Frog Lake Massacre

The Frog Lake Massacre occurred on April 2, 1885, in the small settlement of Frog Lake, then part of the District of Saskatchewan in the North-West Territories (now in Alberta), roughly 200 km east of Edmonton. The killings took place during the Cree uprising that accompanied the broader North-West Rebellion, a conflict involving Métis and First Nations resistance to Canadian government policy.

Chief Big Bear and his band had settled near Frog Lake in late 1884 after signing Treaty 6 in 1882. Grievances over the terms of the treaty, the collapse of the buffalo population, and resulting starvation among the Cree fueled unrest. On March 28, 1885, people at Frog Lake learned of the Métis victory at the Battle of Duck Lake and Poundmaker's looting of Battleford, along with rumours that Canadian soldiers were coming to kill Indigenous people in the area. In response, Wandering Spirit assumed the role of war chief for Big Bear's band and began gathering arms and supplies. Indian Agent Thomas Quinn, who controlled rations that kept the Cree in a state of near-starvation, was viewed as both a source of local anger and an obstacle to Wandering Spirit's plans.

On the morning of April 2, armed Cree men took Quinn hostage and took control of the settlement, looting stores. After Catholic mass concluded around 11:00 a.m., Wandering Spirit ordered the white settlers to relocate to a nearby Native encampment. When Quinn refused to move, Wandering Spirit shot and killed him. Despite Big Bear's attempt to intervene, Wandering Spirit's group then killed eight more unarmed people: Catholic priests Leon Fafard and Felix Marchand, lay assistant John Williscroft, and settlers John Gowanlock, John Delaney, William Gilchrist, George Dill, and Charles Gouin. Hudson's Bay Company clerk William Bleasdell Cameron escaped with the help of sympathetic Cree.

Following the killings, approximately 70 hostages were taken, including the widows Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney and their children, along with several Métis men who later assisted in moving some victims' bodies to safekeeping in cellars. The settlement's buildings, including the church, were burned on April 4, 1885. Troops arrived on June 14, 1885, and buried the victims.

Following the suppression of the rebellion, Wandering Spirit and seven others — Little Bear, Walking the Sky, Bad Arrow, Miserable Man, Iron Body, Ika, and Man Without Blood — were tried without legal counsel for murders at Frog Lake and Battleford. Judge Charles Rouleau sentenced all to death; the eight were hanged on November 27, 1885, in what is recorded as the largest mass hanging in Canadian history. Big Bear, though he had opposed the attack, was convicted of treason for organizing Cree resistance and served part of a three-year sentence before his death in 1888.

The site was designated the Frog Lake National Historic Site in 1923, with a cairn and federal plaque erected in 1924.