1885 hangings at Battleford

In the Frog Lake Massacre, Indian Agent Thomas Trueman Quinn was shot in the head. Quinn was a notoriously harsh Indian agent, who kept Indigenous people near Frog Lake on the brink of starvation ("no work, no rations").[1] Quinn treated the Cree with harshness and arrogance.[1] Before dawn on April 2, 1885, a party of Cree warriors captured Quinn at his home. He refused to go to another location with the Cree warriors, and Wandering Spirit shot him dead. In the moments of panic following Quinn's shooting, eight other settler prisoners were shot dead.

Following the end of the rebellion, marked by the capture of Batoche, the participants of the events at Frog Lake were arrested and taken to Battleford.

Wandering Spirit pleaded guilty and was sentenced to hang on September 22, 1885.

The major trial condemning six of the eight men to death by hanging was heard by a Battleford resident, Stipendiary Magistrate Charles Rouleau. The December issue of the Saskatchewan Herald described him as a "heavy loser pecuniarily" after the Looting of Battleford  – his house had been burned to the ground, and he reportedly threatened that "every Indian and Half-breed and rebel brought before him after the insurrection was suppressed, would be sent to the gallows if possible."[2]

Rouleau found 11 of the accused men guilty and sentenced them to hang.

The Cree-speaking men who were sentenced to hang were not provided with translation at their trial.

The death sentences for three were commuted before their sentences could be carried out.[3]

The following people were sentenced to die in Battleford. The first six were convicted of murders in the Frog Lake Massacre, while the final two were convicted of murders in the Looting of Battleford.

• Kah - Paypamahchukways (Wandering Spirit) for the murder of T. T. Quinn, Indian Agent.
• Pah Pah-Me-Kee-Sick (Round the Sky) for the murder of Léon Fafard, a priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
• Manchoose (Bad Arrow) for the murder of Charles Govin, Quinn's interpreter.
• Kit-Ahwah-Ke-Ni (Miserable Man) for the murder of Govin.
• Nahpase (Iron Body) for the murder of George Dill, a free trader.
• A-Pis-Chas-Koos (Little Bear) for the murder of Dill.
• Itka (Crooked Leg) for the murder of Payne, a farm instructor of the Stoney Reserve south of Battleford.
• Waywahnitch (Man Without Blood) for the murder of Tremont, a rancher out of Battleford.

There are a number of first-hand historical records that exist of the Hangings at Battleford. The majority of accounts are written from the perspective of settlers in the area. Blood Red the Sun, a work by William Bleasdell Cameron, first published in 1926 as The War Trail of Big Bear, describes the events leading up to the Frog Lake Massacre and the executions in significant detail. Cameron's friends and colleagues were killed at the Frog Lake Massacre, and he was an HBC employee whose life was spared by Wandering Spirit.[1] Cameron testified at the trials against the accused men.

Students from Battleford Industrial School were brought from the school to witness the hangings as a "warning".[4]

In his 1970s-era histographical account of Indian policy in Canada, Prisons of Grass, Howard Adams gives his opinion on the hangings:

Every member of the Indian nation heard the death-rattle of the eight heroes who died at the end of the colonizers rope and they went quietly back to their compounds, obediently submitting themselves to the oppressors. The eight men who sacrificed their lives at the end of the rope were the champions of freedom and democracy. They were incomparable heroes, as shown by their last moments.[5]

A headstone placed at the mass grave of the Battleford Eight.

The bodies were buried in a mass grave near the fort. It remained unmarked and forgotten for many years. In 1972, the gravesite was rediscovered by students who followed old plans of the fort to find the burial. The location was marked with a concrete pad and chain fence. In later years, this was removed and replaced with a modern headstone bearing the names of the executed men. There is also an interpretive panel explaining the history of the burial site.

The gravesite is located on public property in the Town of Battleford at 52.73175°N 108.294886°W / 52.73175; -108.294886 near the Eiling Kramer Campground and Fort Battleford.

• Vancouver-based Celtic punk band The Dreadnoughts released a song on the hangings in 2022 titled “Battleford 1885”