Battle of Fish Creek
The Battle of Fish Creek, fought April 24, 1885 at Fish Creek, Saskatchewan, was a major Métis victory over the Canadian forces attempting to quell Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion. Although the reversal was not decisive enough to alter the ultimate outcome of the conflict, it was convincing enough to persuade Major General Frederick Middleton to temporarily halt his advance on Batoche, where the Métis would later make their final stand.
Battle
Middleton, having led his Field Force out from Qu'Appelle on April 10, was advancing upstream from Clarke's Crossing along the South Saskatchewan River when he discovered a hastily organized ambush by Gabriel Dumont's Métis / Dakota force.Dumont suggested to Riel the use of guerrilla warfare, by blowing up train tracks to disallow them from crossing over into certain parts of Eastern Canada. Riel stated that guerrilla tactics was "too much like Indian warfare". Dumont also proposed to surprise attack them at night, but after Dumont heard that Middleton's scouts were already on the lookout, Dumont had to scrap that idea.
On April 23, as the militia began advancing from Clarke's Crossing, Dumont took 200 men and rode out from Batoche toward Tourond's Coulée. Louis Riel accompanied them. When a report arrived that the North-West Mounted Police were advancing on Batoche, Riel returned there with 50 men. Dumont stationed most of his men in the coulée, where they set to work digging rifle pits. Dumont took a smaller party of twenty horsemen forward of the coulée. Their task was to seal the exit when the ambush was sprung. "I want to treat them like buffaloes," Dumont said of Middleton's men. However, an inexperienced Metis soldier had forgotten Dumont's specific demand to stay away from the road as it could give the location of the Metis away. The next day the militia were about to attempt to cross the coulée. A scout spotted tracks of the unexperienced Metis soldier and began to follow them. The scout was coming close to Dumont and his men in which Dumont stealthily attempted to catch him. Before Dumont could catch the scout, the Metis and Canadian army had come into contact with each other, and it was then that the concealed Métis in the rifle pits would attempt to ambush the militia. Dumont, under pressure, shot the militia's scout and returned to his men in the poplar bluff rifle pits to fight the rest of the Canadian militia.
The Métis pounded Middleton's men with one devastating fusillade before withdrawing into cover and restricting themselves to sniper fire in order to conserve ammunition. Their position was strategically selected and enabled a simple and effective strategy of defence.
Since the Métis were positioned in the coulée, Métis soldiers were restricted to shooting up towards the Canadian army in which many of the casualties and wounds were mainly in the upper body and head area.
With half of his force on the opposite side of the river, Middleton was unable to bring his full numerical army to bear. One of his artillery batteries opened fire on the Métis to little effect, although well-fired cannonades did succeed in driving away Dumont's Cree allies before their weight could be added to the battle.
Many of Dumont's men were fleeing the battle. Dumont stopped as many men as he could from leaving and convinced them to keep fighting. Dumont's numbers were decreasing vastly as he had forty-seven of the one hundred and thirty men that he began fighting with. Dumont very outnumbered, but was able to keep the Metis casualties to a minimum.
Strung out along the coulée's edge, silhouetted against the sky, the militia fired a vast amount of ammunition at the resistance, succeeding mostly in showering tree branches across the ravine, but when the artillerymen pushed their guns to the coulée's edge to try to fire down at the concealed Métis, they suffered heavy casualties. The only targets the militia could clearly see were the Métis' tethered horses. They slaughtered about fifty-five of the horses.
General Middleton attempted to place himself in full view of the resistance. However, a bullet tore through his fur hat, and his two aides-de-camp were both wounded by his side. The frustrated Canadians, their casualties mounting, undertook several fruitless rushes into the ravine. A few infantry regulars under Middleton's command made one charge. Another, larger one was carried out by the Royal Winnipeg Rifles militia. This latter advance was parried by the Métis' use of improvised barricades within the coulée. These uncoordinated advances accomplished nothing but more Canadian casualties. Middleton in a statement later on said: " plans were well arranged beforehand and had my scouts not been well to the front we should have been attacked in the ravine and probably wiped out".
Despite the heavy casualties inflicted upon the resistance, Métis morale deteriorated as the battle wore on. Dumont's men were famished, dehydrated, and low on ammunition, though relatively impervious to enemy fire from within their gullies and ravines.
However, Middleton, distressed by the casualties he was taking, erred on the side of caution and opted for retreat. At the battle's end, both sides had withdrawn from the battlefield but the Métis had inflicted greater casualties and had delayed Middleton's march on the Metis' headquarters at Batoche. Weeks later, after news reached him of the Cree victory over Colonel Otter – to whom had been issued the dreaded Gatling gun – at Cut Knife, Middleton embarked once more on decisive action against Batoche.
Maps
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Legacy
In the spring of 2008, Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Christine Tell proclaimed in Duck Lake, that "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."
The Battle of Fish Creek National Historic Site, now named Tourond's Coulée / Fish Creek National Historic Site, preserves the battlefield of April 24, 1885 at la coulée des Tourond , and the story of Madame Tourond's home. The National Historic site of Middleton's camp and graveyard is across the Fish Creek water body and is north west of the theatre of battle which occurred in the creek valley west of the Tourond farmhouse site.