Swift Runner slowly squeezed the trigger, holding his breath. He had been hunting his entire life and was confident in his aim.
The rifle let out a loud report, echoing off the vast hills of the wilderness surrounding him. The moose went down, falling in a heap in the snow.
Swift Runner let out his breath, never taking his eyes off the animal. He had long ago learned that no matter how good a hunter’s aim was, sometimes an animal wouldn’t be finished with one shot.
He waited, unmoving, watching for signs of life in his quarry.
When he didn’t see any, the hunter rose and began to walk across the field to where the moose lay. Drawing his knife, he knelt down and started to butcher the animal.
As he worked, he let his mind wander.
He had learned how to hunt when he was a boy. His people, the Cree, had regularly passed through the area while they followed the buffalo herds. They had made canoes from the abundant birch trees in the region, using them to navigate the waters of the Sturgeon River.
They had known white men, European traders who offered them guns and tools in exchange for beaver pelts and buffalo hides. Then, around 1874, a different group of white men had come into the area.
The Northwest Mounted Police, or the NWMP for short, had been founded the previous year to deal with the illegal whiskey trade that ran rampant across the Canadian frontier. They had come to this part of the Sturgeon River to build a fort there.
The NWMP knew that the First Nations people knew the hills and forests there much better than they did. They approached the Cree and asked them if anyone among them would be willing to be a guide for them.
The Cree had recommended Swift Runner. He was a knowledgeable hunter and knew the land well, and when they asked him he readily agreed.
Unfortunately, Swift Runner soon developed an addiction to whiskey himself. The very police that he had been asked to help soon grew to fear him.
The hunter was a giant, standing a full 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing a solid, muscular 200 pounds at a time when most men were well under 6 feet tall. He was known for being incredibly strong, and he had no issues putting his full strength to use against anyone who got in his way when he was drunk.
Soon enough, the police learned that it was easiest to stay out of his way until he either sobered up or passed out.
But as his alcoholism gradually worsened, the NWMP tired of his behavior and evicted him from Fort Saskatchewan, sending him back to his family amongst the Cree.
Being back among his people didn’t make him change his ways. He constantly looked for ways to find whiskey, and he usually found it. Swift Runner was drunk much of the time, causing just as much havoc amongst the Cree as he had back at the fort.
After going on a drinking bender that lasted nearly three months, everything came to a head for Swift Runner. At the end of his spree, he walked into Fort Saskatchewan on Christmas Eve of 1878 and tried to kill a trader.
The police promptly arrested him and kept him locked up until he got sober enough to leave under his own power. When he returned home, the Cree had decided that they were finished with his drunken ways, too. They told him flatly that they weren’t going to let him travel with them as they followed the buffalo. However, they did make an exception for his family.
This finally seemed to have had an effect on Swift Runner. He promised his wife and children that he would stop drinking and be a good man, if only they wouldn’t abandon him. They gave in and watched as the Cree left without them.
Winter was coming, but Swift Runner had every confidence that he could provide for his family just like he always had. Along with his brother and mother, Swift Runner and his family made their way to his winter camp almost eighty miles from the fort.
As they settled in, they could see that there was plenty of food, water, and good shelter. it had been just as easy as he had told them it would be.
Swift Runner had almost finished with the moose. He looked around at the snowy woods around him. The early months had gone well, but it was getting harder to find game. It was starting to concern him.
A few weeks later, in February 1879, Swift Runner got sick. He felt terrible, and could barely move, let alone hunt for his family. Thankfully, his brother was there to help. But his brother had grim news for him: the game was gone.
He couldn’t find any, and, when Swift Runner felt well enough to go out again, neither could he. Try as they might, the two experienced hunters couldn’t find anything.
Day by day, their food stores dwindled. When they were used up, the family was forced to kill their dogs, living off them they for as long as they could. When that began to run out, a desperate Swift Runner made his way to a trading post on the Athabasca River several miles away.
The man in charge there was able to give Swift Runner a small store of goods, which the hunter took back to his family. That got them through another week or two, but, soon enough, the last of it was gone.
Things were looking grim, and all of them knew it. After some discussion, Swift Runner’s brother decided to take their mother and set out on their own. With just the two of them, they could move faster and, maybe, find food. They might even be able to make it to one of the forts.
As Swift Runner and his family watched, the two of them made their way through the woods and out of sight.
Swift Runner continued to hunt, but it was all in vain. There was nothing to be found. They were beginning to starve, and he knew that he and his family were in grave danger.
Finally, he told his wife to take the children and leave him behind. He told them to follow the tracks in the snow left by his brother and mother. If they kept moving, there was a better chance of them reaching a fort or finding food. There was nothing where they were. If he stayed there alone, then he might find enough game to sustain himself.
One of his sons, a strong-willed 10-year-old, refused to leave his father’s side. Try as Swift Runner might, the boy could not be persuaded to leave. He finally gave up and let the boy stay.
Day after day, father and son tried their best to find something to eat, but continually came up empty-handed.
One morning, Swift Runner got up early. Peering through the pre-dawn darkness, he saw that his son was still asleep. As he sat there, watching him, a horrible thought came to Swift Runner’s mind.
He tried to resist it, but it became harder and harder as the hunger pangs clawed at his stomach. Slowly he got up, moving deliberately so as not to make any noise.
Reaching down, Swift Runner took his rifle, then walked over to where his son was sleeping by the fire. He knew what he was about to do, and a small voice in the back of his mind told him to stop. But the hunger gnawed at him, unrelenting, the pain drowning the voice out.
He hadn’t been able to find any game for days; there was no food to be had. But now, as he raised the rifle to his shoulder, he realized that there had always been game there for him, right beside him. He just needed to take it.
Swift Runner moved the barrel close to his son’s head, his finger already beginning to squeeze the trigger.
He knew that he should look, to follow the shot through, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He turned his head away as tears began to stream down his cheeks.
When the gun went off it almost surprised him. He felt the stock kick against his shoulder, and he knew that his shot had hit home.
After a few moments, Swift Runner opened his eyes and looked down at his son. The shot had gone in the top of the boy’s head, but his chest still rose and fell as he breathed.
A new kind of pain ripped at Swift Runner’s stomach then. His shot hadn’t killed the boy after all.
Swift Runner broke down. He had done the unthinkable; shot his own son. He thought that he had done it as mercifully as possible, but he had failed.
But what was he going to do? There was no way that his son would ever survive a wound like that. Swift Runner knew what he had to do.
Steeling himself, he drew his hunting knife, then stabbed his son twice in the side. Leaning away, Swift Runner watched the boy to make sure that he was dead. His breath caught in his throat as he saw that his son was still breathing.
Tears streaming down his face, Swift Runner found a large branch and finally, brutally, beat his son to death with it.
Now he knew his son was dead. That part was over. It was time to start the second.
Taking his knife, Swift Runner began to break down his son’s body, carefully stripping the flesh like he had the moose earlier that winter. Then, taking some of the better parts, he cooked it over the fire and ate it.
Over the next several days, Swift Runner continued to sustain himself on his son’s remains. He wasted nothing, even cracking open the bones and consuming the marrow.
But sooner or later he knew that his food would run out again. Taking his rifle, he began to wander the woods looking for game.
One day, he ran into his wife and other children. They were happy to see him, and quickly asked what had become of the child who had stayed behind with him. With a grim face, Swift Runner told them that he had starved to death.
Swift Runner sensed that they knew what had really happened to his son, but they never said a word about it.
Three days later, Swift Runner’s oldest son died. After having suffered for so long, he had succumbed to starvation. Taking an axe, they chipped a grave into the hard, frozen earth and gently lay the boy inside it.
The days passed, and the family still could not find anything to eat. First, they cut pieces from their tents, boiling the leather until it was soft enough for them to chew. Their shoes came next.
Their plight was dire, and they all knew it. Endless hunger gnawed at their stomachs. For Swift Runner, there was another layer to the suffering.
He felt that none of his family wanted to stay with him. He was sure that they knew he had killed the child that had stayed behind with him earlier that winter.
He was supposed to be their protector and provider, but he hadn’t done either. Now they were here in this endless wilderness, reduced to eating their clothing to keep the gnawing hunger at bay. They were dying slowly, and his actions were to blame.
One morning Swift Runner woke up before the rest of his family. He looked around and saw all of them sleeping around the fire. His mind wandered back to the morning that he had murdered his son.
Something – he was never sure what – made him angry in that moment. He was suddenly furious, filled with rage. In a moment he knew exactly what he was going to do.
He got up, took his rifle, and walked over to his wife. This time Swift Runner had no doubt, no hesitation. Placing the muzzle against her chest, he shot her, killing her.
Laying the rifle down, he grabbed a hatchet and then proceeded to hack his three sleeping daughters to death.
He awoke his last remaining son, who was about seven years old. He told him to gather snow and melt it to make water. Swift Runner saw that the boy was suffering from hunger, weak and tired. Slowly, his son got up and began to do what he had been told to do.
After watching the boy for a moment, Swift Runner took his knife and returned to the girls. It was time to eat.
Over the course of the next few hours, he carefully butchered the corpses of his three daughters and his wife, even breaking open their bones and skulls and removing the marrow and brains.
For the next week, Swift Runner and his young son ate the remains of their family. As the week came to an end, the snow began to melt. Spring had returned. With it came ducks, which Swift Runner killed for himself and his son. They had more than enough to survive on now.
But as the time passed, Swift Runner found himself hesitant to go back to civilization. He knew they would find out what he had done. He confided all of this to his son, telling the young boy that he wouldn’t be blamed.
But Swift Runner told him that his father would have to pay a price for what he had done. They would kill Swift Runner for his crimes, but the boy would live.
One night, as they sat by the fire, he told his son to go and get something a short distance away. As the boy dutifully did as he was told, Swift Runner picked up his rifle and shot the boy dead.
His son was the only witness to all that he had done. Without him, there was a chance that no one would ever know what had happened. Standing up, Swift Runner took his knife and crossed over to his son’s body. Without a word, he knelt down and began to cut.
Despite having killed more than enough ducks to sustain him, Swift Runner decided to eat his son as well.
A few weeks later, he walked into a Catholic mission at St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. He told them that his family had starved to death over the winter, and that he had just barely managed to survive himself.
People were sympathetic to him. They knew how bitter the winters could be on the frontier, and many had succumbed to hunger, disease, and cold. But the longer that they spent with him, they began to think that he seemed in incredibly good health and weight for a man who claimed to have nearly starved to death.
There was something off about his story, but they weren’t quite sure what. Eventually someone decided to summon the NWMP and ask them to investigate Swift Runner’s story.
He told them the same story as he had been everyone else. After listening, they also suspected that he wasn’t telling them everything. They also knew that the only way to prove his story one way or the other was to go back with him into the hills.
At first, he was reluctant, but Swift Runner soon realized that he had no choice but to comply with their demand.
A few days later, Swift Runner began to lead a police search party back toward his winter camp. When they got near, he deliberately tried to keep them away from it. He knew what they would find there, and what would happen to him when they did.
The commanding officer soon realized what Swift Runner was doing. Having noticed that Swift Runner was leading them away from a particular section of forest, he stopped following the Cree hunter and led his men directly towards it.
A short time later they rode into what was left of Swift Runner’s winter camp. They immediately wished that they hadn’t come.
Bones were everywhere. Looking them over, the soldiers saw the cut marks, the broken long bones and skulls where Swift Runner had snapped them open or pulverized them to get at the marrow and brains. These poor people had been murdered and butchered.
When they asked Swift Runner what this was, he knew that they had found out his secret. There was no point in lying anymore, so he told them the truth.
He explained to them what had really happened over the winter, and that this was what was left of his wife and five of his children. They had all been starving to death, so he had decided to murder them and eat them to keep himself alive.
Swift Runner explained that he really had no idea what had happened to his mother and brother. He told them that they could find the grave of his oldest son in an area about a mile and half away.
A few officers who were sent to verify Swift Runner’s story found the remains of an eleven or twelve-year-old boy. The corpse was intact and showed clear signs of being emaciated.
The police gathered up all the evidence that they could carry, burying anything that they could not. When they were finished, they returned to Fort Saskatchewan and put Swift Runner on trial. The magistrate found him guilty of murdering his family and he was condemned to be hanged on December 20th, 1879.
Because he was a member of the Cree Nation, the Cree were invited to give their opinion of what Swift Runner had done and his death sentence. All of those asked approved.
While he was waiting for his sentence to be carried out, he was visited by a Catholic priest named Remus. According to later accounts, the two discussed religion and Swift Runner eagerly wanted to learn more about being Catholic.
A short time later, a priest named Father Hippolyte Leduc arrived at Fort Saskatchewan, having only just sailed from France. One of the first things he did was go and see Swift Runner in his cell.
The two struck up an unlikely friendship and soon the Cree hunter felt comfortable enough to give the priest a detailed confession of what had happened to his family, which Father Leduc later published in the Battleford Saskatchewan Herald.
Swift Runner’s story has been much sensationalized in the nearly 150 years since his execution. Because of this, several different variations of the story have emerged during that time. How he met his end is no different.
Two predominant versions come down to us from newspaper accounts of the time, and both are very different from each other.
According to Father Leduc, Swift Runner converted to Catholicism in the days leading up to his execution.
On December 20th, the day of the execution, Leduc and Swift Runner had breakfast together. Both were nervous and hardly ate anything. After they said the Rosary together, a guard came in and ordered Swift Runner to change his clothes.
Soon after, the police came to collect him. They asked if he had anything else to say to the priest, to which he simply said, “No.”
Swift Runner was then told to put his arms into place so that they could be secured to his sides. He did so, although he visibly paled. The group walked out, with the hunter praying while the priest began to say another Rosary.
A large crowd had assembled, watching as they climbed the scaffold to the waiting rope.
Leduc told Swift Runner to kneel and pray for God’s forgiveness. While he did, the priest gave him a final absolution.
After, Swift Runner stood. The executioner placed the noose around his neck and put a black veil over his face. As Leduc began to pray again, the trap was opened, and Swift Runner fell five feet down. The rope went rigid and snapped the Cree hunter’s neck, ending his life.
The other version seems much more sensational.
In it, Swift Runner was told to prepare for his death early on the morning of the 20th.
The police asked if he wanted to see a priest, but Swift Runner replied that the white man had ruined him with their whiskey, and he didn’t think that their God was worth the time.
It was still dark outside as he was marched to the scaffold that had been erected just outside the main gate of the fort. It was bitterly cold that day, and members of the crowd had set fires to keep themselves warm.
As he walked past one fire, Swift Runner stopped to warm himself. He showed no sign of emotion as he stood there, waiting to be hung.
As the police began to double check everything, they realized that members of the crowd had removed the trap door and used it for firewood. The execution had to be postponed while they had a new door built.
While waiting, Swift Runner sat calmly and ate a large breakfast.
After the executioner approached him to pinion his arms. However, the man was so nervous that he couldn’t do it. Some members of the Cree who were in the audience took the rope from him and secured Swift Runner themselves.
By 9:30, Swift Runner demanded to be fed again. When he finished, he was finally taken up to be hung. As the noose and veil were put on him, the crowd roared. Amid the noise, the trap door opened, and Swift Runner fell to his death.
Swift Runner’s sensational crimes have become covered by decades of rumors and half-truths. In the end, these embellishments have only served to obscure the very real murders of a woman and several of her children by a monster of a man.
Swift Runner lived in a time where law and order were being brought to the Canadian frontier. The self-confessed murderer and cannibal became the first man officially executed on Canada’s western frontier.
Sources
Althouse, John. Fort Saskatchewan. Alberta Genealogical Society.
Baird, Craig. The History of For Saskatchewan. Canadian History Ehx.
Eccles, William John and Foster, John E. Updated by Foot, Richard and Filice, Michelle. Fur Trade in Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 7/23/2013. Edited 11/1/2019.
Rev. Father Leduc Sr. The Swiftrunner. Battleford Saskatchewan Herald, 2/9/1880
How They Gathered Him In. Winnipeg Free Press, 1/16/1880.
The Terrifying Tale of Swift Runner and the Wendigo. Knowledge Nuts.com
Lewis, Chad and Nelson, Kevin Lee. Wendigo Lore: Monsters, Myths, and Madness. Beyond the Fray Publishing, 2020, 2021.