Book recounts fugitive’s flight from law
Saskatchewan author explores resistance and reconciliation in book on Almighty Voice
Saskatchewan author and historian Bill Waiser’s newest book, In Search of Almighty Voice: Resistance and Reconciliation, tells the story of Almighty Voice, a member of the One Arrow Willow Cree.
BILL WAISER
Almighty Voice was arrested by the North-west Mounted Police on Oct. 22, 1895 for killing a settler’s cow five months earlier. Taken to the Duck Lake barracks, Almighty Voice was to face trial the next morning before Indian Agent Robert Mckenzie, a government official he had once threatened.
Fearing imprisonment and the loss of his freedom, Almighty Voice slipped away when his guard left the room. He headed first to his home community, but knowing that the police would come looking for him, he fled with a young woman, Small Face, to the Carrot River country. The book excerpt below from Chapter 2 (“Come on, Old Boy”) picks up the story as NWMP Sergeant Colin Colebrook and his guide François (Frank) Dumont close in on the fugitive and his partner.
The NWMP assumed that Almighty Voice and his young companion would flee southeast along the winter section of the Carlton Trail to the Touchwood Hills (south of the Quill Lakes) and the Cree reserves there. Detachments in the area were alerted to watch for the fugitive Indian. But Almighty Voice planned to go east, through the less accessible Carrot River country, to elude capture. He and Small Face slipped away on foot late Thursday night, 24 October, as the first snow of the season started to fall, and walked a short distance the next day. Later accounts had the pair fleeing the reserve in a cart, but that would have attracted attention — something Almighty Voice wanted to avoid. A cart would also limit where he could go. When it became dark, Almighty Voice disappeared for a few hours and returned with a stolen grey horse. The pair rode through the night along the Carlton Trail (known as the Hoodoo Trail in that area) before picking up a smaller trail sometime on Saturday and striking east through the rolling parkland, dotted with clumps of trees and small saline lakes and sloughs. Once among the isolated, sparsely populated hills, Almighty Voice took time to camp and rest the horse.
Colebrook and Dumont were not far behind. By Sunday, they had reached Hoodoo, a stopping place and mail station on the Carlton Trail, just northwest of present-day St. Benedict, and determined that Almighty Voice had not come that way. That afternoon, they were joined by NWMP interpreter Tom Mckay, who had been sent by Superintendent Moffatt to assist with the search. Working together, they located the place where Almighty Voice and Small Face had left the main trail. The three tracked the man and woman through the brush-riddled country, southeast of the Carrot River, until it became too dark. Early next morning before sunrise (Monday, 28 October), Colebrook and Dumont readied to resume the search, while Mckay doubled back to Batoche with Colebrook’s pack horse for more food rations. Once back on the Hoodoo Trail, Mckay met a police constable and his team hauling supplies from the Batoche detachment for the search. Mckay grabbed what he needed and then set off again to find the Mountie and his scout, now a day ahead and getting closer to their quarry.
The searchers were in the saddle early again Tuesday morning, anxious to get going as soon as the sun started to come up. It had been almost one week since the escape of Almighty Voice. Dumont had carefully inspected every campsite they came across and told Colebrook the night before, “I am sure we will see him tomorrow.” They were probably just east of Waterhen Lake, near present-day Beatty, about 60 miles from One Arrow. The land was etched by deep, heavily timbered ravines that sheltered shallow creeks running northeast to the Saskatchewan. Because of the thick brush, the pair stumbled upon Almighty Voice and Small Face almost by accident.
Colebrook spotted them a short distance away and quietly called out to Dumont, who was looking for their tracks, “Here they are.”
Almighty Voice had just shot a prairie chicken for breakfast and was tying it to a bundle on the pony, behind where Small Face was sitting. Neither saw the policeman and his scout approaching. Dumont pulled out a service revolver that Colebrook had given him and then called out after them not to run. “I want to ask you something,” he said in Cree. Almighty Voice told Small Face that it was a trap and started loading his double-barrelled shotgun. Dumont expected Colebrook to rush the couple and gave his horse a sharp whip with the reins to get going. But the Mountie calmly walked his horse forward, and Dumont had to stop and wait for him. Colebrook didn’t want to alarm the fugitive but was nonetheless confident he would surrender.
Once together, the pair slowly trotted towards their quarry about 150 yards away. Almighty Voice, still busy loading his shotgun, shouted to Dumont to tell the policeman, “I want to shoot the sergeant.” Dumont translated the warning for Colebrook. Small Face, now crying, pleaded with Almighty Voice not to use his gun. Dumont also told him not to shoot. But Almighty Voice ignored them as he capped his shotgun. “He’s going to shoot, he’s going to shoot,” Dumont repeated, his voice betraying his fear. Colebrook stopped his horse about 20 feet from Almighty Voice and calmly said in his English accent, “Come on, old boy.” But the fugitive, with his shotgun now primed, started walking backwards. He stopped two or three times, dropped to one knee and took aim at the Mountie. Each time, he yelled in Cree, “Go away, go away.” Colebrook’s horse was spooked by the shouting and reared up, nearly spilling his rider to the ground. The horse then refused to move.
After Colebrook got control of his horse, he continued to ride towards Almighty Voice, while Dumont swung wide to try to get behind him. They passed Small Face, who sat frozen on her pony, but were losing ground to Almighty Voice, who had scurried to a nearby bluff about 50 yards away. Colebrook now picked up the pace, with his gloved right arm raised in the halt signal, saying over and over, “Come on, old boy.” Almighty Voice knelt down again by the bluff and took aim at the policeman, but then stood up. Colebrook kept coming. Almighty Voice slipped into the bush and trained his shotgun on the Mountie. Colebrook was about 25 feet away when the blast threw him from his horse. The sergeant was dead before he hit the ground.
Hearing the gunshot, Dumont cautiously rode around the bluff and spotted Colebrook lying motionless with blood seeping out of his upper chest. Almighty Voice was looking down at the Mountie but then scrambled back into the bush. Dumont watched for a few nervous minutes to see if Colebrook was still alive. But he detected no movement, not even breathing. The eerie silence was broken only by the policeman’s horse, busily feeding as if nothing had happened.
Dumont decided to get help — he remembered passing a house about six miles back — and rode past Small Face, who had not moved since he had first called out to them. He was worried, though, that Almighty Voice might come after him, and in his panic, accidentally discharged his revolver when he tried to cock the hammer while riding off. The shot startled Small Face out of her trancelike state and digging her heels into the side of her pony, she galloped after Almighty Voice, who was running away from the bluff. She followed, looking back occasionally, until he grew tired and got on the pony with her. The pair rode for some time before deciding it was safe to stop. Almighty Voice gave Small Face a few things to live on, telling her that she couldn’t go on with him and that she should walk to the nearest place. “They won’t leave me alone,” he said, “for what I have done to them.” He promised to try to meet her at “the closed rock” (Barrier Lake) near Nut Lake and then rode off. Small Face never saw Almighty Voice again.
Dumont found another house, closer to the place of the murder, and frantically told the two occupants (one of them E. B.
Cay) what had happened. They weren’t sure, at first, what he was talking about. One of the men set off for the Mountie stationed at Flett Springs, east of Goose Hunting Creek, and returned more than two hours later with Constable Charles Tennant, who was on fire duty in the area. Dumont repeated his story — how he was certain that Colebrook had been killed — and then led Tennant to the slain sergeant.
In examining the body and the mortal shotgun wound, they found the left hand open, without a glove, and a small, non-regulation-issue revolver within reach. Colebrook had apparently concealed the weapon, at the ready, inside his coat. It could explain why Almighty Voice fired: he might have caught a glimpse of the gun when the Mountie’s horse reared. Colebrook’s corpse was loaded into a wagon brought by the two men from the house. Tennant asked them to take the dead sergeant to Kinistino, while he and Dumont tried to pick up the trail of Almighty Voice, now a murderer on the run.
Word of Colebrook’s death reached Prince Albert late the next day, 30 October. Constable Tennant had hurriedly scribbled a few lines in pencil on a scrap of paper and asked the two men transporting the body to hand the note to Corporal William J. Bowdridge at the Kinistino detachment. The news was then relayed to Superintendent Moffatt, who in turn telegraphed the NWMP commissioner in Regina that Colebrook had been killed by “the escaped Indian prisoner” and that Tennant was “on trail of a murderer.” That’s all he knew. “I have no particulars,” he confessed in a followup letter that same night. “I am very much in the dark as yet.”
The commissioner’s office immediately distributed a circular letter to all divisions across the prairies, imploring them to be on the lookout for “a young man, tall, slim, known as Jean Baptiste or Almighty Voice … what would be considered a good looking Indian.” Superintendent Moffatt was convinced, though, that Almighty Voice would seek out help in one of two directions: he would either head north to the James Smith and Big Head (Cumberland) reserves near Fort à la Corne on the Saskatchewan River or east to the Nut Lake (Yellow Quill) reserve. He consequently dispatched a three-man search team, under Inspector John Beresford Allan, to Kinistino at daybreak on 31 October to look for the fugitive Indian. Getting there would not be easy because of the early arrival of winter. The
South Saskatchewan River, the same river that Almighty Voice had crossed during his escape only a week earlier, was heavy with floating ice, and the mounted policemen and their horses had to be ferried across in a skiff. Even then, they got caught in an ice jam and landed about a mile below their starting point.
Moffatt also ordered a second group of Mounties from Batoche to Harperview (near present-day Birch Hills) on the Prince Albert — Kinistino — Melfort trail to retrieve the body of Colebrook and bring it to Prince Albert.
Out of respect for their fallen colleague, they brought Colebrook’s wife, Ida, with them. She had answered the phone at the Batoche detachment when news of her husband’s death was called in. When the party reached William Harper’s home, they were shocked to find the Mountie’s frozen corpse in a makeshift coffin in the outhouse. It was being kept there until it was safe to cross the river.
Bill Waiser is the author of more than a dozen books, including A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan before 1905, winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. In Search of Almighty Voice: Resistance and Reconciliation can be ordered by contacting your local bookstore.