Mistahimaskwa, widely known as Chief Big Bear, was a powerful Plains Cree leader born around 1825 in what is now Saskatchewan . He came of age when the prairies were still dominated by buffalo hunts and Indigenous law. As a hunter and warrior, Big Bear earned respect for both his prowess and vision. By the 1860s he was recognized as chief of a band of about 65 lodges, leading his people through a period of mounting change on the plains . The expansion of Canadian authority into the North-West after 1870 brought new challenges: police outposts, surveyors, Christian missionaries, and government agents all signaled a coming end to the old way of life. Big Bear’s independent spirit only grew stronger as more newcomers arrived. He was determined to protect his people’s freedom in the face of these incursions.
In 1876, the young Canadian government set out to negotiate Treaty Six – a massive land treaty covering 120,000 square miles of Cree, Saulteaux, and Dene territory. Big Bear, however, was deeply suspicious of the treaty-making process. He had heard about earlier numbered treaties (Treaties 1 to 5) and how those agreements left Indigenous nations disappointed and destitute. In his view, the promises in those treaties had not been kept, so why would Treaty Six be any different? He famously warned his fellow chiefs that accepting the government’s gifts was like a fox taking bait from a trap only to be struck down: “We want no bait; let your chiefs come like men and talk to us,” Big Bear said, rejecting the trinkets and tobacco offered by officials . His words showed a shrewd understanding that the presents were meant to soften them up for a deal – a deal he feared would ensnare his people.
When Treaty Six negotiations began in August 1876, Big Bear refused to attend the initial meeting at Fort Carlton, sending word that he would speak when he was ready. He finally arrived at Fort Pitt after the treaty had been concluded and was urged by other chiefs to sign. Big Bear stood firm. He told the Queen’s representative that what he most dreaded was having “a rope around [his] neck,” words that confused the government interpreter . Governor Alexander Morris took it to mean Big Bear feared being hanged for treason, dismissing him as cowardly. In truth, Big Bear was using a Plains Cree expression about being led by a rope – a metaphor for losing freedom and being controlled . He was warning that the treaty’s terms would bind his people under the government’s will. Big Bear declared he could not consent to Treaty Six, at least not until all his people – still out hunting buffalo on the plains – could be consulted . He wanted to delay and see if better terms could be won, or if the government would prove its good faith over time.
Big Bear thus became the first major prairie chief to refuse signing a numbered treaty . His stance was nearly unprecedented, as most chiefs under pressure had agreed to treaties by then. He was convinced the treaty’s terms were unjust and inadequate to protect his nation’s future . Big Bear especially lamented that the treaty did not guarantee enough food or real security – a prescient concern, since a famine clause and the promise of aid in Treaty Six were vague and ultimately poorly upheld. He also spoke up for the buffalo, asking the government to ensure the herds would be protected . The officials made grand assurances, but Big Bear’s intuition was that once Indigenous peoples were in the government’s “fox trap,” their autonomy would be lost. For the next several years, he held out and refused the treaty, even as Canadian Dominion authority tightened around the plains.
Big Bear’s defiance won him growing admiration among Cree and other Indigenous peoples facing hunger and uncertainty. From 1876 to 1882 – years that saw the catastrophic disappearance of the buffalo – he carried on what one historian called a “nine-year struggle” to gain better terms for his people . As buffalo herds failed and famine loomed, many Cree families gravitated to Big Bear’s camp, drawn by his determination to negotiate a fair deal rather than settle for the meager promises in the treaty. By the late 1870s Big Bear’s following had swelled, making him one of the most influential chiefs on the plains .
Canadian officials viewed this rising alliance with alarm. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and his Indian Commissioner, Edgar Dewdney, considered Big Bear and a few other holdout chiefs “principal agitators” preventing the pacification of the North-West . The government’s national policy – especially the drive to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and open the prairies to settlers – depended on extinguishing Indigenous title and confining First Nations to reserves . Treaties were the chosen instrument of that policy. To coerce the holdouts, officials wielded a cruel weapon: food. In 1879, Dewdney announced that only bands who adhered to treaty would receive government rations . With the buffalo gone, this was an existential threat. By withholding food, the government aimed to starve Big Bear’s people into submission . Macdonald infamously remarked that it was “better to feed than fight” the Plains tribes – but he was willing to do neither unless they met his terms . Hunger became a lever of colonial control.
Despite these pressures, Big Bear held out as long as he could. He insisted on meeting with officials to argue for better terms. He met Indian Commissioner Dewdney in 1879 and described the desperate plight of the Cree with the buffalo gone【5†L281-L286】. He pleaded for more aid and for the treaties to be revised to truly secure his people’s future. The government gave little ground. By 1882, starvation had reached Big Bear’s own band. That December, after seeing his children and elders suffer through lean winters, Big Bear finally agreed to sign an adhesion to Treaty Six . On December 8, 1882, at Fort Walsh, he touched the pen to paper. It was an agonizing decision made “in order to secure rations from the government for his starving people” . Big Bear’s two eldest sons had already broken away and signed the treaty a month earlier in an attempt to get food . Facing the reality that he could not feed his band alone, Big Bear bowed to necessity. Even in that moment, witnesses say, he made it known that he still found the terms unfair, and that he signed under duress of hunger.
Although Big Bear was now a treaty signer, he was not about to meekly settle on whatever patch of land the government chose. Under the terms of Treaty Six, each band was to select a reserve – but Big Bear had a bold idea. Rather than disperse his followers across small, isolated reserves, he envisioned uniting several Cree bands together on a large contiguous territory. In the early 1880s, he encouraged allied chiefs to choose adjacent reserve lands in the Battle River and Fort Pitt region, hoping to create a substantial Indigenous-controlled enclave on the prairies . Such a bloc could form a unified political and economic base for the Cree, preserving a measure of autonomy within the new Canadian order. Big Bear’s vision was essentially an “Indian territory” in the North-West – a concept that challenged the Canadian reserve system, which was predicated on keeping First Nations scattered and dependent.
The government quickly caught on to Big Bear’s plan and vehemently opposed it. Officials feared that concentrating so many “Indians in one area” would empower the Cree and possibly incubate resistance . They remembered how the great Plains confederacies of the past had wielded power in numbers. So Ottawa refused to grant contiguous reserves to Big Bear and his allies. Each band would have to settle on a separate, distant parcel, under the watch of an Indian agent. Big Bear delayed choosing a reserve for as long as possible, moving his band around the Fort Pitt and Battleford regions while negotiating with authorities. This led to tension and mistrust. Government agents grew increasingly impatient with Big Bear’s reluctance to “settle down.” By the summer of 1884, he and his people were still largely living as nomads, gathering where they could, while rations remained scant and conditional.
In June 1884, Big Bear took a remarkable step in pursuit of Indigenous unity. He organized a grand Thirst Dance (often known as a Sun Dance) on the reserve of Chief Poundmaker, a younger leader who shared Big Bear’s hopes of solidarity . The gathering at Poundmaker’s reserve drew an estimated 2,000 people from various Cree and other Indigenous communities – a massive assembly that alarmed Canadian officials . For several days, the chiefs and warriors held council, danced, and prayed. Big Bear spoke passionately about standing together to demand the government honor its promises. There was talk of forming an Indigenous alliance across the prairies, even of reaching out to the Sioux or the American tribes – a “union of North American First Nations,” as Big Bear dreamed . The Thirst Dance gathering was peaceful, but it was politically charged. North-West Mounted Police arrived and attempted to break up the meeting, seeing it as a prelude to rebellion . In a tense standoff, Big Bear and Poundmaker managed to calm their excited young men and avoid a violent clash with the police. The gathering dispersed without bloodshed, but the atmosphere was fraught. Both chiefs knew that the government’s patience was wearing thin.
The winter of 1884–85 was difficult. Big Bear’s band, now formally under Treaty Six, received only minimal rations. Frustration and hunger steeled the resolve of some of his followers, especially a militant warrior society within the band. At the same time, farther south in the Métis community, Louis Riel had returned to lead a protest movement that was boiling over. In March 1885, the Métis rebellion against Canadian authority began, igniting the North-West Resistance. Big Bear did not invite this war – in fact, he counselled patience and caution – but the fuse of Indigenous resistance was already lit. Young warriors in Big Bear’s band saw the Métis taking up arms and felt that the moment had come to strike back at the government that had betrayed them.
On April 2, 1885, a faction of Big Bear’s band launched a sudden attack at Frog Lake, a small settlement in present-day Alberta. Led by war chief Kapapamahchakwew (Wandering Spirit) and Big Bear’s son Ayimîsis (Little Bear), they took the local Indian Agent and priests by surprise . The tension exploded into deadly violence: nine settlers and officials were killed in what came to be known as the Frog Lake Massacre . Big Bear was not present at the initial outbreak of violence; accounts say he was horrified when he arrived to see the bloodshed . The elderly chief berated the young warriors for their rash act. In the weeks that followed, Big Bear worked to prevent further killing. He sheltered several settlers and missionaries who had been taken captive, protecting them from harm . Nevertheless, the conflict had spiraled beyond his control. Other Cree bands, such as that of Poundmaker, were also drawn into confrontations with Canadian forces in the tumult of 1885. Big Bear, despite counseling peace, found himself branded a rebel.
For months during the North-West Resistance, Big Bear’s band moved across the region with a mobile camp, evading Canadian militia forces. Big Bear himself did not direct any attacks; he was essentially trying to keep his people together and alive amid chaos. But the Canadian public and press lumped him in with Louis Riel’s insurrection. Government troops were dispatched west with the explicit goal of subduing “rebel Indians” like Big Bear. After the Métis were defeated at Batoche in May 1885, attention turned to rounding up the Cree holdouts. Big Bear, now nearly 60 years old and exhausted, finally surrendered to the Northwest Mounted Police on July 2, 1885 . He was by then a physically worn man, having endured hunger, stress, and the collapse of all he had worked for.
In the late summer of 1885, Big Bear was transported in custody to Regina to face trial. He was charged with treason-felony for his role in the North-West Rebellion – essentially accused of being a leader of the “Indian revolt.” The trial opened on September 11, 1885 . It was, by contemporary accounts, a painful spectacle. Big Bear did not speak English, and the proceedings were foreign to him. Witnesses, including some of the settlers he had protected, testified that Big Bear had tried to prevent violence . Nonetheless, the government was determined to make an example of him. After a short trial by jury – all of them white – Big Bear was found guilty of treason-felony. The judge acknowledged that the chief had personally not shed blood, but held him responsible for failing to control his band. Big Bear was sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba .
The verdict hit Big Bear hard. He reportedly said, “If I had not been old, they would have hung me” – a bitter reflection on how close he came to the fate he had most feared【5†L241-L248】. Big Bear entered Stony Mountain prison in the fall of 1885 as perhaps the most famous Indigenous prisoner in Canada. He was not alone: other Cree leaders like Poundmaker were also jailed (Poundmaker received a similar sentence of three years, though he would die shortly after his early release). In prison, Big Bear’s health deteriorated. The years of privation had already weakened him, and incarceration in a damp stone penitentiary – a world away from the fresh air of the plains – further broke his body. After about two years, he was suffering from multiple ailments and was finally released early in February 1887 due to ill health . Emaciated and frail, the old chief was allowed to go free, but by then his spirit seemed drained.
Big Bear spent his final year living quietly on the Little Pine Reservation (the reserve of another chief who had been his friend) . He was taken in by sympathizers who tried to care for him. On January 17, 1888, Mistahimaskwa died, likely of complications from diabetes or simply the cumulative effects of hardship. He was about 62 years old. At the time of his death, settlers and officials still regarded Big Bear as a defeated rebel. But within Cree communities, a different narrative of Big Bear lived on – one of a leader who had stood up for his people’s rights and dignity.
Chief Big Bear’s life epitomizes the struggle of Indigenous peoples against the colonial policies of 19th-century Canada. He resisted the coercive treaty system longer than almost anyone, insisting that Indigenous nations deserved a real say in their future. Treaty Six, as Big Bear recognized, was not a sacred pact between equals but a tool of dispossession – a means for the young Dominion of Canada to assert control over the West while offering minimal obligations in return. His intuitions were tragically validated. After the treaties were signed, the government largely ignored many of its promises, and the legal reality of the Indian Act took hold. The Indian Act of 1876, passed the same year Big Bear first refused Treaty Six, became the framework governing every aspect of First Nations life . This federal law was profoundly invasive and paternalistic: it imposed government-selected band councils, controlled Indigenous lands, outlawed cultural practices, and defined who was even recognized as “Indian” . In short, it aimed to assimilate and manage Indigenous people “as if wards of the state,” stripping away autonomy . Big Bear had sensed that signing the treaty would put a rope around his people’s necks – and indeed, once on reserves, Cree bands found themselves bound by the many ropes of colonial law.
The aftermath of 1885 brought even harsher measures. The Canadian authorities, shaken by the Cree and Métis resistance, introduced the pass system to confine First Nations to their reserves, requiring them to obtain written passes to leave – a policy not in the treaty but enforced under the Indian Act regime. Large gatherings like Big Bear’s 1884 council were now forbidden without permission . Ceremonies such as the Thirst Dance were banned by amendments to the Indian Act in 1884. It was exactly the future Big Bear had tried to prevent: one where his people were confined, surveilled, and deprived of the freedom to live according to their traditions. As one historian observed, once Indigenous people were made dependent on rations, the government could quell any protest simply by withholding food . This was the bleak new order that Big Bear had foreseen and fought against.
Yet, Big Bear’s legacy is not one of defeat. Today he is remembered as a visionary leader and a defender of Indigenous rights ahead of his time. Even an official plaque by the Government of Canada recognizes Big Bear as “one of the foremost champions” of the Plains Cree, a chief who refused treaty, sought unity, and only yielded after exhausting all efforts to protect his nation . His trial and imprisonment are now widely regarded as an injustice – the punishment of a man who wanted peace, not war. Big Bear’s story has since been retold by Cree elders and historians as a cautionary tale of colonialism but also as an inspiration. He stands alongside figures like Poundmaker and Louis Riel as symbols of Indigenous resistance and resilience.
In the broader arc of Canadian history, Big Bear’s life illuminates the clash between an Indigenous worldview that valued the land and freedom, and a colonial worldview that sought to divide, conquer, and civilize. His resistance to Treaty Six forced the Canadian negotiators to reckon (briefly) with Indigenous demands. His calls for a large protected territory anticipated later movements for Indigenous self-governance. Although he did not succeed in his immediate aims, Big Bear planted seeds of pride and defiance that would flower in later generations. Today, as Canada reexamines its past injustices and seeks reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the story of Chief Big Bear remains powerfully relevant. It is a story of a leader who, in the face of overwhelming odds, tried to hold onto the “great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system” as John A. Macdonald bluntly put it – and to instead carve out a future where his people could remain who they were, on their own land. Big Bear’s fight for dignity and rights in the 1870s and 1880s stands as an enduring testament to the spirit of Indigenous resistance to colonial policy, and it continues to inspire the ongoing struggle for justice and self-determination today.
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