Battle of Fish Creek
North-West Rebellion of 1885
The advantage of surprise that Gabriel Dumont had planned at Fish Creek, a stream that cut across the prairie in a ravine forty feet deep, was an improvised buffalo pound that would have worked but for the undisciplined nature of the Métis and aboriginals. Dumont had given strict orders on movement to occur off the road where the grass would leave no trail. A few irresponsible young warriors were unable to resist the chase of a few cattle up and down and across the road. Their tracks were spotted by General Middleton’s scouts the next morning.
Dumont with a group of horsemen enroute to their hiding places in the coulee encountered the advance guard of Middleton’s militia. A couple of Métis were shot and others fled in a panic. Dumont rallied fifteen riders who remained and in a thicket were able to hold the militia off. When he returned to the ravine, he found only forty-seven of the one hundred and thirty men he had left there. He sent a horseman to Riel at Batouche for reinforcements and attempted to round up the deserters to persuade them to return to the fight. Dumont still had the advantage of position.
General Middleton’s Militia Thwarted
General Middleton’s milita soon discovered they were unable to be near the lip of the ravine as the ranks of men became easy targets. Two cannons could not be placed on the edge, and their shrapnel fell harmlessly past the range of the riflemen below. Middleton’s second branch of the militia were having difficulty in crossing the South Saskatchewan river, filled with chunks of ice from the spring thaw, in a single small boat.
When ammunition became low, Dumont ordered the prairie grass and bush fired, and had the Métis attack under cover of the smoke. Dumont had hoped the old trick of plains warfare would assist in his finding ammunition on the dead bodies of his enemy. He was unsuccessful, but the horseman he had sent out earlier to Batouche returned with eighty companions. The Metis and aboriginal cavalry charged the coulee and drove Middleton’s troops back.
Métis Victory
The Métis had won the battle by fighting their attackers to a standstill. Their guerilla-style resistance and the position the Métis had taken in the ravine was a miniature Khyber Pass of the North and had shocked Middleton, as his past experience included experience in the the Indian Mutiny. Middleton realized his column could have been destroyed. This resulted in the immobilization of his militia for two weeks.
Some of the militiamen questioned the message sent by the government about the rebel Métis and aboriginals. There was a feeling among some of them that the Metis and aboriginals had been wronged, the government had been criminally negligent. Other militia had no compunction about looting and burning Métis homes, and driving off their livestock.
Casualty figures for the Métis were four dead and two wounded; and, the militia had fifty: ten killed and forty wounded.
Sources:
A Strange Empire: A Narrative of the North-West (1994), Joseph Kinsey Howard
The Dominion annual register and review (1886), Henry James Morgan
Gabriel Dumont: the Metis Chief and his lost world (2003), George Woodcock, James Rodger Miller
Battle of Fish Creek
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