LAKELAND – In April 1885, according to several official government accounts, war chief Wandering Spirit led an attack on a settlement in the northwest territories, leaving nine settlers dead. This became known as the Frog Lake Massacre.
Wandering Spirit, alongside seven others, was later hanged in the largest mass hanging in Canadian history in November 1885 at Battleford. Specifically, Wandering Spirit was hanged for killing Indian Agent Thomas Quinn.
But Leah Redcrow, executive director at Acimowin Opaspiw Society, is challenging the narrative. “They didn't hang Wandering Spirit. They [the Canadian government] know that.”
“He was alive and well decades after they allegedly hung him,” Redcrow said.
Historical records also claim, “they [Wandering Spirit and his brothers] were starving and desperate, and they went to go kill the Indian agent,” said Redcrow. “That's not what happened.”
Conventional accounts state that Chief Big Bear and his band wintered near Farm Agency No. 15 in Frog Lake. The agency was meant to serve the neighbouring Wood Cree reserves of Unipouheos and Puskiakiwenin around Frog Lake, according to information from the Government of Canada.
Big Bear’s band grew frustrated from the lack of food.
“The government approach of limiting rations to encourage settlement combined with a hard winter made conditions very difficult for Big Bear’s Cree followers,” further reads the information.
“When news of Métis victories at Duck Lake reached the camp, Big Bear’s war chief, Wandering Spirit, responded to the insufficient food supply and harsh labour conditions imposed by the agency by leading an attack of Plains Cree warriors against it.”
But Redcrow states that key details of this history are incorrect. Her research, which she said includes access to church and government records, indicates that the incident was not motivated by food shortages but rather by the forced abduction of children from the Snake Hills Band in Saddle Lake, “which includes my grandfather, as well.”
The children, she said, were confined and taught doctrine against their cultural teachings. Wandering Spirit and his brothers then headed to Frog Lake to retrieve their children.
When they arrived, Quinn and the other men had already been killed. Redcrow believes they were assassinated, because “the reason why they [Wandering Spirit and his brothers] went over there wasn't about food or desperation, it was about the children.”
“We had nothing to do with anything about killing the Indian agent,” said Redcrow.
The priests who abducted and doctrinated the warriors’ children were then killed out of sight as means of vengeance.
Redcrow also said the Roman Catholic Church is aware of the AOS’ findings. “I told them this is in the spirit of transparency.”
“It's not something that I'm proud of, but it's also part of the truth telling and healing process,” she said. “By being honest about what happened that led to everything.”
So, who is Big Bear?
If Wandering Spirit and the warriors from the Snake Hills Band committed the killings, then how is Wandering Spirit connected to Chief Big Bear?
“We were not affiliated with Big Bear at all,” according to Redcrow. Big Bear’s name was used by Wandering Spirit and one of his brothers to sign letters to throw off the authorities.
Redcrow also disputes the official story of the executions at Fort Battleford. She said Wandering Spirit and the other men who were supposedly hanged were not actually executed.
Instead, she claims they escaped to the United States, where they lived under different names.
“[Wandering Spirit] is not in that grave. It's a well-known story of how he escaped as well. And we, actually, still have people in our community who found the ball and chain that he escaped from. We have it and that’s within Saddle Lake.”
She said that archival evidence, including Canadian government deportation attempts, supports this claim and the individuals supposedly buried in Canada were not the same people sentenced to death. “The Canadian government knows it.”
Wandering Spirit then took his brother’s name, Big Wind, to escape the authorities, because Big Wind was not on the rebel pay sheet.
That begs the question, “Who did they really hang?”
After 1885, “a mass exodus happened in our reserve,” said Redcrow, when 500 families from Saddle Lake fled to the United States and now occupy Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation in Montana. “Those are the historic band members from my band that fled after the rebellion.”
According to Redcrow, most of Saddle Lake’s residents today originally came from Goodfish.
“A whole bunch of our reserve got taken away after 1885. It got re-surveyed because our reserve used to go up to Elk Point. The government, in retaliation for this rebellion, took away the majority of our reserve.”
Redcrow said she will be presenting the evidence on March 29 at the St. Paul Recreation Centre at 1 p.m., the same day as when the AOS will be holding its fourth memorial dance, as well as a presentation of its latest findings on children who died at a residential school in Saddle Lake.
Redcrow also presented the AOS’ findings at Battleford, Sask., in February 2025.
Why study Wandering Spirit?
According to the Redcrow, the AOS studied Wandering Spirit as part of the organization’s broader research into missing children, because the organization found traces of evidence that the children detained and sent to residential schools were descendants of those who fought during the uprising, including children from the Snake Hills Band.
She said the descendants were tracked through what she called rebel pay sheets. “That's who they selected for residential school.”
“We can trace all of the survivors that are alive today back to those rebel pay sheets, and these rebels were basically the people who were active participants in the 1885 rebellion,” she said.
Understanding what happened in history, including the Frog Lake Massacre, basically also helps understand the causes of residential schools, Redcrow explained.
What happened after 1885 “set off a chain of events that had decades of implications on people,” including the opening of residential schools, she said. “So, now when we need to go back in history, we need to still acknowledge what is the truth and what is not the truth,” including unearthing what truly happened during the Frog Lake Massacre, she said.
