Creek, gave up the idea rather swiftly when
Riel did not seem to see its advisability. When Colonel Irvine reached
Carlton, as related, and found out how things stood, the immediate thing
to settle was as to whether he should hold that post or not. This was
not hard to decide. Carlton was simply a Hudson's Bay post without
population, while Prince Albert was the largest white community in the
whole region. The people there must be protected as a first duty, and it
was only fair to the Prince Albert volunteers, who had left their homes
and came so splendidly to the aid of the little body of Police, that the
latter in turn should not leave those homes exposed to the barbarities
of the rebels now intoxicated by a certain success. Accordingly, Fort
Carlton was abandoned. It took fire from a hospital mattress and an
over-heated stove, just as the Police were leaving, and burned to the
ground. Irvine and his men, with their wounded, arrived in due course at
Prince Albert, which they found full of refugees from surrounding
homesteads as well as the town. Most of these refugees were in the
church there, which they had surrounded with a wall of cordwood in dread
of attack. The women and children were wild with apprehension of
possibly falling into the hands of Beardy's tribe. And there was a band
of Sioux to the north that it was feared might at any moment assert
their traditional love of the warpath.

[Illustration: COL. T. A. WROUGHTON. Asst.-Commissioner in command at
Vancouver, B.C. _Photo. Steffens-Colmer, Vancouver._]

[Illustration: LIEUT.-COL. AYLESWORTH BOWEN PERRY, C.M.G. Commissioner
since 1900. _Photo. Rossie, Regina._]

[Illustration: COL. CORTLANDT STARNES. Senr. Asst.-Commissioner, Ottawa.
_Photo. Topley, Ottawa._]

HEADQUARTERS STAFF, 1921.

[Illustration: R.N.W.M.P. WOOD CAMP. CHURCHILL RIVER.]

The Duck Lake fight, with its balance in favour of the rebels,
encouraged Big Bear up near Fort Pitt to rebel and do all the damage he
could, starting in with the massacre of nine white men, Government
agents, etc., on the reserve and imprisoning the rest, including the
Hudson's Bay factor and his family, who gave themselves up to the
Indians at Fort Pitt. It stirred up the powerful Cree element under
Poundmaker at Battleford, where depredations were committed, and where
the white people barricaded behind stockades suffered siege and the
imminent danger of famine and attack for many weeks. It sent its echoes
down