscription in 1917" (p. 212). Up to 1917, Canada's "home defence orientation" was associated with the "citizen soldier ideal" (p. 1). After conscription, the long-serving prewar militiaman was overshadowed by the notion of the innately talented civilian going straight from civvy-street to the battlefield with a modicum of training.While a host of newspapers and journals are listed in the bibliography, the main source of analysis is the _Canadian Military Gazette. _This was the only military journal to continue publication for the period studied. The journal was self-proclaimedly nonpartisan and reprinted articles on military themes from across the country. As with any discursive study of a print source, ascertaining the extent to which views expressed in the journal were read and accepted by Canadians is problematic. Wood notes that hundreds of men may have read a single copy in the mess, but it may be equally true that copies moldered without ever being read. That the journal was quoted by newspapers across the country is a good indicator that its columns carried some weight, as are frequent references in the _Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs _(pp. 14-16).

In addressing the historiography of the ideas surrounding the Canadian militia, Wood grapples with both historical heavyweights and a new breed of contenders. Carl Berger's classic work on imperialist thought in Canada, _A Sense of Power _(1971), posited that Canadian nationalism was heavily influenced by, and compatible with, imperial ties to Britain. Wood challenges these imperial connections when applied to the militia, suggesting that, "the indigenous citizen soldier traditions of the country" were highly influential in forming imperial notions in Canada (p. 55). Militia criticisms of the Permanent Force often hinged on the British character of the regulars, blaming them for bending to the whims of patronage (pp. 58-64). Wood notes that while military reformers couched their criticisms in rhetoric which emphasized duty to the British Empire, the specific reforms they promoted advocated home defense (p. 143). Wood is especially set against the utility of gender studies in examining the militia. For example, he considers the approach of Mark Moss's _Manliness and Militarism: Educating young Boys in Ontario for War _(2001) to be ahistorical. While Moss argues that the cadet movement was an exercise in socialization and control, fostering militarism and patriotism, Wood contends that the long-term military aims were never overshadowed by progressive social prescriptions (p.163).

The extent to which the ideas in the _Canadian Military Gazette _and those expressed in the speeches of the Canadian Defence League or various general officers commanding were shared by the general public is, of course, questionable. Wood convincingly suggests that while at the beginning of the Laurier era, the general public was little interested in military affairs, by the time of the Dreadnought crisis in 1909-10, Canadians had awakened to military demands. The degree of sophistication of the civilian public's thoughts are challenged, however; Wood notes that "many Canadians simply enjoyed a good parade and felt, almost instinctively, that maintaining a national army was simply something that 'grown up' nations did" (p. 3).

Wood's work expands our knowledge of the Canadian militia beyond the elite imperialists and general officers commanding. By a close study of the _Canadian Military Gazette _and the speeches of militia officers and advocates, he shows the complex varieties of thought regarding the role of the citizen soldier in Canadian defense. By doing so he muddies the waters of the traditional historiography surrounding imperialism and the militia in Canada. More a history of military thought than a discursive study of popular conceptions, the work will appeal to academic military historians, while leaving gendered analysis and discourse and identity studies to the social historians.

Note

[1]. Jack L. Granatstein, _Canada's Army: Waging War and Keeping the
Peace _(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 3_._

Citation: William Pratt. Review of Wood, James, _Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921_. H-War, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2012.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=34351

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

Chief Crowfoot's Military Youth

Title: Earliest known
 illustration of Crowfoot.
Date: 1875
Photographer/Illustrator:
Nevitt, Richard Barrington 
Glenbow Image No: NA-51-1

Chief Crowfoot of the Blackfoot, is generally not known as a generalissimo.  After his abstention from the 1885 North-west Rebellion, he rose to notoriety as an emblem of loyalty, or in the parlance of the late nineteenth-century, a "good Indian."  Yet like any resident of the West in the nineteenth-century, Crowfoot did not live a life devoid of violence.  Hugh Dempsey's biography, Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfoot (1972, 1982) recorded the problems discerning the details of the future chief's youth as an occasional warrior.  Dempsey wrote in the early 1970s, "Blackfoot tales of war often were embellished with supernatural acts, while the date and place were not considered worthy of recall. For this reason, the telling of [Crowfoot's] first and subsequent war exploits can only attempt to follow a logical path through the maze of fact and legend." (Dempsey, p. 13)

Crowfoot's youth shows numerous examples of his skill at warfare.  In several raids on enemy camps during the 1840s, he was shot by the enemy.  In one instance, Crowfoot daringly ran into an enemy camp and touched a lodge of the enemy Crow tribe.  Subject to Crow gunfire, a ball hit Crowfoot in the arm, but passed through without shattering any bone.  In another raid on the Shoshoni tribe, Crowfoot was more seriously injured by gun fire, necessitating help to return to his own camp.  The lead ball had lodged in Crowfoot's back, and as it was never removed, caused him problems in later life.

Title: Combat between Blackfoot, Assiniboine and Cree people, Fort McKenzie, Montana.
Date: August 28, 1833
Photographer/Illustrator: Bodmer, KarlGlenbow Archives Image No: NA-2347-1

Crowfoot was by all accounts a brave warrior, and several episodes narrated by Dempsey enforce the claim.  On one occasion, Crowfoot was out with a party which hoped to steal horses from the Crees, but encountered an enemy band wandering the windswept prairie on their own horse-stealing foray. As Dempsey wrote,

Crowfoot was among the first to rush into the fight, where he singled out a Cree warrior who was running toward the trees.  To travel more quickly, Crowfoot hurled aside his rifle as he ran after his enemy.  The Cree reached the dense bushes, but Crowfoot followed him.  Risking ambush, he plunged along the trail until he came close enough to grab the Cree by the hair.  Wrenching him backward, Crowfoot plunged the knife into his chest and killed him on the spot.  He then hacked the scalp from the Cree's head and returned to his comrades, who had also been victorious.  (Dempsey, p.18)

Glenbow Image No: NA-1241-10
Title: Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot.
Date: 1885
Photographer/Illustrator:
Gully, F., Calgary, Alberta

Another violent encounter with the Crees later developed into a shooting match between rifle pits. When stalemate seemed to threaten, Crowfoot left his defences and crawled forward towards the enemy.  Dempsey writes that "[a]rrows and balls whistled past him, but he kept moving forward until he found a shallow depression midway between the two lines.  Then reaching into his firebag, he withdrew his pipe and turned to his comrades, shouting, 'Oki, come and smoke with me!" (Dempsey, p. 18)  Crowfoot's calm in the face of danger inspired his followers to start crawling forward towards his position, and when the Cree saw this movement, they assumed the worst, turned and fled.  Leading by example had won the day.

A bloody confrontation in 1873, shows that revenge could be the causus bellus of First Nations warfare.  Crowfoot's eldest son had left the camp at Three Hills and headed to war.  The son was Crowfoot's only healthy son.  One son suffered from developmental issues and the other had poor vision.  The eldest would never return to his father's camp, having been shot by the Cree north of the Red Deer River.

As Crowfoot mourned, his anger grew.  Dempsey notes, that Crowfoot's one true flaw was his fiery temper, and in this case his wrath was directed towards the Cree tribe. (p. 67)  As Dempsey wrote, "Revenge did not have to be upon the actual killer of Crowfoot's son; it was knowledge enough that the Crees were responsible.  The blood of a Cree, any Cree, would avenge the loss."  (p. 71)  After searching the prairies, a small group of Cree were discovered.  One man was killed, his body "scalped and mutilated, satisfied Crowfoot's desire for revenge."  (p. 71)  Later on, when a peace treaty was in effect between the two tribes, Crowfoot adopted the future Cree chief, Poundmaker, as his son.  Given the previous revenge killing of a Cree man, the choice of Poundmaker as a "replacement" for his eldest son is particularly ironic.

Title: "Crowfoot", Chief of the

 Blackfeet Indians. 

Credit: O.B. Buell/Library
 and Archives Canada/C-001871
Date 1886

Crowfoot's power in the 1870s and beyond were not due to his military prowess.  When chiefs such as Big Swan and Old Sun rode out against their enemies, Crowfoot remained in his lodge.  This being said, Crowfoot's reputation of bravery in his earlier years could not have hurt him in later life.  The 1870s were the last gasp of Crowfoot's power amongst his tribe.  During this period he had a large herd of around 400 horses, and still enjoyed the esteem of his people.  Even at the signing of Treaty No. 7, however, Crowfoot was not considered the greater leader of the Blackfoot confederacy.  Both Red Crow and Rainy Chief of the Bloods had larger followers, and Red Crow was closer to what one might call the leader of the combined Blackfoot, Blood and Piegan tribes. By 1881, whisky had crushed the organization of Crowfoot's people.  Dempsey notes that it was only "with the old order changing [that] he emerged as Crowfoot the peacemaker."  (p. 81)