Frog Lake Massacre

The Frog Lake Massacre was a Cree uprising during the North-West Rebellion in western Canada. Led by Wandering Spirit, young Cree warriors attacked the village of Frog Lake in the District of Saskatchewan of the Northwest Territories on 2 April 1885, where they killed nine settlers. Frog Lake became part of the province of Alberta in 1905.

Causes
Angered by what seemed to be unfair treaties by the Canadian government and the dwindling buffalo population, the main source of food for the indigenous people, chief Big Bear had been organizing the Cree for resistance. They were encouraged by the Métis victory at the Battle of Duck Lake.

Anger among the Cree in the area was directed largely to the Indian Agent, Thomas Quinn, who treated the Cree with harshness and arrogance.

The Massacre
Against Big Bear's opposition, a band of Cree led by war chief Wandering Spirit took Thomas Quinn hostage in his home in the early morning of 2 April. The Cree then took more white settlers hostage and took control of the village. They gathered the Europeans, including two priests, into the local Catholic church, where mass was in progress. After the mass concluded, around 11:00 a.m., the Cree ordered their prisoners to move to a Cree encampment a couple of kilometres away.

Quinn steadfastly refused to leave the town; in response, Wandering Spirit shot him in the head. In the resulting panic, Wandering Spirit's band killed eight other settlers: the two Catholic priests, Leon Fafard and Felix Marchand, Fafard's lay assistant John Williscroft, as well as John Gowanlock, John Delaney, William Gilchrist, George Dill, and Charles Gouin.

One of the Hudson's Bay Company clerks, William Bleasdell Cameron, one of the men rounded up into the church, went to the Hudson's Bay shop to fill an order made by Quinn for Miserable Man after the mass. When the first shots were fired, he escaped with the help of sympathetic Cree, and made his way to a nearby Wood Cree camp, where the chief pledged to protect him.

Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney, wives of two of the slain men, their families and approximately seventy others from the town were taken captive.

Aftermath
The Cree moved on to Fort Pitt. The massacre prompted the Canadian government to take notice of the growing unrest in Western Canada. The rebellion was put down.

Wandering Spirit and five other warriors: Round the Sky, Bad Arrow, Miserable Man, Iron Body, Little Bear, Crooked Leg and Man Without Blood, were convicted of treason for their actions in the Frog Lake Massacre. They were hanged with two other Cree convicted of murder in the largest mass execution in Canadian history.

Although Big Bear had opposed the attack, he was charged with treason because of his efforts to organize resistance among the Cree. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in the Manitoba Penitentiary.

Legacy
The site of the massacre was designated the "Frog Lake National Historic Site" in 1923, at the location of the Cree uprising which occurred in the District of Saskatchewan, North-West Territories. Parks Canada says the site designated by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada is extensive, but the national park service owns only a small portion, mainly a graveyard, where a stone cairn and federal plaque were erected in 1924. The geographic coordinates on this page are for that cairn.

In 2008, Christine Tell (provincial minister for tourism, parks, culture and sport) said "the 125th commemoration, in 2010, of the 1885 Northwest Resistance is an excellent opportunity to tell the story of the prairie Métis and First Nations peoples' struggle with Government forces and how it has shaped Canada today."