A PIECE OF LOCAL HISTORY
Book tells story of 1895 pursuit of 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.
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.