with a large band of Indians under Poundmaker on the banks of Cut Knife Creek, a small tributary of the Battle River.  Though Otter did not win a victory, he showed Poundmaker the serious nature of the contest in which he was engaged against the Canadian government, and soon afterwards, when the Cree chief heard of the defeat of the half-breeds at Batoche, he surrendered unconditionally.  Another expedition under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Strange also relieved Fort Pitt; and Big Bear was forced to fly into the swampy fastnesses of the prairie wilderness, but was eventually captured near Fort Carleton by a force of Mounted Police.

This second rebellion of the half-breeds lasted about three months, and cost the country upwards of five million dollars.  Including the persons murdered at Frog Lake, the loyal population of Canada lost thirty-six valuable lives, among whom was Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, a gallant officer, and a member of the house of commons, who succumbed to a serious illness brought on by his exposure on the prairie.  The casualties among the half-breeds were at least as large, if not greater.  Five Indian chiefs suffered the extreme penalty of the law, while Poundmaker, Big Bear, and a number of others were imprisoned in the territories for life or for a term of years, according to the gravity of their complicity in the rebellion.  Any hopes that Riel might have placed in the active sympathy of the French Canadian people of Quebec were soon dispelled.  He was tried at Regina in July and sentenced to death, although the able counsel allotted to him by the government exhausted every available argument in his defence, even to the extent of setting up a plea of insanity, which the prisoner himself deeply resented.  The most strenuous efforts were made by the French Canadians to force the government to reprieve him, but Sir John Macdonald was satisfied that the loyal sentiment of the great majority of the people of Canada demanded imperatively that the law should be vindicated.  The French Canadian representatives in the cabinet, Langevin, Chapleau, and Caron, resisted courageously the storm of obloquy which their determination to support the prime minister raised against them; and Riel was duly executed on the 16th November.  For some time after his death attempts were made to keep up the excitement which had so long existed in the province of Quebec on the question.  The Dominion government was certainly weakened for a time in Quebec by its action in this matter, while Mr. Honore Mercier skilfully used the Riel agitation to obtain control of the provincial government at the general election of 1886, but only to fall five years later, under circumstances which must always throw a shadow over the fame of a brilliant, but unsafe, political leader (see p. 247).  The attempt to make political capital out of the matter in the Dominion parliament had no other result than to weaken the influence in Ontario of Mr. Edward Blake, the leader of the opposition