Policing the plains
by R. G. MacBeth · English · Gutenberg #22220 · 630,544 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Policing the plains
being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted Police
Author: R. G. MacBeth
Release date: August 2, 2007 [eBook #22220]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22220
Credits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLICING THE PLAINS ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: MOUNTED POLICE ROUNDING UP HORSE THIEVES. _From painting
by C. W. Russell, Montana._ _Courtesy of the Osborne Coy., Toronto._]
POLICING THE PLAINS
BEING THE REAL LIFE RECORD OF THE FAMOUS
ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE
By R. G. MACBETH, M.A., Author of "The
Romance of Western Canada."
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
HODDER AND STOUGHTON, LTD.
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXXI
CONTENTS
I A GREAT TRADITION 7
II ENTER THE MOUNTED POLICE 25
III MOBILIZING 33
IV THE AMAZING MARCH 48
V BUSINESS IN THE LAND OF INDIANS 57
VI HANDLING AMERICAN INDIANS 78
VII THE IRON HORSES 93
VIII RIEL AGAIN 106
IX RECONSTRUCTION 126
X CHANGING SCENERY 141
XI IN THE GOLD COUNTRY 153
XII STIRRING DAYS ABROAD AND AT HOME 175
XIII MODESTY AND EFFECTIVENESS 206
XIV ON LAND AND SEA 233
XV GLORY AND TRAGEDY IN THE NORTH 255
XVI STRIKING INCIDENTS 266
XVII THE GREAT WAR PERIOD 281
XVIII GREAT TRADITIONS UPHELD 297
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mounted Police Rounding Up Horse Thieves (_Frontispiece_)
Sir John A. Macdonald 16
Hon. Alexander Mackenzie 16
Hudson Bay: R.N.W.M. Police with Dogs 17
Major-General Sir A. C. Macdonnell, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. 32
Major-General Sir Samuel B. Steele, K.C.B., etc. 32
Superintendent A. H. Griesbach 33
Inspector J. M. Walsh 33
Commissioner A. G. Irvine 48
Commissioner George A. French 48
Commissioner James F. Macleod 49
Commissioner Lawrence W. Herchmer 49
Sitting Bull 64
Colonel James Walker 65
Colonel T. A. Wroughton 112
Lieut.-Col. Aylesworth Bowen Perry, C.M.G. 112
Colonel Cortlandt Starnes 113
R.N.W.M. Police Wood Camp, Churchill River 113
Indian Tepee 128
Dog-Train 129
Yukon Rush: Summit, Chilcoot Pass 144
Group of Indian Children on Prairie 145
Chilcoot Pass: R.N.W.M. Police and Custom House 160
Klondyke Rush: Squaw Rapids, between Canyon and 161
White Horse Rapids, 1898
Supt. Constantine in Winter Uniform on the Yukon 176
Piegan Indians at Sun-Dance 177
Rev. R. G. Macbeth, M.A. 192
Group, R.N.W.M. Police, Tagish Post, Yukon 193
Fort Selkirk, Yukon 208
Esquimaux Family 209
Coronation Contingent, London, 1911 224
Indians Receiving Treaty Payment on Prairie 224
Fort Fitzgerald, Athabasca 225
Ice-bound Government Schooner 225
Herschell Island, Yukon Territory 240
Esquimaux Visiting R.N.W.M. Police Tent 240
Barracks at Fort Fitzgerald, Great Slave River 241
R.N.W.M. Police Shelter, Great Slave Lake 241
Cabin of Rev. Fathers Le Roux and Rouvier 241
R.N.W.M. Police Barracks, Churchill, Hudson Bay 256
Police with Dogs and Equipment on Split Lake, N.W.T. 257
Inspector Fitzgerald 272
Supt. Charles Constantine 272
Inspector La Nauze 273
CHAPTER I
A GREAT TRADITION
A few years ago I was away north of Edmonton on the trail of Alexander
Mackenzie, fur trader and explorer, who a century and a quarter before
had made the amazing journey from the prairies over the mountains to the
Pacific Coast. We looked with something like awe and wonder at the site
of the old fort near the famous Peace River Crossing, from which, after
wintering there in 1792, he had started out on that unprecedented
expedition, and we followed up the majestic Peace to Fort Dunvegan, past
whose present location Mackenzie had gone his adventurous way. And
during our trip we came across a little frontier encampment building
itself into a primitive wooden town in view of the advent of a railway
that was heading that way. It was a characteristic outfit with lax ideas
in regard to laws which touched upon personal desires as to gambling,
strong drink, Sunday trading and the rest. These men were out to make
money as their type has been on most of the frontiers of civilization,
and the unwary traveller or the lonely settler who ventured unduly was
promptly fleeced of his possessions and turned out amidst a good deal of
revelry in the hours of night. And then one day there rode into that
shack-town a young athlete in a uniform of scarlet and gold, the
rough-rider hat, the tunic of red, the wide gold stripe to the top of
the riding boots and the shining spurs. He rode in alone from the
nearest post some 60 miles away and, when he dismounted, threw off the
heavy saddle and picketed his horse, a sudden air of orderliness
settled on the locality. The young man, going around with that
characteristic cavalry swing, issued a few warnings, tacked up a notice
or two and then saddling his rested steed rode away at a canter over the
plain. But the air of orderliness remained in that region after the
horseman had disappeared over the horizon just as if he were still
present. This was puzzling to a newcomer who was along, and he asked me
what manner of man this young rider was that he was received with such
deference and that his orders, so quietly given, were so instantly and
so continuously obeyed.
The answer was made out of a life-long acquaintance with the history and
the real life of Western Canada: "Well, it is not the young constable
himself that counts so mightily, though he is a likely looking fellow
enough who could be cool anywhere and who could give ample evidence of
possessing those muscles of steel which count in a hand-to-hand
encounter. But you see he is one of that widely known body of men called
the Royal North-West Mounted Police. They have patrolled and guarded and
guided this whole North-West Country for the last forty years and more.
During that period they have built up a great tradition which rests on a
solid foundation of achievement. Their reputation for courage is
unchallenged, their record for giving every man of whatever race or
colour a square deal is unique, their inflexible determination to see
that law is enforced is well known and their refusal to count the odds
against them when duty is to be done has been absolutely proven again
and again. All these elements and others have created the Mounted Police
tradition to such an extent that the one constable you saw is looked on
as the embodiment of the Empire which plays no favourites but which at
the same time will stand no nonsense from anyone. And perhaps most
wonderful of all is that part of their record which shows that they have
done all this and more without any violence or repression, except as a
last resort. They were always more ready and anxious to save human life
than to destroy it."
"All that is very interesting," said my friend; "I would like to hear
more about these men, and would be glad if you would tell me something
of their history." And out there under the open sky of the North
Country, with the stars sparkling above us and the Aurora Borealis
dancing and swishing over our heads in a wonderful panorama of colour
and movement, we talked long into the night about the men in scarlet and
gold. Their whole story could not be told in a night, but the eager
interest of the listener and the creation of a new pride in things
Canadian in his heart, led me to resolve that the history he was seeking
should some day be published to the world. Many requests for the story
have come since that night in the Peace River country, and now that one
period of Police history is closing through the extension of the
jurisdiction of the Force over the whole Dominion, East as well as West,
accompanied by the word "Canadian" in their title instead of "North
West," the time seems opportune for a real-life record of what these men
throughout the years have meant to Canada. Such a record should cause
every Royal Canadian Mounted Police recruit to realize that he has to be
worthy of the tradition built up by the achievements of nearly half a
century through valorous men, many of whom have now passed over the
Great Divide. It will deepen in all men of sincerity a respect for
authority in a restless age. And it will bring into the light facts
hitherto unrevealed that will fill all men with pride in their country.
I know that the men of the Mounted Police have been averse to saying
anything about themselves. They have the usual British characteristic of
reticence intensified. But though I have been brigaded with them on
active service, I have not been a member of the corps, and hence do not
feel bound by their policy of silence. Let the plain truth, which is
always stranger than fiction, be told about these gallant riders as an
inspiration to young Canadians and to men of the blood everywhere. With
this purpose in view I am now keeping the resolution made that night in
the North, as I am in this book extending and telling to a larger
audience the story then unfolded to an individual. My humble hope is
that the larger audience may be equally interested.
THE WIDE WESTLAND
In the year of Grace 1920, we, in the West, celebrated with enthusiasm
the birthday anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company, which has attained
to the ripe old age of 250 years. Yet the eye of this ancient
organization is not dimmed by time, nor does its power show signs of
impairment. As it is around this old and honourable commercial and
colonizing concern that the early history of Western Canada principally
revolves, a few paragraphs on this subject seem to be necessary as we
begin our story. We must have proper historical setting for the entrance
of our famous police force on the stage of Western Canadian history.
About the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, Henry
Hudson, the intrepid navigator who was looking for a North-West Passage
by water through the North-American Continent to the Western Sea,
discovered the great Bay which bears his name to this day. Marooned by a
mutinous crew, he paid for the discovery with his life, after the manner
of many pathfinders, but he had unlocked a new Empire for the human
family. Then for years there was silence around the Bay which Hudson had
opened at such great cost to himself.
Away in the East, following the early explorations along the banks of
the St. Lawrence in old Canada, adventurous hunters and trappers began
to push their way westward and northward, past the Great Lakes to the
prairie land beyond. This was about the middle of the seventeenth
century, and at that period the New World was full of opportunity for
the daring who saw visions beyond the sky-line.
And so it came to pass about half a century after Hudson's time that two
French adventurers, Radisson and Groseilliers, reaching out from the St.
Lawrence to the wide north-west, came into contact with Indian tribes
who told about the great bay to the north and the vast riches of the
region in furs and skins. These adventurers went to see for themselves
and they found that the half had not been told. And because, despite
many theories, no one has ever discovered a way to carry on a big
enterprise without capital, these hardy pioneers returned to the East
and endeavoured to organize a trading company from amongst their French
compatriots. But the enthusiasm of the men who had seen could not awaken
response in the men who had not seen. The faculty of faith was not very
highly developed in these French habitants by the St. Lawrence. But the
zeal of Radisson and Groseilliers was unquenchable. They tried Boston in
vain, and then betook themselves to France, where they were not any more
successful, except that they got a letter of introduction to some men of
leading in England. The Englishman generally loves a sporting chance for
exploration and discovery, and so Prince Rupert, more or less a soldier
of fortune who had lent his name and his sword to almost anything that
offered a possibility of adventure or substance, took up the matter of
the fur trade and was instrumental in sending out vessels with Radisson
and Groseilliers to prospect on the shores of Hudson Bay. Once again the
men who went and saw came back, not only with tales of an El Dorado in
fur, but with the furs themselves, and the dashing Prince forthwith
secured from the easy-going Charles II a monopolistic charter to trade
and generally to control the whole vast region drained by rivers that
emptied into Hudson Bay. The territory thus granted, with more added
later by licences, extended generally speaking from the Great Lakes to
the Pacific and from mid-continent to the North Pole. It was as large
as half a dozen European Kingdoms and has become one of the greatest
adjuncts of the British Empire, but King Charles did not know nor care
much more about it than the French king who later on gave up Canada with
a light heart, saying it was only "a few hundred acres of snow."
It is not our duty in this book to follow the fortunes of "the Governor
and Company of the Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay" as
the Royal Charter described this little band of less than a score of men
to whom had been handed over the control of half a continent. It is
enough to say that the Hudson's Bay Company, as the popular habit of
shortening long titles rendered it, held this vast region for two whole
centuries. During that time the immense resources of the country tempted
others to disregard the monopolistic provisions of the Royal Charter and
to venture in upon forbidden ground. Companies such as the North-West
Fur Company, formed by the Scottish merchants of Montreal, rushed to
secure part of the rich harvest in trade that was being reaped by the
English Company, whose employees, it may be said, were largely the hardy
Scots from the Highlands and Islands. But the leaders of the Hudson's
Bay Company, "stabbed broad awake" by this opposition and strengthened
by the trustworthiness and endurance of their employees, held their
ground and extended their operations till they by degrees absorbed all
opponents and became in 1821 monarchs of all they surveyed.
Meanwhile in the Old Land many things of world-wide interest and
influence had been transpiring. The years around the opening of the
nineteenth century were made stormy by the Napoleonic effort to
subjugate Europe and while their men of military age were away fighting
for the liberty of Europe against "the little giant of Corsica," certain
areas in the north of Scotland were "cleared" of their inhabitants by
heartless landlords who felt that sheep were more profitable for the
owner of estates than human tenants. To these evicted crofters in the
Highlands came that noble altruist and philanthropic colonizer, the Earl
of Selkirk, who, having obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company an
immense district principally in what is now Manitoba, offered the
outcasts of a tyrannous land system homes in the great free spaces of
Rupert's Land, as the Hudson Bay territory was called. The offer was
accepted thankfully, and in the years from 1812 to 1815 these Selkirk
colonists came to the Red River of the North.
It is not part of this story to follow the fortunes of these famous
colonists of whom I have written more particularly in _The Romance of
Western Canada_. They encountered unaccustomed climatic obstacles, they
were persecuted and hunted by the fur-trading opponents of their
benefactor, they were tried by the disasters of floods and by plagues of
devouring locusts, but with the dogged and stern determination of their
race and creed they held on and demonstrated to the world the
possibilities of a country which is now the granary of the Empire.
And the world got to hearing of this Arcadian Colony of Scots in the new
North-West. So when the old Provinces of the East were brought together
under the name of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, the men of light and
leading at Ottawa lost no time in looking westward to secure the vast
western domain for the new Confederation. Despite the difficulty of
travel, settlers had already begun to percolate from Eastern Canada
through the States or the wilderness spaces west of the Great Lakes,
into the Red River country made famous by the Selkirk Colony. And it had
been becoming more and more apparent to the Hudson's Bay Company itself
as well as to others that the great fur-trading and mercantile
organization could no longer adequately administer an area which was
soon to overflow with the human sea of an incoming population. For many
years previous to Confederation the Hudson's Bay monopoly in trade had
been more or less of a figment of the imagination and no one knew that
better than the Company itself. It still retained its monopoly
nominally, but it made very little effort to restrain the half-breed and
other "free traders" who opened up stores and bartered for furs with the
Indians. In any case in one form or other all the trade of the country
practically came, in the last analysis, through the Hudson's Bay
Company, who controlled the money market by having their own bills in
circulation. But the wise old Company saw what was coming and began to
get ready to let go its monopolistic fur-trading charter and adjust
itself to the new conditions.
Hence it was not a difficult matter to persuade the Company to give up
its charter for a consideration. My father, who was a member of the
Council of Assiniboia, a magistrate, and a close personal friend of
Governor McTavish, who was in charge at Fort Garry on the Red River
where settlement had begun, always used to say that the Hudson's Bay
Company was glad to find a reasonable way of getting the responsibility
for the government of the growing country off its hands.
Accordingly, when the Canadian Government deemed the time was ripe, two
members of that Government, the Hon. Sir George E. Cartier and the Hon.
William McDougall, were sent to London to negotiate with the Imperial
authorities for the transfer of the North-West to Canada. In view of the
attitude taken by the Hudson's Bay Company, as stated above, the matter
was not difficult to arrange. And after a brief discussion in London,
the famous old fur-trading organization, which had held charter rights
since the days of Charles II, relinquished those rights to the Imperial
Government for £300,000 sterling, certain reservations around their
trading posts, along with one-twentieth of the land in the fertile belt.
Then, as previously understood, the Imperial Government was to transfer
the vast North-West to Canada, which in turn undertook to respect and
conserve the rights of the people in the area thus added to the
Dominion. This arrangement was concluded in the spring of 1869, and it
was then expected that the purchase money would be paid on the 1st of
October following, and that probably on the 1st of December the Queen's
Proclamation would issue, setting forth these facts and fixing the date
of the actual transfer to Canada.
So far all was well. The ideas leading up to the acquisition of this
great domain were in every sense statesmanlike, and, if carefully
carried out, were calculated to be of the greatest benefit to the people
in the new territory and the Dominion as well. We should pay unstinted
tribute to the men whose ideals were for an ever-widening horizon, and
who felt that "no pent-up Utica should confine the powers" of the young
nation just beginning to stretch out and exercise its potentially giant
limbs. Once the older Provinces in the East were brought into
Confederation it was wise to look forward to a Canada stretching from
ocean to ocean, and to take the necessary legal steps to secure the
broad acres of the West as part of the Dominion. But just when
everything seemed to be going well a cog in the diplomatic equipment of
the Canadian Government power-house slipped and taking advantage of the
occasion, one Louis Riel, the son of the old hot-headed agitator on the
Red River, threw a wrench into the machinery.
The Canadian authorities who wisely carried through the negotiations
with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Imperial Government seem to have
blundered by overlooking the fact that the new territory had within its
borders some 10,000 people, apart from the Indians, who ought to have
been informed in some official way of the bargain that was being made,
and of the steps that were being taken to conserve the rights and
privileges of these early settlers.
It is true that rumours of the transaction reached the Red River country
through unauthoritative sources, but the main result was to produce a
feeling of uneasiness amongst the people there. And especially was this
the case when the rumours were given point by overt acts. Even before
the transfer of the country had been legally completed men were sent out
from the East to open roads from the Lakes into the settlements.
Surveying parties entered the new territory and went hither and thither,
driving their stakes and erecting their mounds, to the bewilderment of
the people, and to cap all the indiscretions, a Governor, the Hon.
William McDougall, was dispatched from Ottawa to the Red River before
the Hudson's Bay regime was formally superseded and before a Queen's
Proclamation, which would have been instantly recognized by all classes
in the community, was issued.
The Selkirk Settlers and other people of that class, however perplexed
at the procedure, had the utmost confidence that the Canadian
authorities would ultimately do substantial justice to all, and hence
they awaited patiently though somewhat anxiously the developments of
time. But the French half-breeds, more fiery and more easily excited,
more turbulent of spirit and warlike in disposition, accustomed to more
or less fighting on the plains, and withal, as a class, less well
informed than their white brethren, were not content to wait. They felt
that the course being followed by the Canadian authorities might lead to
the loss of their rights, and so they rose in a revolt, that while
accomplishing some of the objects that could have been reached by
constitutional means, left its red stream across that early page of our
history. But in the midst of all our statements let it be remembered, in
mitigation of the attitude of the Canadian authorities, that
communication between Ottawa and the West at that period was very
difficult. There were no railways nor telegraphs and the mails were few
and far apart. Though, on the other hand, that condition of things
should have made all parties more tolerant and cautious.
Strange that the two Louis Riels, father and son, should lead in
agitations that were somewhat contradictory. The elder Riel was a
famous antagonist of the Hudson's Bay Company regime with its apparent
or alleged monopoly in trade, and the younger Riel, while no lover of
the Company, opposed the Canadian Government which was to replace it.
The truth seems that they were both temperamentally against authority
and that they were both afflicted with a megalomania which led each to
imagine that he was some great one.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD. Who, while Premier, founded the
Mounted Police. (_Photo, Pittaway Studios, Ottawa._)]
[Illustration: HON. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. Who, while Premier, organized
the Mounted Police. (_Photo, Pittaway Studios, Ottawa._)]
[Illustration: HUDSON BAY: R.N.W.M. POLICE WITH DOGS.]
The younger Riel had the "bad eminence" of leading two rebellions in
Western history before winding up his tragic career on the scaffold at
Regina. He it was who opposed the entrance of Governor McDougall to the
Red River in 1869. He it was who, after having stopped the Governor,
rode down and captured Fort Garry in which he and his men fared
sumptuously all that winter out of the Hudson's Bay Company store. He it
was who imprisoned those who opposed him and ordered the shooting of
Thomas Scott, a young Canadian prisoner--an act which estranged from the
rebel chief the sympathy of many who believed that he had some grounds
for protest against the incoming of authority without any guarantee of
the settler's rights.
But the reign of the rebel was not long. The Imperial authorities who
have never forgotten the teaching of history in the loss of the American
colonies, have more than once called the governments in free colonies to
a sense of their duty and have followed up their advice with military
backing if necessary. And both were forthcoming in this case. The hand
of the good Queen Victoria is seen in the following dispatch from Earl
Granville to Sir John Young, Governor-General of Canada:
"The Queen has heard with surprise and regret that certain
misguided persons have banded together to oppose by force the entry
of our future Lieutenant-Governor into our territory in Red River.
Her Majesty does not distrust the loyalty of her subjects in that
settlement, and can only ascribe to misunderstanding and
misrepresentation their opposition to a change planned for their
advantage.
"She relies on your Government to use every effort to explain
whatever misunderstanding may have arisen--to ascertain the wants
and conciliate the goodwill of the people of Red River Settlement.
But in the meantime she authorizes you to signify to them the
sorrow and displeasure with which she views the unreasonable and
lawless proceedings which have taken place, and her expectation
that if any parties have desires to express or complaints to make
respecting their conditions and prospects, they will address
themselves to the Governor-General of Canada.
"The Queen expects from her representative that as he will be
always ready to receive well-founded grievances, so will he
exercise all the power and authority she entrusted to him in
support of order and the suppression of unlawful disturbances."
The closing paragraph of this fine message indicates the traditional
British Empire position, that though grievances will be heard and
remedied, there will be no quarter given to any nonsense on the part of
rebels. And it was in keeping with this position that Colonel (later
Field Marshal Sir Garnet) Wolseley was dispatched to the Red River
country with regular troops, who arrived at their destination only to
find that Riel and his forces had decamped before their arrival. Two
regiments from Eastern Canada came later and remained on duty at Fort
Garry for some time after the regulars under Wolseley had returned home.
The Red River country was ushered into Confederation as the Province of
Manitoba, and the Hon. Adams George Archibald, of Nova Scotia, was sent
out from Ottawa in 1870 as Lieutenant-Governor. He took a rough census
of the country and with the resultant crude voters' list the first
regular Western Legislature was soon elected and at work.
But west and north of this little Province of Manitoba, itself sparsely
settled, lay an immense hinterland stretching nearly a thousand miles to
the Rocky mountains and northward to the pole itself. This enormous
area, then commonly called "The Saskatchewan," was unpeopled except for
thousands of Indians, many groups of nomadic buffalo-hunters mostly
half-breeds, a few scattered missions of various churches, and a large
number of Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. Manitoba was under the
oversight of a regularly constituted Government and Legislature. But out
in the vast north-west hinterland it was a sort of interregnum time, in
view of the fact that the Hudson's Bay Company, which had controlled the
country for two centuries, had given up its charter and authority to the
Dominion of Canada which had legally but not yet visibly taken
possession. Or, to change the figure, the period was, governmentally
speaking, a sort of "No man's land" with one party technically out of
possession and the other not yet recognized by the traders or Indians as
being in control. Such a situation gave a great deal of opportunity for
lawlessness by warring tribes, horse-thieves, whisky peddlers,
boot-leggers and all the rest of that ilk. And the proximity to the
American boundary line making escape easy was an additional temptation
to the lawlessly inclined. That this class did not allow the opportunity
to go by unused soon became apparent to men who were upon the ground.
Mr. Lawrence Clark, a noted Hudson's Bay officer, whom I remember in his
later years, handsome, eager, alert and well-informed, said that both
traders and Indians were learning the dangerous lesson that the Queen's
orders could be disregarded with impunity.
And it is now pretty well known that our good Queen and her advisers who
had been shocked by the Riel outbreak in 1869 were concerned for the
good government of the vast domain that had been recently handed over by
the Imperial Government to Canada. It was not the British way to allow
things to get out of hand, nor to permit wards of the nation, like the
Indians, to become the victims of the lawless in trade and in morality.
Hence the Governor-General of Canada received for himself and his
responsible advisers more than one dispatch from the Headquarters of the
Empire admonishing that steps should be taken to preserve peace in the
vast new domain and to give all who would immigrate thither the proper
British safeguards as to life and liberty and the pursuit of their
lawful avocations. And, of course, the Canadian authorities, chagrined
over the Riel outbreak and having some knowledge of the immense
responsibilities they had assumed by taking over the North-West, were
anxious to prevent anything that would make the new country unattractive
to the people who were desirous of coming with their families to settle
within its borders.
As a result of all this, Governor Archibald, of Manitoba, within a few
weeks after his arrival in Fort Garry, took steps to secure a report on
conditions on "The Saskatchewan," outside the Province where he was the
representative of the Crown. The fact that he did this so soon after
assuming office and when matters in his own Province required special
attention, indicates strongly the pressure that had been brought to bear
upon the Canadian authorities by headquarters. And when a man was
required for the special mission out over the far North-West he was
there on the spot in the person of Lieutenant W. F. Butler of the 69th
Regiment, afterwards famous as Sir William Butler, of South Africa. On
account of his splendid powers of endurance, his great faculty for
observation and his remarkable literary genius, he was a man with unique
qualifications for the task--the difficult and delicate task--to which
Governor Archibald called him. A person has to be sadly destitute in the
religious sense to believe that Butler was on hand by accident. It is
exceedingly interesting to find that another man, who afterwards became
noted in South Africa, namely the bluff and valiant fighter, Redvers
Buller, was in the Red River expedition with Wolseley and had been
mentioned in connection with the mission to the North-West hinterland.
Years afterwards in the Boer War time this same Redvers Buller, then
commanding the British forces on the veld, said to Colonel Sam B.
Steele, of Strathcona's Horse, who also had served under Wolseley: "I
know Lord Strathcona very well: when I was at Fort Garry on the Red
River Expedition he spoke to me about going out over the plains to
investigate conditions, but I was recalled to my regiment and Governor
Archibald sent Butler out instead, a good thing too; for he wrote a very
good book on his journey which I could not have done." And this
big-hearted, manly, generous reference by Buller properly indicated that
he not only recognized his own limitations, but was glad to pay tribute
to the literary genius who wrote that Classic _The Great Lone Land_ and
the noble biography of General Gordon of Khartoum.
But Butler had more than literary gifts. He had, as already stated,
great powers of observation and that remarkable faculty for forecasting,
which was exemplified, then, on Canadian prairies as it was later on the
South African veld.
In the book _The Great Lone Land_, to which allusion has been made,
Butler tells us with manly frankness that in 1869 he had come to a
standstill in his career as a soldier, because he had neither the means
nor influence to secure any promotion in such a piping time of peace.
And so, when news of the Riel Rebellion in the far West drifted to
London, Butler cabled to Canada for an opportunity to serve in the Red
River Expedition. He immediately followed his cablegram, but on his
arrival found himself too late for a place. However he was given a
special mission to go from Toronto to Fort Garry by way of the United
States in order to find out how the people of that country along the
boundary looked at matters on the Red River. Butler went on to Fort
Garry, passed through the rebel zone, met Wolseley and with him entered
Fort Garry, which had just been evacuated by Riel. As things quieted,
Butler was going to leave for the East, when Governor Archibald got hold
of him, as stated, and sent him out over the West to report on
conditions and make recommendations. He left Fort Garry in October,
1870, treked 900 miles to the Rocky Mountains, then wheeled northward
to Edmonton and down the Saskatchewan River to Lake Winnipeg, boxing the
compass so far as the great hinterland of the plains was concerned. He
heard much and saw more, witnessed the smallpox scourge lashing the
Indian tribes, saw the general disquiet and disorder with no one in
control. The steed of the far West was riderless, the reins had been
thrown away and the country was running wild. Butler's report is graphic
in the extreme and has many recommendations, but the one that mainly
concerns us just now is that which advises the establishment of
constituted authority with sufficient force to back it up, for it was
that recommendation which led to the establishment, though delayed
strangely for two years more, of the famous corps known originally to
history as the North-West Mounted Police.
The particular wisdom of Butler's recommendation lies in the fact that
he advocated along with the civil government a material force which
would be located "not at fixed points or forts." For he said that any
force so located "would afford little protection outside the immediate
circle of these points and would hold out no inducements to the
establishment of new settlements." Wise man was Butler who saw that
settlers must be secured to pour into this vast country and make it the
granary of the Empire, and that a force movable enough to be readily at
the call of scattered settlements would be absolutely necessary. The
sequel has proven how well Butler forecasted events because settlers by
the thousand soon desired to come and it was the presence of the Mounted
Police that gave to these settlers the sense of security that made it
possible for them to turn the vast plains into waving fields of grain
and cause the wide areas of pasture land to shake under the tread of
domestic herds.
And the other special point in which Butler's wisdom in recommendation
comes out in regard to the force to be established is where he states
that such a force should be independent of any faction or party either
in church or state. His wise hint in this regard was taken and
followed, and hence all through their history the Mounted Police have
gone their way, caring for nothing and for nobody in their intentness on
doing their duty. It is quite well known to some of us that in many
places on the plains, in the mountains and away in the land of the
golden Yukon, the Police were often strongly urged to relax their
vigilance in the interests of some political party or some business that
was financially concerned. But all such temptations fell on deaf ears,
and the scarlet-coated riders, looking on intimidation and efforts at
bribery with contempt, pursued the even tenor of their way and gave
every man a square deal according to his deserts no matter who he was or
to what colour the sun and the wind had burned his skin. Such was the
force which this wise recommendation of Butler called into existence.
That such a force would have no sinecure and would have no room for
"misfits or failures," Butler tells us in 1870 in that clause of his
report in which he says, "As matters at present rest, the region of the
Saskatchewan is without law, order or security for life or property;
robbery and murder for years have gone unpunished; Indian massacres are
unchecked even in the close vicinity of the Hudson's Bay Company posts
and all civil and legal institutions are entirely unknown." It was high
time for government control with an adequate material force to give it
power.
And because I have referred to Butler's foresightedness it would be
unfair to his memory to close this section without quoting the
magnificent paragraph with which he ended his report in March of 1871.
It reads as follows:
"Such, sir, are the views which I have formed upon the whole
question of the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan
country. They result from the thought and experience of many long
days of travel through a large portion of the region to which they
have reference. If I were asked from what point of view I have
looked upon this question, I would answer--From that point which
sees a vast country lying, as it were, silently awaiting the
approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls unceasingly
from Europe to America. Far off as lie the regions of the
Saskatchewan from the Atlantic seaboard, on which that wave is
thrown, remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern
slopes of the Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is
destined to reach those beautiful solitudes, and to convert the
wild luxuriance of their now useless vegetation into all the
requirements of civilized existence. And if it be matter of desire
that across this immense continent, resting on the two greatest
oceans of the world, a powerful nation should arise with the
strength and the manhood which race and climate and tradition would
assign to it--a nation which would look with no evil eye upon the
old motherland from whence it sprung; a nation which, having no
bitter memories to recall, would have no idle prejudices to
perpetuate--then surely it is worthy of all toil of hand and brain,
on the part of those who to-day rule, that this great link in the
chain of such a future nationality should no longer remain
undeveloped, a prey to the conflict of savage races, at once the
garden and the wilderness of the central continent."
These great words were written nearly half a century ago. What has taken
place in Western History within that time shows how this remarkable man
"had his ear to the ground," as the Indians used to express it and that
he was in effect saying, with Whittier:
"I hear the tread of nations,
Of Empires yet to be;
The dull low wash of waves where yet
Shall roll a human sea."
CHAPTER II
ENTER THE MOUNTED POLICE
Great bodies are proverbially slow in their movements, and in this
regard all governments seem to be great bodies. It may be that a healthy
difference of opinion within a cabinet tends to cautious procedure, but
that type of caution is rather trying on people whose nerves tingle for
action.
The first Government of Canada under that astute and tactful statesman,
John A. Macdonald, was a sort of composite organization which needed
careful handling to prevent explosions, and some vast new problems such
as the construction of a transcontinental railway were in that day
swinging into politics. So, despite Butler's urgent report in 1871 and
the rumours more or less exaggerated of intertribal Indian fights with
the accompaniments of massacre and scalping-knife torture, the
Government took another year to think over it, and in 1872 sent
Adjutant-General P. Robertson-Ross to make a general reconnaissance and
bring back further expert opinion. And Colonel Ross, after many many
months of travelling, brought in a quite pronounced series of
suggestions pointing out the great need for such a force as Butler had
suggested, and definitely advised the placing of detachments of "mounted
riflemen" all the way from Manitoba to the Rockies, and for that matter
from the boundary line to the Pole.
It is interesting to note in this report of Colonel Robertson-Ross a
reference to the matter of the uniform of the proposed force in the
following paragraph:
"During my inspection in the North-West, I ascertained that some
prejudice existed amongst the Indians against the colour of the
uniform worn by the men of the Rifles, for many of the Indians
said, 'Who are these soldiers at Red River wearing dark clothes?
Our old brothers who formerly lived there (meaning H.M.S. 6th
Regiment) wore red coats,' adding, 'we know that the soldiers of
our great mother wear red coats and are our friends.'"
The Indians like the bright colour, but they also in this case connected
it with the regular regiment that had come to the Red River to keep the
peace. Referring to this same subject of uniform, Mr. Charles Mair,
noted author and frontiersman, recently said: "There is a moral in
colour as in other things, and the blind man who compared scarlet to the
sound of a trumpet was instinctively right. It does carry with it the
loud voice of law and authority so much needed in this disjointed time.
It disconcerts the ill-affected and has no small bearing in other ways."
The Hon. Frank Oliver, of Edmonton, who has known the West from the
early days, wrote not long ago on this point:
"For nearly half a century throughout Canada's great plains, the
red coat of the Mounted Policeman was the visible and definite
assurance that right was might. A red speck on the horizon was
notice to both weak and strong, honest and dishonest, that the rule
of law prevailed; while experience taught white men and red that
'Law' meant even-handed justice as between man and man without fear
or favour."
"The red coat was evidence that wherever the wearer was, he was
there with authority. In any other colour he might have escaped
hostile observation. Not so when clad in red."
Following Colonel Ross' report in 1872 the Government at Ottawa was
subjected to a sort of fusillade on the question from the floor of the
House of Commons. Hon. Alexander MacKenzie (afterwards Premier), Hon.
Dr. John Schultz (later Sir John, Governor of Manitoba, who had been
imprisoned by Louis Riel and had escaped with a price on his head), an
ardent Canadian, Hon. William Cunningham, a newspaper man from Winnipeg,
Hon. Donald A. Smith, a Hudson's Bay Company man (who as Lord Strathcona
was to have such a large share in the making of the West) and the Hon.
Letellier de St. Just were some of the members who wanted to know what
the Government was contemplating in view of all the reports received.
Sir John A. Macdonald, who took special pride in the police in later
years, and the Hon. Joseph Howe, whose office was to look after the
West, said that the Government was fully alive to the situation and
would act in due time. As a matter of fact the Government, especially
Sir John, had been for some time in consultation with experienced
service men, notably Major (later Colonel) Arthur Henry Griesbach, who
was in Ottawa for many months advising in regard to the force of which
he was afterwards to become one of the earliest and most honoured
members. It also emerged later that Sir John and his associates had been
making some study of such famous organizations as the Irish
Constabulary, and that he had set his mind on having a force that would
be distinguished for hardiness in service and readiness in response to
calls of duty rather than for "fuss and feathers," as he expressed it in
his favourite way.
Finally, on May 3, 1873, the Premier moved for leave to introduce a bill
dealing with the administration of justice and for the establishment of
a police force in the North-West Territories. It was adopted by the
House on May 20, and so the organization of the now famous corps was
definitely on its way. An interesting fact was that this was to be a
civil force in uniform, not a military organization subject to the
Queen's regulations, but dependent for discipline upon the personality
of the officers, the esprit de corps that would be generated and the
_noblesse oblige_ idea that would emerge in the course of service. And
all these things actually developed as we shall see in the process of
this story.
Having finally passed the Act, the legislators rested on their laurels
a few months more, for it was not until September that actual enrolment
of the new force began to take place. The process of enlistment was then
hurried somewhat and later on some sifting was done in order to throw
out any culls. But in the main the men measured up well to the demands
of that most interesting and important clause in the Act, which says:
"No person shall be appointed to the police force unless he be of
sound constitution, able to ride, active and able-bodied, and
between the ages of eighteen and forty years, nor unless he be able
to read and write either the English or the French language."
This was sane legislation, for these men were not going out on a picnic.
They were going to patrol the widest and wildest frontier in the world.
And that frontier has always said in the words of Robert Service:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your
sane:
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore.
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core.
Them will I gild with my treasure; them will I feed with my meat;
But the others--the misfits, the failures--I trample them under
my feet."
And in order that readers may have other testimony than that of the
author on the question of the need for strong men, let me quote words
written by the Hon. N. W. Rowell, who, as President of the Council and
Governmental head of the force, had specially studied the history of the
Police:
"When the Canadian West first saw the scarlet jacket the prairies
were in a transition stage which contained grave possibilities of
danger. The old era, in which the Hudson's Bay Company and the
Indians had dealt peaceably together, was breaking up, and the
private trader, irresponsible and often not too scrupulous, was
laying the seeds of trouble in a land where the Indians still were
numerous and powerful. Tribe waged war against tribe, and
formidable hosts, fresh from fighting against the American army,
surged across the forty-ninth parallel."
And the words also of the frontier statesman already mentioned, the Hon.
Frank Oliver, of Edmonton:
"Ordinarily speaking no more wildly impossible undertaking was ever
staged than the establishment of Canadian authority and Canadian
law throughout the Canadian prairies by a handful of Mounted
Police. The population consisted chiefly of warring tribes of
Indians, of whom the Blackfeet Confederacy was the most important,
the most warlike and the most intractable. Next to the Indians in
numbers were scattered settlements of half-breeds, who lived by the
chase; no less warlike although more tractable than the Indian.
Then a few white and half-breed traders and missionaries; and last
and best, the commencement of white settlements at Prince Albert
and Edmonton. An imaginary line separated Canada from the United
States for a distance of 800 miles. South of that line, strategic
points were garrisoned by thousands of United States soldiers; an
almost continuous condition of Indian warfare prevailed; and the
white population in large measure ran free of the restraints of
established authority. There had been an overflow of 'bad men' from
Montana into what is now Southern Alberta and South-Western
Saskatchewan, who repeated in Canada the exploits by which they had
made Montana infamous. In large measure, world opinion took for
granted that lawlessness must accompany pioneer conditions.
Canada's Mounted Police Force was the challenge to that idea."
And as evidence of the way in which the police backed Canada's challenge
nothing finer is written than the following in a letter to me some time
ago from Governor Dr. R. G. Brett of Alberta, who has been on the
frontiers for nearly forty years:
"The manner in which so small a force kept down the liquor traffic,
controlled the savage tribes of Indians, protected the lives and
property of the settlers, affords an illustration of paternal
administration that is probably without parallel in the world's
history."
These are tributes from men who know. And Governor Brett goes on to
commend the idea of a history of the Police when he adds:
"Every Canadian cannot but be a better citizen after reading the
history of the lives of the modest heroes, whose devotion to duty
and even-handed distribution of justice have commanded the
admiration of the civilized world."
From the beginning the officers of the force have been almost invariably
of outstanding strength who won the respect of the men under their
command by their willingness to share all the perils of the service and
by being always ready to be in front of the troop when there was danger
ahead. Not long ago a veteran hospital Sergeant of the Force, Dr.
Braithwaite, of Edmonton, said finely, "I know of no officer in the
force who would order any man to do any work at all, that the officer
would not do himself. A man would not be asked to ride a refractory
horse that his officer would not or could not ride. This is what has
given the Force its reputation--the absolute confidence of the men in
their leaders, and the complete esprit de corps that was always there."
That the general spirit of the original legislation which insisted on
good physique and respectable character in the men of the force was
carried out in practice, those of us who have known these men in almost
all circumstances and places can testify. To illustrate, I recall in
Winnipeg seeing the men who were going over to form part of the Empire's
tribute on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. After a
stop-over for a couple of hours they fell in to the bugle call on the
railway platform. The men looked like models for the statue of Apollo,
and with the clear eye, bronzed faces and alert movement born of their
clean and healthful outdoor life on the plains, they were goodly to
behold. And when I remarked to Major (now Commissioner) Perry, who was
in command, that it was generally looked on as rather a dangerous thing
to let a body of men loose amid the temptations of a strange city, Perry
replied: "That has no bearing on these men, even though there was a
saloon on every corner. Every man feels that the honour and good name of
the force depend on his individual conduct, and so he can be trusted."
And when in London, the Mounted Police won golden opinions, not only for
their splendid appearance, but for their gentlemanly bearing.
Still another general remark may be made here. It will be remembered
that Butler had recommended that the force to be organized in support of
constituted authority be independent of any party or faction either in
Church or State. And here also Butler's advice has been borne in mind.
Governments have come and gone in regular cycle of years according as
they were thought worthy or otherwise of the people's support. And
partisan politics have played a considerable, and not always a
creditable, part in Canadian history. But the Mounted Police force has
never been in the game. Mounted Policemen have always been strictly
non-partisan in politics and no interference with them by politicians of
any party would be tolerated for a moment. These law-enforcers have
always been absolutely independent of any local or other influences
except the commands of their officers in the line of duty, and to this
in large measure is due the remarkable reputation of the force for
giving every man a square deal, regardless of race or creed or colour.
Mounted Policemen have never been respecters of persons. They treat
every one alike. Referring to political parties, for instance, it is
recalled that the corps was scarcely organized when Sir John Macdonald
was retired by the Canadian electorate and the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie
was elevated to the premiership. But this made no change in the matter
of the force which from the beginning has been the servant not of any
political party but of the nation. It is historically correct to say
that Sir John Macdonald started the organization, but it fell to Mr.
Mackenzie's lot to perfect the organization, and start it definitely on
its Western career. Governments may come and governments may go, but the
Police have kept on the even tenor of their way throughout all the
years.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR A. C. MACDONNELL. K.C.B., C.M.G.,
D.S.O., KNIGHTED FOR SERVICES TO THE EMPIRE.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR SAMUEL B. STEELE, K.C.B., etc.,
KNIGHTED FOR SERVICES TO THE EMPIRE. _Photo. Elliott & Fry._]
[Illustration: SUPERINTENDENT A. H. GRIESBACH. The first man to enlist
in the Mounted Police. "The Father of the Force."]
[Illustration: INSPECTOR J. M. WALSH. Who handled the Sitting Bull
situation. _Photo. Murray, Brockville._]
CHAPTER III
MOBILIZING
Perhaps the startling story of "The Massacre Ground" at Cypress Hills,
some 40 miles north of the boundary line, and kindred stories were the
last straws which, added to the weight of evidence for the necessity of
an armed force in the West, moved the Dominion Government to active
organization work. This Cypress Hills event is a gruesome story enough,
but it is part of the setting for the entrance of the Mounted Police on
the stage of Western life.
It appears that a party of men--we call them men by courtesy as they
were human beings of the male persuasion--crossed over from Montana on a
trading expedition. They were white men, but perhaps of various races,
for they were mostly adventurers who had served in the American Civil
War and had not much regard for human life. These men deluged an
Assiniboine Indian Camp with deadly whisky in return for every valuable
thing the Indians had to trade. And when the Indian Camp was ablaze with
the light of campfires and was a mad whirl of dancing drunkenness the
miscreant traders from the South, in a spirit of utter wanton devilry,
got under cover of a cut bank by the creek where the camp was, and
proceeded to shoot the Indians who were defenceless in their orgy. A
volley or two accounted for two score killed and many wounded, only a
few escaping to the hills. And this carnival of bloodshed was witnessed
by an American trader, Abe Farwell, who, being alone, was helpless to
prevent, but who testified as to the frightful occurrence.
Nor was this very far from the general order of the day. Bloods,
Piegans, Blackfeet, Crees, Assiniboines and the other tribes maddened
with doped liquor from outlaw traders, fought each other whenever they
met. And some cases were known where Blackfeet and Crees, implacable
enemies, happening to meet at some trading post, struggled with fierce
brutality, while the Hudson's Bay trader in the fort had to barricade
his gate and let them fight it out amongst themselves. I have myself
seen Indian braves with half a score of scalps dangling from their
belts, and others with no end of nicks in their rifle stocks to indicate
the number they had slain. Buffalo-hunters from the white and half-breed
settlements by the Red and the Assiniboine Rivers only ventured westward
in large companies heavily armed. Explorers ran great risks, and the
famous Captain Palliser had to hunt one whole winter with Old Sun, the
Chief of the Blackfeet, that he might become as one of that fighting
tribe and get leave to draw his maps.
Communication was difficult, but the news of these events of
frightfulness percolated through to Ottawa and the order went out in
September, 1873, that officers already appointed should proceed to
recruit in the Eastern Provinces and rush some part of the force to the
far West, so as to be on the ground by the next spring. The principal
recruiting officer seems to have been Inspector James Morrow Walsh, who
became one of the noted men of the Force in later years. It is a
somewhat remarkable coincidence and a decided testimony to the
directness with which the Mounted Police when organized struck at the
very heart of the lawlessness in the West, that Fort Walsh, called after
this recruiting Inspector, was built as a Police post not many months
later practically on "The Massacre Ground" in the Cypress Hills country.
That Fort was a direct and visible challenge to every outlaw, white or
red, who expected to have his own way in British territory.
We shall meet Walsh from time to time in this story and his name simply
occurs here as one of the earliest recruiting officers. I knew him at
different stages in his career, but most particularly when he had
retired from the Force and entered the coal business in Winnipeg. Later
on he was the Civil Governor of the Yukon Territory. Clean-cut in
figure, athletic, wiry and always faultlessly dressed, Walsh was a
good-looking type and bore in his carriage the unmistakable stamp of his
cavalry training. In Winnipeg he was popularly known as the man who had
tamed Sitting Bull, the redoubtable Sioux of Custer Massacre fame, but
others of the Police also had a hand, as we shall see, in that
extraordinary experience.
There was no difficulty in getting men to enlist in the Mounted Police.
This was clearly not due to any mercenary motives on the part of men
enlisting. The remuneration for both officers and men was small, as it
remains comparatively speaking to this day, when we remember that the
work has always called for an unusual degree of endurance, initiative,
reliability and courage. But the Government no doubt placed considerable
reliance on the fact that the spirit of adventure is strong in the
hearts of young men and that the lure of a new land would draw them with
compelling magnetism. In this the authorities were not disappointed. In
fact, Colonel George A. French, a Royal Artillery Officer, then at the
head of the School of Gunnery at Kingston (who died recently after much
distinguished service to the Empire during which he rose to a
Major-Generalship and a Knighthood with many decorations), and who was
early given command of the Mounted Police with the title of
Commissioner, saw the danger of a rush for places in the new Force and
took steps to weed out undesirables. More than once in Toronto and again
at Dufferin in Manitoba when the great venture of the march out into the
unknown began, Colonel French put the matter before the men in a sort of
forlorn-hope admonition. They were to be one of the few forces in the
world constantly on active service and neither Garibaldi nor Bruce of
Bannockburn ever warned men more distinctly of what possibly lay ahead
of them. And the picture, as after events proved, was not overdrawn.
These men were to face cold and hunger and the perils of drought in the
various seasons of the year; they were to leave the comforts of
civilization and live under the canopy of the sky amidst the storms of
summer and the blizzards of winter; they were to be called to root out
nests of outlaws who had no scruples about taking human life, and they,
a mere handful of men, were to control and guide Indians whose brethren
to the south of the boundary were engaging attention of thousands of
soldiers in the endeavour to keep them in order. All this and more did
French tell the new recruits. But only a very few dropped out and
throughout the years the force has attracted a fine class of men both
from Canada and the British Isles. Young men from the towns and farms of
the old Provinces, University Graduates and younger sons of the nobility
in the Mother Land, men of birth and breeding and social advantage have
always been in the ranks. But once in the force there were no social
distinctions sought or recognized. Genuine manhood was the only
hall-mark allowed as a standard. The fine democracy of Robert Burns,--
"The rank is but the guinea stamp;
The man's the gold for a' that,--
has had right of way. There was an intangible but real atmosphere in the
corps which in some quiet but quite definite fashion, eliminated any man
who did not measure up to the mark which the members felt they ought to
reach. Mr. Charles Mair, the author and frontiersman, already quoted,
says finely, "The average Mounted Policeman was an idealist regarding
the honour of his corps; and if, as sometimes happened, a hard character
crept into it, physically fit, a good rider or a good shot, but coarse,
cruel and immoral, he fared ill with his fellows, and speedily betook
himself to other employment."
The men who first enlisted in the East, mainly in Ontario, in September,
1873, were sent away westward by the Great Lakes and the difficult
Dawson Route to the Red River country in order to be on the ground and
get down to work preparatory to the trek towards the setting sun. The
Dawson Route, so-called after the designer of it, was a trail which
utilized the water-stretches and on the whole was more suited to
amphibious animals than human beings. Some of the men now coming over it
with the police had travelled it with Wolseley a few years previously
and would have vivid recollections of the flies and mud and portages and
the need of manufacturing skidways over the bogs, but they would also
recall the irrepressible and uproarious spirit in which they used to
sing of their additional accomplishments in the rollicking "Jolly Boys"
chorus:
"'Twas only as a volunteer that I left my abode,
I never thought of coming here to work upon the road."
The Police, however, were coming in the fall of the year and escaped
some of the plagues of the earlier seasons. They duly landed at Lower
Fort Garry, the old Hudson's Bay post still romantically standing on the
banks of the Red River some 20 miles north of the present city of
Winnipeg. They came in three troops or divisions, "A," "B," and "C," of
fifty men each, which was the number of the Force which the law-makers
at Ottawa thought would be sufficient to patrol 300,000 square miles of
territory where lawlessness was beginning to be rampant. In the meantime
it was not very pleasant for the Police to land at the Fort near the
beginning of winter and to learn a few days afterwards that their winter
clothing had been commandeered by the weather and frozen in somewhere on
the Dawson Route. But this too was accepted with good grace by the men
who had declined to be sifted out of the Force by the warnings given
them as to hardships ahead.
These men at Lower Fort Garry had been on the pay-roll since their
enlistment in September, but they were not actually on service till the
3rd of November, 1873, when they were sworn in by Lieut.-Colonel Osborne
Smith, who was then in command of the Western Military District with
headquarters at Winnipeg. It is not generally known that Colonel Osborne
Smith, who had seen service in the Crimea and the Fenian Raid in 1866,
was really appointed Commissioner of the Police so as to give him full
authority until a successor was invested with the command. But I have
before me as I write the elaborate parchment which so appointed Colonel
Smith. It is dated September 25, 1873, and bears the signature of J. C.
Aikins (afterwards Governor of Manitoba) as Secretary of State as well
as that of Sir John A. Macdonald. Colonel Osborne Smith, whom I knew
well in later days and under whom I served in the Winnipeg Light
Infantry, brigaded in 1885 with some of the Police of this original
troop, was an ardent Canadian Imperialist, and I imagine it was he who
drew up the enlistment oath that was subscribed before him that day at
the old Fort. In view of the fact that the word "Canadian" has been
substituted in the name of the Force for the word "North-West" and that
the jurisdiction of the corps has now been extended over the whole
Dominion, it is suggestive of prophetic vision that the original oath
should have borne the heading "Mounted Police of Canada."
It is also interesting to note in connection with this oath, which
pledges faithful performance of duty and the protection and due care of
their equipment and other public property, that the first signature is
that of Arthur Henry Griesbach, who was then Regimental Sergeant-Major,
but who later on became one of the ablest Superintendents. He has
already been referred to as the special adviser of Sir John A. Macdonald
in Ottawa for some months prior to the organization of the Police, and
on this account shares with Sir John the designation of the "Father of
the Force." Griesbach's signature was witnessed by Samuel B. Steele, who
was then Troop Sergeant-Major, and who, after very notable service in
the Police and the Militia, was promoted to a Major-Generalship and
Knighted. Amongst other well-known signatures is that of John Henry
McIllree, then a Sergeant who, with much excellent work in the Force to
his credit, became Assistant Commissioner and is now retired with the
rank of Colonel and the Imperial Service Order. The list of men on that
first roll holds the signatures of many whose names became household
words in Western Canada and whose contribution to the Empire was of
far-reaching value. They were the real originals of a corps which was
looked on by many as an experiment in the beginning. But their work set
such a high standard for those who came after them that men who joined
in later years felt the pressure of prestige to which they must live up
if they were to hold their place in the organization. The result has
been that the reputation of this remarkable corps has grown with the
years and any writer of their history would be sadly lacking in the
historical sense if he did not see how profoundly they have influenced
for good the trend of life west of the Great Lakes.
It is worth while at this point to emphasize and illustrate this
statement for the sake of readers who may not know the history of the
West as some of us do who have lived in the country all our days and
have witnessed the developments throughout the passing years. Nothing
could be a greater mistake than to look upon the Mounted Police as a
body separate from the elements that have gone to the making of the
Canadian West. As a body, it is true, they were aloof from partisan
political strife, from class struggles in the social order and from the
activities of commercial endeavour, but their influence was felt
constantly on the pulse of the growing country which, like a boisterous
growing boy, needed restraint and guidance in reaching the fullness of
its powers. They were not party men, politically or socially, but they
saw that every person and every organization that was sane and
law-abiding and constructive, got fair play without interference from
anyone. The Police did not as a body engage in commercial activities
themselves, but they made it possible for the settler and the miner and
the railroad-builder and others in all lawful occupations to go about
their work in peace and develop the country under the shield of police
protection. In brief, the record of this famous corps is woven into
Western history to such a degree that without the fibre of that record
the present great fabric of a new land, strong, sound and unbreakable,
would have been impossible.
Two things specifically might be said here in this regard. Butler, in
the famous report already quoted, dwelt eloquently, it will be
remembered, on the necessity for the organization of a force that would
be a protector and guide to the settlers who would flow into the West.
It is rather a curious coincidence that when the first of the Mounted
Police contingent came over the Dawson Route they assisted families on
the way to the Red River country who would probably never have got
through without the help of these kindly giants. And that was just a
prophecy of what was to be the rule. Settlers did not hesitate to go
where there was Mounted Police protection and the occasional patrol to
remote homesteaders to see whether there was anything required made the
lot of many a lonely household much more carefree and happy than it
would otherwise have been. There is absolutely no doubt that the tide of
humanity flowed freely into the vast new frontier land by reason of the
fact that the scarlet-coated riders had made the wilderness a safe abode
and a place of opportunity for the law-abiding and the industrious. Thus
did the Police fulfil the vision of Butler and make the settlement of
the great areas not only possible but speedy.
Another impressive way in which the Mounted Police made history was
their extraordinary handling of the Indian tribes who were the original
possessors of the soil. History, both ancient and modern, is full of the
bitter tragedies created by the way in which incoming people have
treated original inhabitants of the lands they were coming to possess.
In our own day just across the border, owing to mishandling by some
unfaithful Government agents and other causes, there was war for decades
between the Government and the Indians, who looked upon the cavalry and
other military bodies in that country as their enemies. This was never
the case with our Western Country. The first business our Mounted Police
did was to stand between the Indians and the vile creatures who would
give them drink and rob them of all they possessed. So that some two
years after the scarlet tunic had made its appearance in the foothill
country, Crowfoot, the famous Chief of the warlike Blackfeet, referring
to the Police, said in his beautiful imagery, "They have protected us as
the feathers protect the bird from the frosts of winter." The Indians
knew that they could not commit crime and go unpunished any more than
the white man, but the Indians also knew that the Police would see that
every man, whether red or white, got fair play. Hence the Indians
recognized the Police as their friends and not as their enemies. With
thousands of Indians, accustomed to almost constant war, thrown upon
their hands, the Police never had any real revolt on the part of the
Indians to deal with save only when the mad Riel inveigled a few of them
on the war-path by cunning guile. And with some personal knowledge of
that whole affair we venture to say that had the warning given by
Superintendent Crozier and other Policemen months before the outbreak
been taken, and had the Police Force been doubled and given a free hand,
there would have been no rebellion and no bloodshed. But when the
outbreak did come we are also ready to affirm, as amongst those who took
part in its suppression, that but for the missionaries and the Police
the rebellion would have been far more widely spread. And equally are we
ready to declare that the Police were the backbone of every brigade in
which they served, and this we say without any desire to minimize the
arms of the service to which we belonged.
It was the swearing in of the "originals" of the Mounted Police that led
to the writing of these special reflections. For on looking back over
the years of this West that I have known from childhood, it seems to me
that the day of that first enlistment oath was a pivotal point around
which much of the destiny of Western Canada would turn for the rest of
recorded time. Hence it is at this stage of the story that the formative
day at Lower Fort Garry should be noted.
That winter in the old stone-walled fort was a busy one for the new
recruits. After they were sworn in by Colonel Osborne Smith, that
officer returned to his duties at Upper Fort Garry. He had done a good
day's work, and if he addressed the men in the crisp, incisive style I
have often heard him use on patriotic occasions, then he had made
additional contribution to the considerations that inspired the Police
to determined endeavour. On his leaving Superintendent W. D. Jarvis, who
had seen service in Africa and became a very popular officer, took over
the duties of Adjutant and Riding Master, Griesbach took charge of
discipline and foot-drill, while S. B. Steele, popularly known in the
West to the close of his days as Sam Steele, looked after the breaking
of the broncos and gave instruction in riding, which latter proved to be
highly necessary. There were no eight-hour days, the only limit being
the daylight each way. Steele drilled five rides a day in the open, and
the orders were that, unless the thermometer dropped beneath 36 degrees
below zero, a rather cool temperature, the riding and breaking were to
proceed. The broncos were of the usual exuberant type, given to every
device to throw a rider, and falls on the frozen ground were not
infrequent, but by spring the men knew how to handle broncos so as to
become the pioneers of fine horsemanship amongst the riders of the
plains.
Lieut.-Colonel French came in November, 1873, and assumed his command.
It did not take him long to see that a handful of 150 men, however
gallant, would be totally inadequate for the gigantic undertaking ahead
of them. The Force has always been too small in numbers, but at the
outset the proposed strength was absurdly below the mark. Fortunately
the news of the lawlessness that was abroad in the far West made it
possible for Colonel French to get the proposed number doubled and
brought up to the 300 which Constable T. A. Boys made famous in his
well-known poem "The Riders of the Plains," from which we quote the
following verses:
"We muster but three hundred
In all this Great Lone Land,
Which stretches from Superior's shore
To where the Rockies stand;
But not one heart doth falter,
No coward voice complains,
Tho' all too few in numbers are
The Riders of the Plains.
"Our mission is to raise the Flag
Of Britain's Empire here,
Restrain the lawless savage,
And protect the Pioneer;
And 'tis a proud and daring trust,
To hold these vast Domains,
With but three hundred Mounted Men,
The Riders of the Plains.
"And though we win no fame or praise
But struggle on alone
To carry out good British rule,
And plant old England's throne;
Yet when our task is ended,
And Law and Order reigns,
The peaceful settler long will bless
The Riders of the Plains."
Meanwhile down in Eastern Canada the left wing of the Force was being
recruited and, permission being obtained from the United States, three
divisions, rather over strength, left Toronto on June 6, 1874, and came
west via Chicago and St. Paul to the end of steel at Fargo in North
Dakota. Colonel French had gone back East to come out with them. It was
a motley outfit that dumped itself out of the train on that Dakota
plain. The men were a carefully selected and fine appearing lot, and the
horses were of the handsome Eastern type; but the wagons in pieces to be
assembled, and the saddles shipped from England in parts, were strewn
over the ground for acres. The Fargo people rather enjoyed the idea of
these men with their interesting mission being amongst them for a week
or so getting ready for the trail. But to the amazement of those
townsfolk the Police starting at four o'clock in the morning and working
in four-hour relays "hit the trail" within twenty-four hours and pulled
out their cavalcade for the trip to Canadian Territory. It had taken two
weeks from Toronto, including the rather testing experience for men of a
day off in Chicago and St. Paul, so that we like Colonel French's note
at this point saying, "I must say I felt a great load off my shoulders
at again being on Canadian soil." But the Police had begun early to
create a good impression, and he adds, "The conduct of the men had been
most exemplary, their general appearance and conduct invariably
attracting the favourable notice of the railway officials and others _en
route_." In preparation for the march westward to the foothills of the
Rockies the three divisions "A," "B," and "C" that had been quartered
for the winter at Lower Fort Garry left that point on June 7, 1874, and
were at the rendezvous at Dufferin near the boundary line to greet the
Commissioner and the three divisions "D," "E," and "F," which had come
through as related from Toronto.
Just before leaving Lower Fort Garry with the original divisions,
Inspector James Farquharson McLeod had been appointed Assistant
Commissioner of the Force. Thus one of the noted figures in the after
history of Western Canada came upon the scene of his future work and
triumphs. McLeod had served as Assistant Brigade Major in Wolseley's Red
River expedition and for his services then received the brevet rank of
Lieut.-Colonel and the C.M.G. He was originally from Calgarry in
Scotland (hence the name of the city of Calgary in Alberta in his
honour) and had all the judicial faculty of the Scot coupled with the
ardour of his Highland ancestry. His absolute reliability and fearless
fairness gave him an influence over the Indians in later days that can
only be described as extraordinary, and the time came when that
commanding power over the warlike Blackfeet stood Canada in good stead.
Commissioner French lost no time in getting his men into shape at the
rendezvous. From the divisions he brought with him he drafted fifty men
to bring the original divisions up to strength. He arranged the night
camp with the Eastern horses inside the zariba of wagons, and the
Western horses, mostly broncos, on the outside--an arrangement that
turned out well in view of a stampede that took place. The occasion of
the stampede (and there is nothing more fearful than a stampede of
maddened animals) was a terrific thunderstorm, which transformed the
prairie into a sea of electric flame and sent bolts crashing into the
zariba amidst the horses that were tied to the wagons. Sergt.-Major Sam
B. Steele (that was then his rank), who was riding near this enclosure,
thus vividly described the scene: "A thunder-bolt fell in the midst of
the horses. Terrified, they broke their fastenings, and made for the
side of the corral. The six men on guard were trampled under foot as
they tried to stop them. The maddened beasts overturned the huge
wagons, dashed through a row of tents, scattered everything, and made
for the gate of the large field in which we were encamped. In their mad
efforts to pass they climbed over one another to the height of many
feet. I had full view of the stampede, being not more than 50 yards from
the horses as they rushed at the gate and attempted to pass it,
scrambling and rolling over one another in one huge mass." Inspector
(now Colonel) Walker leaped on a passing horse and went out with them
into the night. He pursued the frightened animals for some 50 miles
across the boundary, and helped to round them up and bring them back
twenty-four hours after they had stampeded. Colonel Walker says: "The
horses did not get over their fright all the summer, and had to be
watched closely as any unusual noise would stampede them." This was
truly an exciting introduction to prairie life.
Commissioner French, who had been sworn into his office on December 16,
1873, was handling the situation with the thoroughness and ability of a
trained soldier. He believed in discipline and showed independence by
declining to tolerate any outside interference with the work of the
Force. Perhaps it was French who laid the foundations for the
non-partisan character of the Police by resisting anything which bore
the resemblance of using political pull to secure place and promotion in
the corps. He stood strongly for merit as the basis for preferment.
Evidence is not lacking to show that Ottawa was rather too much disposed
to run the Force by long-range activity on behalf of some favourites.
Dispatches came from the seat of Government, showing pronounced lack of
knowledge of local circumstances and requirements. To some of these
French replied so forcibly that interference with the internal
management of the Force largely ceased in time. In one case, amongst
French's books of letters, I found this recently: "Sub-Constable ----
has not as yet shown the necessary qualification to justify his
promotion to the position of Acting Constable, much less to that of a
Commissioned Officer." In another case he wrote: "I beg to point out
that if the members of this Force are encouraged to communicate with the
Department direct, thereby ignoring all those supposed to be placed in
authority over them, it will be very difficult to maintain anything like
proper discipline in the Force." Wise man, who saw a dangerous tendency,
and courageous man to point it out with frankness. At another time some
wise person suggested to pay by cheque, to which French replied, "Who
will cash them in the wilderness?" Similarly, he objected to members of
the Force being encouraged to write of their grievances to the
newspapers.
That French looked carefully into details for the sake of the men's
comfort is evidenced by letters in his book which protest against an
inferior kind of tea being sent out for use in the Force, and that he
was very watchful against the class of people who, on various pretexts,
try to get some of the Government property, is attested by the following
letter to a man whom I remember well to be of that shark type: "In
answer to your letter of the 28th of August, I beg to say that I do not
see the necessity of giving you a Government wagon, because, through
some carelessness in your business arrangements, you have lost one of
your own." There is wit as well as rebuke in that communication. On the
whole we repeat that, though he had a task of unusual difficulty, French
laid the foundation of the Force, and gave the superstructure a trend
that affected for good the after history of the famous corps. It was
this man who was now to lead his column on the longest march in history
for a column carrying its own supplies. He was leading it "out into the
unknown," but though many prophesied disaster, he was not to fail.
CHAPTER IV
THE AMAZING MARCH
That thunderstorm, with the resultant stampede at Dufferin, along with
some blood-curdling prophecies of attacks by the scalp-gathering Sioux
Indians, had the good effect of weeding out the few non-adventurous
spirits who, up to now, had thought that the hardships and dangers of
the expedition had been painted in too lurid a colour. This suited
Colonel French, as he had no desire to venture into the wilderness with
any but the very best of men. A very necessary part of Police equipment,
namely their revolvers, did not arrive from England till early in July,
but once they had come French, who was impatient of delay in beginning
so tremendous a trek, gave orders on July 8 for a "pull out," or what
the old traders used to call "a Hudson's Bay start." The idea of a "pull
out" before the real journey began was to shake the line of the caravan
into shape, take out any kinks that might need straightening, and
generally see that everything was working satisfactorily. With field
guns and mortars, seventy-three wagons, and 114 of the wooden prairie
conveyances, known as Red River carts, new harness and other equipment
that needed testing, the "pull out" in this case was highly desirable,
but every care had been taken, and after a 2-mile test, camp was pitched
for a day or so till the real trip, across the 1,000-mile plain, was
commenced on July 10, 1874, a red-letter day in Western history.
The prairie had witnessed many a remarkable outfit striking out over the
plains with dog-trains in winter and carts and buffalo-runners in
summer, but it had never seen anything so business-like and highly
picturesque as this Police marching-out state. The six divisions or
troops of the mounted men, with the convenient alphabetical designation
from "A" to "F," had been given horses of distinctive colour, so that in
order there came for the start, dark bays, dark browns, light chestnuts
with the guns, greys, blacks and light bays. After these came wagons,
carts, cows and calves, beef cattle, and a general assortment of farming
implements. Meat would be necessary when the buffalo were not available,
and it would keep better "on the hoof." Posts would have to be supplied
with food, and haying, ploughing and reaping would be necessary if men
and horses were to live at some of the remote points. So they took the
necessaries along as far as they could. Of course, the impressive order
of march at the beginning could not be maintained throughout the
gruelling expedition. A thousand miles across swamp and _coulées_ and
rivers, over areas of waste and desolate prairie, where fires had swept
every vestige of grass away, through sections where flies and drought
and excessive heat, turning into cold as the autumn approached, played
the inevitable havoc. All these elements combined to throw that ordered
line into confusion at times. Here and there cattle died, oxen gave out
and quit, horses broke down through lack of food and water, men, hardy
as they were, took ill sometimes, but none succumbed, and as Colonel
French observed in concluding his first report to Ottawa: "The broad
fact is apparent that a Canadian force, hastily raised, armed and
equipped, and not under martial law, in a few months marched vast
distances through a country for the most part as unknown as it proved
bare of pasture and scanty in the supply of water. Of such a march,
under such adverse circumstances, all true Canadians may well be proud."
And so say we all.
[Illustration: COMMISSIONER A. G. IRVINE.]
[Illustration: COMMISSIONER GEORGE A. FRENCH.]
[Illustration: COMMISSIONER JAMES F. MACLEOD.]
[Illustration: COMMISSIONER LAWRENCE W. HERCHMER.]
It would be impossible to follow that amazing march in detail--that
would take a whole volume, but the main outlines are within our reach.
The officers who led in that remarkable episode in Canadian history
deserve mention, for it has always been a Police tradition that officers
would never ask men to go anywhere where they were not prepared to go
themselves. Personally, or by reputation, at one time or another, I have
known practically all of these officers, and they would all measure up
to requirements, though some would excel others in initiative and
activity. They were Lieut.-Colonel George A. French, Commissioner; Major
James F. MacLeod, C.M.G., Assistant Commissioner; Staff-Dr. J. G.
Kittson, Surgeon; Dr. R. B. Nevitt, Assistant Surgeon; W. G. Griffiths,
Paymaster; G. Dalrymple Clark, Adjutant; John L. Poett, Veterinary
Surgeon; Charles Nicolle, Quarter Master. Division "A": W. D. Jarvis,
Inspector; Severe Gagnon, Sub-Inspector. Division "B": G. A. Brisebois,
Inspector; J. B. Allan, Sub-Inspector. Division "C": W. Winder,
Inspector; T. R. Jackson, Sub-Inspector. Division "D" (Staff Division):
J. M. Walsh, Inspector; J. Walker and J. French, Sub-Inspectors.
Division "E": J. Carvell, Inspector; J. H. McIllree and H. J. N.
LeCaine, Sub-Inspectors. Division "F": L. F. N. Crozier, Inspector; V.
Welsh and C. E. Denny, Sub-Inspectors. These were the originals amongst
the officers, and the originals always attract our special notice. The
Force has been as a whole, wonderfully fortunate in its officers. Here
and there, as in the rank and file, there have been some throughout the
years who were less strenuous and able than others, but their uniformly
high character, and their incorruptibility at the hands of men who were
ready to pay large sums if the Police would look the other way, have
never been questioned. Many of these officers throughout the years might
have become wealthy had they either neglected their duty to take
business investments on the frontier, or had they been susceptible to
anything like bribery. It stands to their credit that those of them who
have passed on, died in comparative poverty, and that those who survive
have nothing but their not too generous pay, or the still less generous
pension allowance.
The original officers above named set a high standard in that famous
march across the wilds in 1874, and they were supported by as gallant
and hardy a body of men as ever crossed the plains. Most of them were
young men from the Eastern Provinces, who had no experience in the life
of the prairies, and hardly any conception of the difficulties to be met
and overcome, but they faced situations as they arose, and with the same
initiative, resource and courage that have characterized Canadians on
other fields of service, they persevered and won.
Broadly speaking, the aim of the Police expedition was to strike at the
lawlessness which was specially defiant and open in the foothills of the
Rockies, where the proximity of the international boundary line made it
easy for outlaws of all types to evade the consequences of their crimes
and depredations on both sides in turn. Besides that it was proposed, by
a sort of triangular distribution of the 300 Police, to cover the whole
North-Western territory, and in that way give visibility to authority in
all localities. To fulfil these aims and reach these objectives, the
main body of the Police was to be sent on this march out to the Bow and
Belly Rivers, near the Cypress Hills, made infamous by the massacre
already described, and countless other criminalities. Another
detachment, separating from the main body, was to go northward to
Edmonton, by way of forts Ellice and Carlton, while a third, under the
charge of the Commissioner, was to return to the proposed headquarters
at Fort Pelly or Swan River, on the north-west boundary of Manitoba.
These objectives were all reached after many serious hardships, the only
modification in the places being in regard to the Swan River. On
returning to that point in the beginning of winter, Colonel French found
that the barracks were not ready for occupation, some wiseacre having
started to build them amid granite boulders on a hill. Moreover,
prairie fires had burned the hay intended for the Police, and the
Hudson's Bay Company, having lost their supply also, could not assist.
Consequently the Commissioner left only one division there, under that
very competent officer, Inspector Carvell, and with the rest he pushed
on to Winnipeg and the original starting-point at Dufferin, where he
arrived in 30 degrees below zero, November weather, after a total march
for his contingent of nearly 2,000 miles. We shall look at these three
movements of the Force briefly.
The whole column kept together as far as La Roche Percée, or the pierced
rock, on the banks of the Souris, a distance of nearly 300 miles from
the starting-point at Dufferin. Near here the Commissioner established
what he called Cripple Camp for the maimed and halt, both of man and
beast, for already the hardship of the route had begun to take its toll.
But there was no time to lose, and French throughout was insistent on
getting forward, for the way was long, and it was necessary to get out
to the Cypress Hills country, get some shelters erected for the men and
horses, and lay in some stores of provisions. By the end of August they
were pretty well to their destination. In the meantime, Colonel French
had gone over the line to Fort Benton, Montana, the nearest telegraphic
point in those days, secured some stores and learned from Ottawa that
after arrival at the foot-hill points, he was to leave Assistant
Commissioner MacLeod in charge and return himself with "E" and "D"
Divisions to Fort Pelly or Swan River, as the headquarters of the Force.
While Colonel French was in Montana for a few days several half-breed
buffalo-hunters visited the Police camp and told some ferocious stories
about the desperadoes who were entrenched out in the cattle-stealing and
boot-legging belt waiting to dispute possession with the new-comers. The
scarlet-coated men took in all they said and smiled. Forts "Whoop-Up,"
"Stand-off" and the rest, with some of the outlaws in garrison, would
have been a welcome diversion after the hardships they had experienced.
Perhaps the leading incident of this particular part of the big trek was
the discovery by the Commissioner of Jerry Potts, a short, heavy-set,
taciturn man, half Scot and half Piegan, a wonderful plainsman, skilled
in the language of the Indian tribes and a past-master in all the lore
of the prairies. His father was an Edinburgh Scot, who was killed in
Missouri by an Indian, and it is said that Jerry, though a mere boy,
followed the Indian into camp and shot him. Anyway, Jerry Potts became a
splendid help to the Police, a trainer of scouts, a matchless diplomat
with the Indians, an incomparable interpreter, and a highly respected
guide who, without consulting maps, seemed to know the way by instinct
either in summer or winter. He began to be useful as soon as he took
service with the Force in that fall of 1874. He guided them to the best
feeding-places for the horses and cattle, and to the watering-places
which were so constantly needed. And when, a few days after he came, the
column struck herds of innumerable buffalo, it was Jerry Potts who
warned against shooting at certain times, lest the bisons would stampede
and trample the whole cavalcade under foot. Potts remained with the
Police as interpreter till his death in 1906, making a long service of
twenty-two years. We shall meet his name here and there in this story--a
diamond in the rough, entitled to a niche in the hall of the men who
helped to shape the early years of our history.
Shortly after this trip to Montana, Colonel French, with the divisions
above named, left the foothill country, and, coming back by way of
Qu'Appelle, Fort Pelly and Swan River, he reached Dufferin, as already
mentioned, in the 30 degrees below zero weather, he and the men with him
having travelled about 2,000 miles since leaving there in July.
The third party already mentioned as leaving La Roche Percée was a
small detachment under Inspectors Jarvis and Gagnon. With sick and
played-out horses, a lot of cattle, and not much general provision, and
hardly enough men to keep up the rounds of duty, the lot of this
detachment starting out on a march of 850 miles was not very enticing.
The detachment left La Roche Percée on August 3, and reached Edmonton,
by way of Fort Ellice and Carlton, on the 27th of October. Pasture was
poor, water was scarce and, except where they struck Hudson's Bay posts
or, as in one case, met a caravan of traders from whom some rations in
the shape of pemmican were purchased, the outlook all the way was
hazardous. When the weather began to get cold the weakened horses often
had to be lifted in the morning and their joints rubbed, before they
could proceed on the journey. During the last 25 miles it seemed as if
the enterprise would collapse near the goal, as the cold had so
stiffened the half-starved horses that they could not travel over the
hard-frozen and icy ground. They had to be lifted and rubbed hour after
hour. No wonder Inspector Jarvis said after reaching Edmonton, "Had
these horses been my own property I should have killed them, as they
were mere skeletons." However, the detachment got through finally, and
were warmly welcomed by Mr. Hardistry, the Hudson's Bay factor, who, in
addition to his own open-hearted nature, had joy in exercising to the
full that generous hospitality for which the old Hudson's Bay men have
been famous for two and a half centuries. They had ruled in a
benevolently autocratic way throughout the years, and one would almost
imagine that they would have looked askance at the scarlet-coated men
who were representing the powers that were superseding them. But the
Mounted Police had no more loyal friends and helpers than these grand
men of the old Company, who were of enormous assistance to the
Government and the Police in the critical days when there was a change
of rulers taking place and the problem of the Indians had to be
peaceably and satisfactorily settled.
Inspector Jarvis, who was a gallant and popular officer, has this
notable paragraph in his report to Colonel French: "In conclusion, I may
state, on looking back over our journey, I wonder how we ever
accomplished it with weak horses, little or no pasture, and for the last
500 miles with no grain, and the latter part of it over roads
impassable. We made them, that is to say, I kept a party of men ahead
with axes and, when practicable, felled trees and made corduroy over
mudholes, sometimes 100 yards long, and also made a number of bridges
and repaired the old ones. We must have laid down several miles of
corduroy between Fort Pitt and here. Streams which last year when I
crossed them were mere rivulets, are now rivers difficult to ford. _And
had it not been for the perfect conduct of the men and real hard work_,
much of the property must have been destroyed." Loyal men were those
splendid pathfinders, who would do their utmost to conserve the
equipment which belonged to their Sovereign. They had a keen sense of
honour and a fine appreciation of the trust reposed in them.
It is highly interesting to find emerging occasionally in these reports
the names of men who afterwards became outstanding figures in the Force.
Constable Labelle is especially singled out for mention by Inspector
Jarvis, because of his special attention to the horses which were pulled
through largely by his assiduous care. A man of that kind wins our
respect and appreciation. A horse is perhaps the most sensitive animal
in the world, and the West is full of stories of the positive attachment
which grew up between the men on the frontier and the faithful animals
to whose endurance and courage in storm and blizzard the troopers often
owed their lives.
And Inspector Jarvis mentions another in his first report from Edmonton
when he says, "Sergt.-Major Steele has been undeviating in his efforts
to assist me, and he has also done the manual labour of at least two
men."
That Steele, whom we shall meet more than once in this story, could do
the manual labour of at least two men we can well believe. Years after
the date on which this tribute was written by Jarvis I met Steele in the
foothills of the Rockies, and in his tall, powerful figure, deep-chested
proportions and massive shoulders, he suggested prodigious strength to
the onlooker. And that Steele not only could but would do two men's work
if it seemed his duty, goes without saying to those who knew him.
Lieut.-Colonel J. B. Mitchell, of the 100th Grenadiers in Winnipeg, one
of the original '73 men of the Mounted Police, tells us that when he
went to Kingston to take an artillery course, before the Police Force
was organized, he was told by Battery Sergt.-Major John Mortimer that
some of the sergeants might try to take advantage of him, as he was new
at the business but Mortimer added, "You can always rely on Sergeant Sam
Steele." And the certificate of that grizzled old Sergt.-Major never had
to be cancelled.
And thus we have seen the Mounted Police come upon the stage and take
their positions at the end of extraordinary marches. It will be our
place and privilege to follow them as they play their large and serious
part in nation-building in Western Canada.
CHAPTER V
BUSINESS IN THE LAND OF INDIANS
Orders from Ottawa had disposed the Mounted Police into four different
locations, although, as we have seen, the fourth had become only
necessary at Dufferin, because there was neither shelter nor adequate
provision for headquarters at Fort Pelly. But, when we look back into
the situation, we can readily see that the Assistant Commissioner,
Colonel MacLeod, had the most difficult and dangerous situation of all.
They had all reached their destination after tremendous hardships, the
Edmonton detachment perhaps most of all. But the three detachments,
namely those at Edmonton under Jarvis, Fort Pelly under Garvell, and
Dufferin under the Commissioner, had shelter and reasonable provision.
But MacLeod was out in the open with the winter coming on and no shelter
from the blizzards that blow at times even across that foothill country.
He was hundreds of miles away from any possibility of help in men or
substance from Canadian sources, and he had only three troops of fifty
men each in the midst of a turbulent gang of outlaw whisky-peddlers and
horse-thieves. He was completely surrounded by thousands of the most
warlike of Western Indians, with some thousands still more warlike just
over the line. Perhaps it was well that he hailed from the land where
they say, "A stout heart to a stey brae," because, if a figure of speech
from the sea is permissible on the prairie, he and his men knew that
they had "burned their ship behind them," and that they must hold their
ground or perish. They proved equal to their task, but a sketch or two
from the reports of that period reveal the situation even to those who
do not know the country. Colonel MacLeod decided that he could not hope
to pull the horses and cattle through the winter in the locality where
he was making his headquarters, so he dispatched Inspector Walsh and the
weakest of the horses and cattle to Sun River, some 200 miles to the
south. Walsh was evidently on the look out for service, for MacLeod
says, "Walsh was anxious to be sent, and he deserves great credit for
the way in which he is performing this service." In another place
MacLeod says about November 1: "We had a severe snowstorm, with high
wind and extreme cold, the thermometer going to 10 degrees below zero.
When the storm broke I had all the horses driven into the shelter of the
woods near by; every one blanketed and fed with oats and corn. Then I
was extremely anxious about them, and glad they got through so well."
The righteous man is merciful to his beast, even though the beast is
Government property. And then we come across this fine human touch in
which the emotional nature of the Highlander breaks through: "I hope
soon to have ample accommodation for all if another storm breaks out. I
have made up my mind that not a single log of men's quarters shall be
laid until the horses are provided for, as well as a few sick men." If
the dumb animals cannot speak for themselves, the Colonel speaks for
them. If the men who are laid aside cannot plead their own cause they
will not suffer, for the Colonel does not forget them. And MacLeod is
early teaching his officers that he will have no "carpet knights," who
claim immunity from hardship because of their rank, for he goes on to
say, "Then the men's quarters will be proceeded with, and after that the
officers'." We think the officers would all say amen to this, and that
is why they always had the confidence of their men. By the time it was
20 degrees below zero they had got the men inside buildings with enough
chimney to allow a fire to be kindled. But officers were still on the
waiting list, for the report says in December, "Winder, Jackson and the
doctor are in a tent in the woods."
With officers and men of that stamp we hear no whining about being
unable to enforce the laws of the country. And it was no easy place to
enforce laws of certain kinds. The whole region around Fort MacLeod, as
the necessarily crude outpost was called, being conveniently near the
boundary line, had been for years the favourite stamping ground of the
whisky-peddler. There had been no one to interfere with his activities.
The Hudson's Bay Company regime, never very active in that locality, had
been out of commission for four years, and nothing had taken its place.
For Canadian authority, governing in a long-distance fashion, had not
yet impressed itself visibly on the vast plains. Hence the outlaw trader
had gone his riotous way, and as a result the poor Indian, who had an
insatiable thirst for stimulant, had lived riotously to his own great
detriment.
And so, busy as the Police were in trying to build some shelter for
their horses and themselves, Colonel MacLeod lost no time striking a
body blow at the liquor traffic. Hearing from an Indian named Three
Bulls that a coloured man was doing business in fire-water about 50
miles away, MacLeod sent Inspector Crozier and ten men, accompanied by
the inimitable interpreter, Jerry Potts, to gather in the outfit. Two
days afterwards Crozier returned, bringing in the coloured gentleman and
four others with some wagon-loads of whisky, a small arsenal of rifles
and revolvers, as well as many bales of buffalo robes, which the
whisky-sellers had taken from the poor Indians in exchange for the drink
that was so fatal to these children of the wild. The whisky was poured
out in the snow, the robes were confiscated for the good of the country,
and the culprits given the option of a fine or jail. This process
revealed the headquarters of the traffic, for a sporting man, rejoicing
in the sobriquet of "Wavey," came up from Fort Benton, in Montana, and
paid the fines of the white men. There was an extra charge against the
coloured man, whose name was Bond, and as "Wavey" would not intervene
Mr. Bond had to go to jail. MacLeod would stand no nonsense. On one
occasion, a gentleman from the same country as Bond, who was sent to
jail without option, and who had in his own locality contracted the bad
habit of talking back to judges, said to Colonel MacLeod, "When I get
out of here, if you put me in, I will make them wires to Washington
hum." "Let them hum," sad the Colonel; "in the meantime you go to jail,
and if you say more you may have your sentence doubled."
This was a Daniel come to judgment with a vengeance. To be more modern,
it reminds one of Begbie, the great frontier judge on the west coast,
who tamed the outlaw miners who tried to start rough-house in the
gold-rush days. The dishonest extortioners on the prairie could do
nothing to frighten or flatter or tamper with men like Colonel MacLeod
and his red-coated patrols. Hence, we read the sequel in the Colonel's
report in December, 1874: "I am happy to be able to report" (happy is a
choice word--there are some things that make a good man happy)--"to be
able to report _the complete stoppage of the whisky trade throughout the
whole of this section of the country_, and that the drunken riots, which
in former years were almost a daily occurrence, are now entirely at an
end; in fact, a more peaceable community than this, with a very large
number of Indians camped along the river, could not be found anywhere.
Every one united in saying how wonderful the change is. People never
lock their doors at night and have no fear of anything being stolen
which is left lying about outside; whereas, just before our arrival,
gates and doors were all fastened at night, and nothing could be left
out of one's sight." And then Colonel MacLeod adds a testimony from the
Rev. John McDougall, of Morley, at the edge of the mountains. He and his
father, the Rev. George McDougall, who had been frozen to death on the
plains, were widely known old-time missionaries. In later years I knew
John McDougall well, missionary, scout and frontiersman, tall,
full-bearded, handsome and keenly alive to everything that affected the
welfare of the West land. And this competent witness said, "I am
delighted with the change that has been effected. It is like a miracle
wrought before our eyes." The Police were fulfilling their high,
benevolent and patriotic mission.
Colonel MacLeod felt that the first business of the Police was to thus
protect the Indians who were the wards of the nation, and so it was that
he had struck a decisive blow at the drink traffic, which was bidding
fair to exterminate these children of the plains. Once that was done the
Colonel set himself to get into touch with the various native tribes,
which from the earliest days of the explorers and fur-traders had been
looked upon as the most warlike and dangerous. It is well known that
even the Hudson's Bay Company, despite the experience and the remarkable
tact of their employees, had always found it difficult to establish
satisfactory relations with the tribes, amongst which at this period
Colonel MacLeod and his men were seeking a sphere of service for the
good of all concerned.
Accordingly, we find MacLeod reporting before the end of 1874 that he
had interviewed the chiefs of the practically confederated tribes of the
Bloods, Piegans and Blackfeet. He found them very intelligent men, and
he described in some detail the stately ceremony with which these chiefs
had conducted themselves in these interviews. They shake hands with
Colonel MacLeod, and then, receiving the pipe of peace from the
interpreter, Jerry Potts, they each smoke a few seconds and pass it
around. MacLeod then explains to them the friendly attitude of the
Canadian Government towards them, that the Police had come not to take
the country from the Indians, but to protect these Indians against men
who would despoil them and destroy them by sowing amongst them evil
practices. And he adds that the Government would send soon some of the
great men of the country to deal with the Indians and make treaty
agreements with them.
At these early interviews the chiefs gave unstinted praise to the
Police, before whose coming there had been constant trouble. The Indians
said they used to be robbed and ruined by the whisky-traders, that their
horses, robes and women had been taken from them, that their young men
were constantly engaged in drunken riots and many were killed, that
their horses were stolen, so that they had no means of travelling or
hunting. All this, the chiefs said, had been changed by the coming of
the Police. One chief, in the graphic way by which they gesture in
accord with what they are saying, crouched down and moved along with
difficulty, and then stood up and walked. "Before you came," said this
chief to the Colonel, "the Indian had to creep along, not knowing what
would attack him, but now he is not afraid to walk erect."
And so that first winter wore on with steady work on the part of the
Police, who, while seeing that the Indians had every protection afforded
them, also helped them to understand that they also had to observe the
laws of the land. In view of the general situation amongst the Indians
and the proximity of part of the North-West Territory to the boundary
line, on the other side of which there was almost continuous warfare
between the Government and the Indians there, posts were established now
at several points all over the vast area that the Mounted Police had to
control and guide. In some respects perhaps the most notable event in
the spring of 1875, was the sending of Inspector Walsh with "B" Division
to the Cypress Hills country, where a fort was built, named after this
active and venturous Inspector. And this Fort Walsh became the centre
around which for several years the Indian problem, in its various
phases, surged backwards and forwards in varying force, but sometimes
within dangerous possibility of becoming a tidal wave of destruction and
death. There is no finer chapter in Canadian history than the one in
which a mere handful of officers and men of the Mounted Police, with
endless patience, unflinching courage and consummate skill in open
diplomacy, kept the peace in an area larger than several European
kingdoms, and within whose precincts thousands of warlike and well-armed
Indians composed the reckless, restless and roving population. Years
afterwards, when the first Canadian railway had crossed the continent
away to the north, and conditions were entirely changed after treaties
had been made with the Indians and reserves allotted to them, Fort Walsh
was abandoned and dismantled, as it had served its purpose. A peaceful
ranch now occupies the site, but though the debris of the old fort is
strewed on the plain, the record of the men who made their headquarters
there and in similar places is an imperishable bulwark and citadel in
the life of our Dominion. Other posts were established about this
period, such as Fort Calgary, Fort Saskatchewan, Battleford, Carlton, in
what is now Northern Saskatchewan, Qu'Appelle in Saskatchewan and Swan
River, an early post, Shoal Lake and Beautiful Plains in the northern
section of Manitoba. All of these had their influence on the progress of
the West, but none had in the pathfinding days the halo of romance that
centred around Fort Walsh.
In the year 1875 Major-General Sir E. Selby Smith, who commanded the
Militia in Canada, made a tour of inspection throughout the Dominion and
spent some months under escort of the Mounted Police travelling from
Swan River to the far West. He was most favourably impressed by the
physique and initiative of the men, commended the work that had been
done, suggested the increase of the Force and the opening of some new
posts, but there were many items in the report which revealed that a man
cannot know the life and the needs of a country by making a trip through
it. Perhaps the best thing in his report was where he said: "Too much
value cannot be attached to the North-West Police, too much attention
cannot be paid to their efficiency." The men on the ground knew the
value of the Force and were taking good care that it would be efficient
to the last degree.
It was at the time of this tour that a fort projected by Colonel MacLeod
to be erected somewhere midway between Fort MacLeod and the Red Deer
River was built by "F" troop of the Mounted Police. It was erected near
the Bow River and for a time was known as Fort Brisebois, after the
officer commanding the division at the time. The name got into orders
once or twice but without authority, and Colonel MacLeod put an end to
any controversy over it by calling it Calgarry, after his birthplace in
Scotland. Our Western mania for shortening names and thereby sometimes
breaking with the historical past led to the cutting out of a letter and
leaving the name in its present form. But the present city of Calgary,
with its great buildings and its distinctive place within sight of the
Rockies, has a definite background of early police history which has
done much to shape her destiny.
In the seventies changes were taking place in the system of government
in the North-West Territories that had pronounced influence on the
future of the country in ways closely associated with police history.
Heretofore the vast territory over which the Police had oversight had
been governed from Manitoba by the Lieutenant-Governor of that Province,
assisted by a small body of men called the North-West Council. But
government at long range is not more successful than diplomacy of the
same variety, and it was becoming evident that some visibility should be
given to control in the North-West Territories that stretched from
Manitoba to the Mountains and from the boundary to the Pole.
Accordingly, in 1876 the Hon. David Laird was appointed
Lieutenant-Governor, with a small Council to assist him consisting of
Colonel MacLeod of the Police and Matthew Ryan and Hugh Richardson,
Stipendiary Magistrates. Ryan was a man of considerable literary power,
and Richardson became prominent as one of the trial judges in the cases
of Riel and the other rebel leaders some years later.
[Illustration: SITTING BULL. Famous Sioux Indian Chief.]
[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES WALKER (CALGARY) The oldest survivor of
those who were commissioned officers during the great march of 1874.]
David Laird was a Prince Edward Islander of great stature and
gentlemanly bearing. He was of imposing appearance, and had the grace of
easy speech with a good voice. Fearless in his general attitude, he had
withal a fine genius for diplomacy, and came to have a remarkable
insight into the Indian mind. The Indians, who prefer giving men names
that describe some outstanding characteristic, christened Laird as "the
man who talks straight," or, in other words, the man who tells the truth
and sticks to it. Few people, perhaps, nowadays know the obligation this
country owes to men like Governor Alexander Morris, of Manitoba, and
Governor David Laird, of the Territories, for the extraordinary success
with which they and their faithful native interpreters, backed and
flanked by the fair-minded Mounted Police, dealt with the Indians. The
impressive scarlet uniform of the Police somehow or other came to be
recognized by the Indians as a sign royal of friendship. Once when
Inspector Walsh with several men was riding into a camp of American
Indians who had crossed to this side in the winter time, with his dark
blue overcoat lightly buttoned and the men in their great coats, the
Indians, thinking they were American cavalry, met them with levelled
rifles and angry faces. Walsh was not the kind of man to halt for that,
and would probably have paid the penalty for his devotion to duty, had
not one of the troopers, catching the situation, thrown his overcoat
open and disclosed the scarlet tunic. In a flash the Indians lowered
their rifles--they recognized their friends. Little wonder that Morris
and Laird and the other treaty-makers were grateful for the high
standing of these stalwart riders of the plains.
This matter of the Indian treaties deserved some special notice, because
it is not well understood by people outside this country and because it
is closely connected, as already intimated with the story of the Mounted
Police. It is inevitable in the progress of human history that higher
civilizations should supersede the lower. Wherever the contrary has been
the case and a lower civilization overran the higher the movement of
humanity was retrograde. Hence, if the Indian type of civilization in
Western Canada was to be superseded by the British type and this change
effected without injustice and hardship for the original dwellers in the
country, the Government of the Dominion must proceed by process of
treaty. By this we mean that the Government had at the same time to
conserve the rights of the Indian and secure to them both a place of
residence and means of subsistence by a system of reserves and money
payments, and also had to so extinguish the Indian title to all lands
outside their reserves as to enable incoming settlers to enter upon
these lands and possess them on fulfilling certain conditions. That the
Government of Canada, without regard to political party, has through all
the years been more successful in these undertakings than the Government
of any other country is generally conceded. This success has been due in
part to the wise leadership of governors and commissioners and native
interpreters. But we reiterate what every one knows who has studied the
real history of this country at first hand, namely that this success was
due in a very large degree to the presence of the Mounted Police who
became from the first in the eyes of the Indians the embodiment of
genuine friendship and British fair play.
The earliest Indian treaty in what is now Western Canada was made by
Lord Selkirk, whom the Salteaux Indians in the Red River Country called
"The Silver Chief," because for sterling gifts he obtained from the
Indians for his colonists a strip of land extending back as far as one
could see a white horse on the prairie in a clear day. That was a
primitive method of measurement and depended somewhat on the
individual's power of vision, but with a vast unpeopled land stretching
a thousand miles to the setting sun no one raised questions about a few
acres more or less. Later, when the country was beginning to fill up,
greater care had to be exercised. Indians, though apparently stoical and
unemotional, are in reality very sensitive and keenly susceptible to
anything that looks like oversight or slight of them and their rights.
The year 1876 witnessed the retirement of Colonel French from the
Commissionership of the Mounted Police. He had wrought hard in the
critical tasks that fall to the lot of the foundation builder, but
desired to return to his duty in the regular artillery service in
England, where his eminent contributions to the Empire have been duly
recognized. Colonel French, who retained to the end a warm interest in
the Police, was succeeded in the Commissionership by Colonel James
Farquharson MacLeod, who had already done such outstanding work during
the long trek to the West and in getting to definite police duty at the
key-position of the whole work in the foothill country. It was a tribute
to MacLeod's work that he was appointed also to aid Governor Laird in
the delicate work of making the treaty with the most difficult tribes in
the North-West to handle. Treaties had been made with the Indians who
had been most in contact with civilization in the more easterly
districts of the Lake of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg and the Qu'Appelle
Lakes. But the most imposing spectacles and the most difficult situation
began to arise when the Governors, flanked by the brilliant scarlet of
the Mounted Police, came to the farther North-West where the Indians
retained much of their native dignity and barbaric splendour.
This point was reached when Commissioners Governor Morris, Hon. W. J.
Christie and the Hon. James McKay came to Fort Carlton to negotiate with
Mistawasis, the great chief of the Crees, and his friend Ahtukahcoop. An
interesting preface to this treaty was a threat made by a rascally
Indian, Chief Beardy, of Duck Lake, who said that he would not allow the
Commissioners to cross the south branch of the Saskatchewan River to
come to Carlton. This information was imparted by Lawrence Clark,
Hudson's Bay Factor at Carlton, to Inspector James Walker, who had
arrived from Battleford with fifty Mounted Police the day before that on
which the Commissioners were to arrive. Walker (now Colonel Walker, of
Calgary), a man of commanding stature and strong determination, at once
decided to take a hand in the proceedings. Initiative has always been
characteristic of the Police. They were often miles away in distance
from and worlds away in chance of communication with, any superior
officer, and so they early developed the powers of resource which had to
come into play in emergencies. Hence Walker, seeing the situation, swung
out with his troop, in the small hours of next morning and hit the trail
for Batoche. On the way he overtook the band of Indians with Chief
Beardy. Walker paid no attention to them, but simply passed them and
continued on the way. These Indians rarely indicate surprise, but this
was the surprise of their lives, and they showed it in spite of
themselves. They evidently did not calculate on the presence of the
force in that part of the world, and to have these stalwart red-coated
riders come up from the unexpected direction was too much even for their
impassiveness. When Walker met the Commissioners farther on, he told
Governor Morris of the situation and then, wheeling his men, formed a
scarlet escort around the carriage. When they met Beardy he was in a
repentant mood and shook hands with the Governor. But this disorderly
Chief would only sign the treaty in his own camp. Not long afterwards
Inspector Walker with two constables had to go to Duck Lake and face
this same chief and a band of his insolent warriors and prevent them
from looting a store at that point. Still later we shall find the
incorrigible Beardy on the war-path with the rebels Riel and Gabriel
Dumont.
The treaty, known generally as "Number Six," was duly made at Carlton by
Governor Morris and the other Commissioners, with a noted half-breed,
Peter Erasmus, as the capable interpreter. Those present who had not
been accustomed to the plains witnessed a spectacle of wild splendour,
as preceding the treaty, over a thousand Indians, brilliantly and
fantastically painted, chanting a weird song, firing rifles, exhibiting
marvellous horsemanship, beating drums and giving strange yells,
advanced in a semi-circle near to the Commissioner's tent. All this was
preparatory to the famous dance of the stem, where the chiefs,
councillors and medicine men seated themselves on buffalo robes and a
beautifully decorated pipe with a long stem was produced. This was
carried around the semi-circle, then raised towards the heavens and the
stem pointed in turn north, south, east and west. With more stately
motion the Indians moved towards the Council tent, where they were met
by the Commissioners who took the pipe and one after the other stroked
it gently to indicate that they reciprocated the peaceful approach of
the Indians.
The Commissioners present with Governor Morris at this treaty and others
deserve special notice. The Hon. W. J. Christie was a famous Hudson's
Bay Company Factor. When in January, 1873, the Ottawa Government
appointed a North-West Council to act with Governor Morris in governing
the far hinterland towards the mountains, Mr. Christie, who had a very
wide knowledge of conditions and who had education and judgment, was one
of the men chosen. An interesting fact in that connection was that when
the first meeting of that Council was held, on March 8 in that year,
Mr. Christie travelled 2,000 miles by dog-train from Fort Simpson to
Winnipeg to attend it. It was a good opportunity for collecting mileage
and perquisites, but the probability is that this public-spirited man
and the great Company he served made the contribution to the country.
His usefulness was so apparent at the meeting that he was asked to help
the Government in the great task of treaty-making which had baffled so
many other countries.
The other Commissioner whose name is found to nearly all the treaties
was the Hon. James McKay, one of the most picturesque figures the
western plains, amid all their unique characters, ever saw. I remember
him in his later years. His father was a Scot, who had been on one of
the Arctic expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin and had married in
the Saskatchewan country one of the tall, stately and handsome daughters
of the land. Their sons were all of distinguished appearance. The
following description given by the Earl of Southesk, who had come on a
hunting tour and a search for health in the great out-of-doors of the
North-West years ago, is true to the subject. He says: "James McKay met
me in St. Paul. His appearance greatly interested me, both from his own
personal advantages and because he was the first Red River man I had
seen. Immensely broad-chested and muscular, though not tall, he weighed
18 stone: yet in spite of his stoutness, he was exceedingly hardy and
active, and a wonderful horseman. His face is very handsome--short,
aquiline, delicate nose; piercing dark grey eyes; skin tanned to red
bronze by exposure to the weather. He was dressed in Red River style, a
blue cloth capote (hooded frock coat) with brass buttons; red and black
flannel shirt, which served for waistcoat; black belt around the waist;
trousers of brown and white striped home-made stuff, buff leather
moccasins on his feet. I had never come across a wearer of moccasins
before, and it amused me to see this grand and massive man pacing the
hotel corridors with noiseless footfall, while excitable little men in
shiny boots creaked and stamped about like so many busy steam engines."
It was this splendid man who was present to assist Governor Laird and
Mr. Christie in making treaties with the Cree Indians at Carlton on
August 23 and at Fort Pitt on September 9. The last time I saw James
McKay was when a number of us schoolboys rode up to Silver Heights to
see some western sports and buffalo running in honour of the
Governor-General, Lord Dufferin. And as the magnificent frontiersman
drove about with his famous cream horse and buckboard, the great Irish
diplomat realized what such men had done to make the great North-West
peacefully into being a part of Canada.
Soon after these treaties, the headquarters of the Mounted Police were
moved from Swan River, which had never been satisfactory, to Fort
MacLeod, where they arrived on October 22. Apart from Swan River being
unsuitable, it was evident that the centre of interest was gravitating
towards that part of the territories where the names of Forts MacLeod
and Walsh, Wood Mountain and Cypress Hills and other points were being
printed indelibly on the map of Western history. This portion of the
territory was close up against the international boundary line across
which might be heard the roar of fighting between the Sioux Indians and
the United States soldiery. To discuss that is not part of our story,
but the Indians there vehemently declared that they had been for years
robbed by swindling government agents and driven off their land by
unscrupulous gold-hunters and lawless speculators. And, as in many other
cases, soldiers who were themselves innocent of these things had to be
called on to fight the Indians who had grown savage under a sense of
wrong and who, savage-like, had taken revenge by killing whenever they
could. That very year, only a few months before the headquarters of the
Police were moved to Fort MacLeod, occurred the tragedy of the "Custer
Massacre," when that gallant soldier and his no less gallant men,
attempting the impossible, were wiped out completely by superior numbers
of Sioux under the redoubtable chiefs Sitting Bull and Spotted Eagle.
"The Long Hair," as General Custer was called by the Indians who always
admired his dash and courage, fought desperately to the end, and was
said to be the last man to fall. Only the arrival later of General
Terry, with whom Custer was to have co-operated, prevented still greater
disaster to the balance of the American force.
All this had its effect on our side of the border. It made our Indians,
Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans and others, restless, and it became known
that the Sioux on the south of the line were making overtures to the
Indians on the Canadian side either to go over and fight the Americans
or to join with the Indians in the United States to drive all the whites
out of the country on both sides. Inspector Denny, who did much valuable
work in those early days and who made an arrest in a Blackfoot camp,
reported in August of 1876 that he had been consulted by the Blackfeet
Council and told of the efforts made by the Sioux to get the Indians on
this side with them. However, the Blackfeet remained loyal mainly
because they had learned to trust the Mounted Police. But shortly
afterwards, matters were complicated by bands of Sioux crossing over the
line into Canadian territory. We shall deal with this Sioux invasion in
the next chapter, but in the meantime, as this is a chapter on treaties,
shall record how the Canadian Government, being fully aware of all these
events, took special steps at once to make treaties with the warlike
tribes which inhabited that vast area from the North Saskatchewan River
towards the boundary line. For this purpose the Commissioners appointed
were Governor David Laird and Colonel MacLeod, of the Mounted Police. No
better men could be chosen to make this famous Treaty Number Seven with
the Indians at a very critical hour.
Accordingly, on September 19, 1877, at the Blackfeet Crossing of the
Bow River, less than a 100 miles from Fort MacLeod, the Chiefs of the
Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, Stony and Sarcee tribes and some 5,000 of
their men, women and children met to hear the Great Mother's chiefs. Mr.
Laird's address was full of dignity and impressiveness, and couched in
the picturesque language which, interpreted by the inimitable Jerry
Potts, found its way to the hearts of his audience. Mr. Laird opened by
saying, "The Great Spirit has made all things, the sun, the moon, the
stars, the earth, the forests and the swift-running rivers. It is by the
Great Spirit that the Queen rules over this great country and other
great countries. The Great Spirit has made the white man and the red man
brothers, and we should take each other by the hand. The Great Mother
loves all her children, white men and red men alike. She wishes to do
them all good." Then Mr. Laird made special reference to the Police
which was good diplomacy, for the Indians had known the Police for three
years and the wise Governor saw the advantage of linking up the Police
with the Queen's government. He said, "When bad white men brought you
whisky, robbed you and made you poor, and through whisky made you
quarrel amongst yourselves, she sent the Mounted Police to put an end to
it. You know how they stopped this and punished the offenders, and how
much good this has done. I have to tell you how much pleased the Queen
is that you have taken the Mounted Police by the hand and helped them
and obeyed her laws since their arrival. She hopes you will continue to
do so and you will always find the Mounted Police on your side if you
keep the Queen's laws." Then Mr. Laird explained the terms of the treaty
and asked the Indians to go to their Council tents if they wished to
consider the matter.
Next day the Commissioners again met the chiefs and made all the points
clear, and on the third day the treaty was concluded amid great
satisfaction on all sides. There were some remarkable tributes to the
Police by the Chiefs. Crowfoot, the head chief, said, "The advice given
to me and my people has proved to be good. If the Police had not come to
this country where would we all be now? Bad men and whisky were indeed
killing us so fast that very few of us indeed would have been left
to-day. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird
protect it from the frosts of winter. I wish them all good and trust
that all our hearts will increase in goodness from this time forward. I
am satisfied, I will sign the treaty." Red Crow, head chief of the
Bloods, the most powerful tribe of the Blackfeet Confederacy, said,
"Three years ago, when the Mounted Police came to this country, I met
and shook hands with Stamix-oto-kan (Colonel MacLeod) at Belly River.
Since that time he made me many promises, he kept them all; not one of
them was broken. Everything that the Mounted Police have done has been
good. I entirely trust Stamix-oto-kan (Colonel MacLeod) and will leave
everything to him. I will sign with Crowfoot." Many others spoke in the
same strain, and after this great treaty was signed, on September 21,
1877, there was a salute of guns and general jubilation. The point to be
specially recalled in connection with this treaty is that it was
practically accomplished upon the splendid record that Colonel MacLeod
and his men had made amongst these powerful tribes in the most difficult
part of the West.
The annual money payment to the Indians under the treaties required
careful and honest handling. And at the conclusion of his report to the
Government in regard to this most famous of all the treaties, Governor
Laird made this remarkable witness-bearing recommendation: "I would urge
that the officers of the Mounted Police be entrusted to make the annual
payments to the Indians under this treaty. The chiefs themselves
requested this, and I said I believed the Government would gladly
consent to the arrangement. The Indians have confidence in the Police,
and it might be some time before they would acquire the same respect for
strangers." That this suggestion was carried out, is attested the next
year by that well-known officer, Superintendent Winder, who in his
report says: "Inspector Macdonnell and party arrived from Fort Walsh
with money for the Indian payments. Inspector McIllree paid the Bloods
at MacLeod, Inspector Dickens the Piegans on their reserve, Inspector
Frechette the Stoneys at Morley-ville, and I accompanied the agent to
the Blackfeet Crossing to assist in paying the Indians there." All this
requires no comment further than to say that when the fighting Sioux
across the line tried to inveigle these warlike tribes into a war of
extermination against the whites, and later when the fiercely magnetic
Louis Riel sought to get them to join his revolt, the great work in the
consummation of Treaty Number Seven stood Canada in good stead.
One more great treaty had still to be made, and though it is
anticipating a date twenty years after the famous Number Seven Treaty,
we record it here before closing the chapter of treaties with the
Indians of the North-West. A vast region away northward from Edmonton,
known generally as the Athabasca, Peace River and Mackenzie River
region, had so far not been brought under treaty conditions. This was
mainly due to the fact that settlement had not been making its way into
that region. It was considered the home of the fur-trader and the hunter
more than that of the farmer or the stock-raiser. But the investigations
brought about by the Senate Committee at Ottawa on the motion and under
the leadership of Senator (Sir John) Schultz, had called so much
attention to the great agricultural possibilities of the country that,
despite the total absence of railways, settlers were percolating slowly
into that great northern area. Then the gold-rush to the Klondike began
midway in the nineties, and as some of this rush was either going
through the Peace River country to the Yukon or scattering down the
northern rivers, it became necessary, in the view of the Mounted Police,
who made recommendations to the Government, to make a treaty as early
as possible, in order to prevent trouble. Accordingly, the Hon. Clifford
Sifton, then Superintendent-General of Indian affairs in the Laurier
Government, began arrangements in 1898 which led to the appointment of a
Commission and the making of Treaty Number Eight in 1899. Strangely
enough, the Hon. David Laird, "the man who talked straight," who had as
Governor of the Territories made the famous treaties with the Indians of
the plains twenty years before, was called to head the new commission
and make this final treaty with the Crees, Beavers, Chippewyans and
other Indians of the far North. Mr. Laird, after the term of his office
as Governor had expired, had retired to his home in Prince Edward
Island, but later on was appointed to take charge of Indian affairs in
the West, with headquarters in Winnipeg. Along with this Indian Treaty
Commission was a half-breed commission, of which the frontiersman
author, Mr. Charles Mair, was secretary. The expedition took months, and
involved hard if picturesque travelling, all of which is graphically
described in Mr. Mair's narrative _Through the Mackenzie Basin_. The
treaty was made beginning first at Lesser Slave Lake, and continuing at
other points. Mr. Mair, in his book, gives us the names of the party,
describes the camp equipment and then makes the following fine reference
to the Mounted Police: "Not the least important and effective
constituent of the party was the detachment of the Royal North-West
Mounted Police which joined us at Edmonton, minus their horses of
course; picked men from a picked force; sterling fellows whose tenacity
and hard work in the tracking harness did yeoman service in many a
serious emergency. This detachment consisted of Inspector Snyder,
Sergeant Anderson, Corporals Fitzgerald and McClelland, and Constables
McLaren, Lett, Burman, Lelonde, Burke, Vernon and Kerr. The conduct of
these men, it is needless to say, was the admiration of all, and
assisted materially in the successful progress of the expedition."
Thus did these nation-building Police set their seal to the great
treaties which provided for the future of the Indian tribes and at the
same time extinguished the title of the tribes in order to open up a new
empire for higher civilization.
CHAPTER VI
HANDLING AMERICAN INDIANS
Nothing in the history of Western Canada was more charged with dynamitic
possibilities of serious trouble than the unexpected influx into our
country of thousands of battle-scarred Indians from the other side of
the boundary line. The whole period for five years, from 1876 onward,
bristled with difficulties. These Indians themselves had to be more or
less provided for while upon our soil--they had to be controlled
according to British law, they had to be kept from interfering with the
loyalty as well as the rights and reserves of our own Indians, and they
had to be restrained from making this country the base of any operations
against our friendly neighbour country south of the line. The whole
situation was filled with dramatic incidents and dangerous possibilities
of international complications. The honour of handling it with masterly,
firm and yet conciliatory methods must be given not to Ottawa, which was
too far away and which often misunderstood, but to the officers and men
of the Mounted Police whose consummate skill, courage and initiative are
the leading features of that serious period. And the amazing thing about
it all is that in the midst of seething thousands of American and
Canadian Indians on the wide and lonely frontier, we had a mere handful
of these gallant red-coated guardians of the peace.
The influx of American Indians began in December, 1876, when some 3,000
Indians, with large droves of horses and mules, crossed over and camped
at Wood Mountain. They told the officers of the Mounted Police who
visited them at once that "they had been driven out by the American and
had come to look for peace; that they had been told by their
grandfathers that they would find peace in the land of the British; that
their brothers, the Santees, had found it years ago and they had now
followed them; that they had not slept sound for years and were anxious
to find a place where they could lie down and feel safe." It was not the
British way to turn a deaf ear to that pathetic appeal, and so Inspector
Walsh, then in charge at Fort Walsh, took charge of the situation, began
at once to regulate the possession of arms and ammunition to what was
necessary for hunting for subsistence and generally to keep in close
touch with the Indian encampments.
In the following May the famous and redoubtable Sitting Bull with quite
a large force came over and joined the American Indian colony. They also
were interviewed at once by the Mounted Police and promised to observe
the laws of the Great Mother. In the following months bands of Nez
Perces and others arrived in flight from the American soldiers. And so
the situation became more involved. Efforts were made to persuade these
Indians to return to their own country, but they declined to do so and
of course no one would compel them. The Indians said they had been
robbed and cheated by agents, and so they had lost faith in the American
Government, for they assumed that the Government knew or ought to know
of these things. It was matter of common knowledge throughout the
Western country that some agents who were receiving a salary of $1500.00
a year retired with fortunes after a few years in office, and even the
most unsuspecting and docile Indian would baulk at that after a while.
Colonel McLeod, a very cautious man, in a report to the Hon. David Mills
at Ottawa, said, "I think the principal cause of the difficulties which
are continually embroiling the American Government in trouble with the
Indians, is the manner in which these Indians are treated by the swarms
of adventurers who have scattered themselves all over the Indian country
in search of minerals before any treaty is made giving up the title.
These men always look upon the Indians as their natural enemies, and it
is their rule to shoot at them if they approach after being warned off.
I was actually asked the other day by an American who has settled here,
if we had the same law here as on the other side, and if he was
justified in shooting any Indian who approached his camp after being
warned not to advance. I am satisfied that such a rule is not necessary
in dealing with the worst of Indians, and that any necessity there might
be for its adoption arose from the illegal intrusion and wrongdoings of
the Whites." Happy country was ours to have a MacLeod on the spot
through these troublous years!
Meanwhile the Police had occasional problems with our own Indians, not
in relation to the Government, but in connection with ancient or modern
feuds or ordinary quarrels between tribes. The Police generally got
things early under control. Here is a case. On May 25, 1877, Little
Child, a Salteaux Treaty Chief, came to Fort Walsh and reported that his
people and a large number of Assiniboines under Chief Crow's Dance had
been camped together. The Salteaux desired to leave, and so notified
Crow's Dance. This individual for some reason refused permission to the
Salteaux to leave camp. But Little Child, feeling that he and his people
had a right to go where they pleased "so long as they kept the laws of
the White Mother," ordered his people to move. Whereupon Crow's Dance,
who had 250 warriors, set upon the Salteaux, killing not any of the
people, but shooting nineteen valuable sled-dogs, cutting lodges,
upsetting travois, knocking down men, and frightening the women and
children by firing off guns and giving war-whoops. When warned by Little
Child, who did not retaliate, that he would report the matter to the
Police, Crow's Dance struck him and said, "When the Police come we will
do the same." Crow's Dance, backed by several hundred warriors, talked
boastfully, knowing that there was only a handful of Police at Fort
Walsh.
But the Police came, all told fifteen constables and a guide, under
Inspector Walsh. They had also the surgeon, Dr. Kittson, along, because
it looked as if his services would be required badly. Walsh and his
handful of men struck that camp at three o'clock in the morning, after
getting the report. He halted his men and inspected their arms and had
all pistols ready. Then they rode swiftly into camp, and before anyone
knew how it happened, he had "Crow's Dance" and "Rolling Thunder" and
"Spider" and "The one who bends the wood" and the other leaders under
arrest and out of camp to a butte near by. There Walsh ordered his men
to breakfast, and sent word to the Assiniboine Chiefs still in camp that
he would talk to them after breakfast. And so he did, making it very
clear that no one had any right to interfere with others who desired to
leave camp peaceably, and that he intended to take "Crow's Dance" and
the others to Fort Walsh for trial. And they were taken accordingly.
Some were sentenced to short terms, others were allowed to go, as they
were not specially involved. In reporting this incident to Ottawa,
Assistant-Commissioner A. G. Irvine said: "In conclusion I cannot too
highly write of Inspector Walsh's prompt conduct in this matter, and it
must be a matter of congratulation to feel that fifteen of our men can
ride into an enormous camp of Indians and take out of it as prisoners
thirteen of their head men. The action of this detachment will have
great effect on all the Indians throughout the country." Right loyally
spoken, Major Irvine!
And Walsh in his report speaks of his men: "In conclusion I wish to say
a few words for the men of my detachment. Before entering the camp I
explained to them there were 200 warriors in the camp who had set the
Police at defiance; that I intended to arrest the leaders; to do so
perhaps would put them in a dangerous position, but that they would have
to pay strict attention to all orders given by me, no matter how severe
they might appear. From the replies and the way they acted during the
whole time, I am of opinion that every man of this detachment would have
boldly stood his ground if the Indians had made any resistance." A good
testimony this from a keen leader of gallant men. And because a note of
appreciation is always an encouragement, we quote the able Comptroller
Fred White, who wrote Major Irvine on behalf of the Secretary of State,
then the governmental head of the department: "The Secretary of State
desires that you will convey to Inspector Walsh his appreciation of the
courage and determination shown by him and the officers and men under
his command in carrying out their duty."
This incident occurred while the Sitting Bull invasion was still an
unsolved problem, and so we take it up again. Inspector Walsh, as
already recorded, met him on his arrival on Canadian soil, and Sitting
Bull promised to obey the Queen's laws and report to the Police anything
that happened. Not long afterwards three Americans, one a priest, the
second General Miles' head scout, and an interpreter, arrived in Sitting
Bull's camp to persuade him to go back south of the line. "The
black-robe" would have been safe, but the other two would have been shot
on sight but for Sitting Bull's promise to Walsh. The Chief sent word to
the Police that three Americans were in his camp, and Assistant
Commissioner Irvine, Inspector Walsh, Sub-Inspectors Clark and Allen
went out to hold inquiry regarding the situation. Including the
Yanktons, a branch of the Sioux, there were some 205 lodges. This was
Irvine's first meeting with the famous Sioux Chief, and he gives us this
pen picture: "I was particularly struck with Sitting Bull. He is a man
of somewhat short stature, but with a pleasant face, a mouth showing
great determination and a fine high forehead. When he smiled, which he
often did, his face brightened up wonderfully. I should say he is a man
of about forty-five years of age. The warriors who came with him were
all of immense height and very muscular. When talking at the conference
he spoke as a man who understands his subject well and who had
thoroughly weighed it before speaking. He believes no one from the other
side and said so. His speech showed him to be a man of wonderful
capability."
The conference referred to was between the police officers above
mentioned and Sitting Bull and other chiefs of the Sioux, Pretty Bear,
Bear's Cap, The Eagle Sitting Down, Spotted Eagle and others. Later on
the three Americans were present. But the Sioux flatly refused to return
to the South, Sitting Bull closing the conference with the words, "Once
I was rich, plenty of money, but the Americans stole it all in the Black
Hills. What should I return for? To have my horse and my arms taken
away? I have come to remain with the White Mother's children."
The next step taken by the American Government which seemed anxious to
have the Indians return South and settle down on certain conditions, was
to send special Commissioners in the persons of General Terry and
General O'Neill, replaced by Lawrence, to visit Canada, hold conference
with Sitting Bull and the other chiefs to that end. The Canadian
Government adhered to its position of being willing to protect the
Indians so long as they were on British soil. Hence no undue pressure to
leave would be brought on those who had sought asylum under the British
flag, but at the same time both the Ottawa authorities and the Police
would have been glad to see them go voluntarily. Those who had knowledge
of the situation and the outlook knew that Canada would not set aside
land as reserves for American Indians, and they knew also that with the
early disappearance of buffalo and other game in the presence of
advancing civilization, the burden of feeding and caring for these
aliens would be very heavy.
Word was wired from Ottawa to Colonel MacLeod to meet the American
Commissioners with an escort at the boundary and if possible to get the
Sioux leaders to come to Fort Walsh to meet them and thus save the
Commissioners the necessity for a long journey. Accordingly, MacLeod met
the Americans at the line and escorted them to Fort Walsh, to which
point Inspector Walsh brought Sitting Bull and the other chiefs in due
course. Walsh had great difficulty in getting the Indians to come, as
they said they did not trust the Americans and feared that the latter
might bring soldiers across to attack them. The fact that the day Walsh
was in the camp on his errand of persuasion a band of Nez Perces men,
women and children, wounded and bleeding, after a fight across the line,
had come there for refuge, did not make the Inspector's task any easier.
But because they had received the assurance of both MacLeod and Walsh
that no one could cross the line after them, the chiefs came--Sitting
Bull, Bear's Cap, Spotted Eagle, Flying Bird, Whirlwind Bear, Iron Dog,
The Crow, Bear that Scatters, Little Knife, Yellow Dog and some others
of less importance. The conference was held on October 17, 1877. It is
customary for all parties to shake hands before beginning these "talks,"
but on this occasion Sitting Bull, representing the Chiefs, entered and
shook hands warmly with Colonel MacLeod, but passed the American
Commissioners with the utmost disdain.
General Terry delivered the message from the President of the United
States. Terry was a distinguished soldier, hero of Fort Fisher in the
Civil War, a man of magnificent appearance, standing some 6 ft. 6 in.,
built in proportion, a very gentlemanly officer with a kindly face and
gracious manner. He made known the wishes of the President, told the
Sioux that they were the only hostile band remaining out, offered them
reserves and stock with farm implements and instructors, the only
condition being that they would settle down on their reserves and
surrender their arms and their horses. The General made appeal to them
that, because too much blood had already been spilled, they should all
henceforth live in peace, and the whole bearing and appearance of the
distinguished speaker indicated his personal genuineness.
But Sitting Bull and his friends would not be appeased. They were
embittered by a long course of harsh and unfair treatment by
unscrupulous agents and frontier exploiters. One after the other the
chiefs rose and declined the offer because, as they said, they had no
confidence that these fair promises would be carried out. Sitting Bull
said, "For sixty-four years you have treated my people bad. Over there
we could go nowhere, so we have taken refuge here. I shake hands with
these people (the Police), you can go back home, that part of the
country we came from belonged to us and you took it from us, now we live
here." Some of the other chiefs spoke even more bitterly and even a
squaw, though it was a most unusual thing for a woman to take part in a
conference, added her hot protest against accepting the proposals of the
Commissioners from the States. The burden of the Indian speeches was all
to the effect that they had been given no rest on the other side of the
line, but had been driven about from place to place.
So the United States officers returned to their own country, having
failed in their mission, to their own disappointment, and it may be
added to the disappointment of the Canadian authorities who would have
been glad to be relieved of the responsibility for the care of alien
Indians, but who would not attempt in any way to drive out any who had
sought refuge on our soil.
But as the time passed the position of the Sioux became more and more
difficult. They were kept under strict surveillance by the Police. On
account of their warlike disposition, and their association with the
massacres south of the line, their presence was prejudicial to
settlement by white people. Superintendent James Walker, who was in
charge at Battleford and who, having jurisdiction over a large area,
showed marked judgment as well as firmness in dealing with Indians, has
some very accurate forecasts in a report written at the end of 1879. He
suggests that Police be stationed at Duck Lake and Fort Pitt as well as
Prince Albert. Duck Lake was the home of Chief Beardy, with whom Walker
had already taken some firm measures and who joined with the Riel-Dumont
rebellion later. Fort Pitt was the home of Chief Big Bear, concerning
whom Walker writes in that report: "I look upon Big Bear as one of the
most troublesome Cree Indians we have in the territories." And this same
Big Bear also became a rebel in Riel's day and, after the Frog Lake
massacre, burned Fort Pitt as an extra in his exploits, as I witnessed
with my own eyes.
These items are quoted to show Walker's foresight as well as insight,
for these give special weight to another sentence in that report
concerning Indians of the Sitting Bull tribe. "The very name of Sioux,"
wrote Walker, "strikes terror into the hearts of many of the settlers."
On this account the wanderings of Sitting Bull from Fort Walsh to
Qu'Appelle and generally round about, was an unsettling influence. In a
year or two, however, with the buffalo growing fewer and no land reserve
in sight on the Canadian side, a good many of Sitting Bull's following
began to drop away from him and go back over the line. One day, with
about 1,200 or so of his people, he turned up at Fort Qu'Appelle and
applied to Superintendent Sam B. Steele, who had come to that point from
Fort Walsh, and asked that a reserve be given him and his band in
Canada. Steele told him there was no chance, but sent a wire to Indian
Commissioner (afterwards Governor) Dewdney that Sitting Bull was there.
Mr. Dewdney came to Qu'Appelle and told Sitting Bull that the Canadian
Government would not give him a reserve, as he had a reserve on the
other side of the line which the United States would give him to occupy
in peace if he would go there. Mr. Dewdney offered to ration Sitting
Bull and his band as far as Wood Mountain, and Steele sent an escort
with the Indians to ration them to that point. When they arrived there
Sitting Bull was in a rather vicious temper and went to Inspector A. R.
Macdonnell, the Mounted Police officer in charge there, with a few men.
Sitting Bull asked for food and was refused by Macdonnell, who was
widely known as a somewhat erratic but absolutely fearless and
fair-minded man. The Sioux Chief then said he would take food by force,
but he had mistaken his man. Macdonnell replied that he would ration the
band with bullets if they tried that game. Then said Sitting Bull, "I am
cast away." "No," said Macdonnell. "You are not cast away. I am speaking
for your own good and the good of your people and giving you good
advice. You have been promised pardon and food and land if you return to
your own reservation in the United States. I advise you to go and I will
help you and your people to travel if you accept the terms that have
been offered you." Sitting Bull knew that Macdonnell would keep his word
in either case, and so he concluded to take the Inspector's kindly meant
advice.
Accordingly, the next day Macdonnell personally accompanied Sitting Bull
to Poplar River, where the Chief handed over his rifle to Major
Brotherton of the United States Army in token of submission. Macdonnell
then arranged that the Sitting Bull band should be supplied with
transportation and food by Mr. Louis Legarre, a trader, at the expense
of the American Government, and thus they all crossed over the line. A
few years later there was some row on Sitting Bull's reserve over there
in connection with arrests, and in the confusion the famous old chief
was shot, it is claimed by mistake and unnecessarily. Thus ended the
stormy career of a man who seems to have been honest according to his
light in fighting for the rights of his people as he understood them.
His methods in war were no doubt barbaric and cruel enough, but some
civilized nations cannot throw stones at pagans in that regard.
I have written Sitting Bull's story as far as it affected Canada in some
detail, because it was in reality a series of events full of dangerous
possibilities. Papers and persons in Eastern Canada were demanding that
regiments should be raised and sent out to the West to cope with the
situation that foreboded war with the Americans, who had thousands of
picked soldiers on the border to keep the Indians down. But to the utter
amazement of Eastern Canadians and to the more profound surprise of the
Americans our handful of Mounted Police, with masterly diplomacy,
endless patience and steady, cool courage were able to handle the whole
situation and solve it without the loss of a single life on either side.
There are few such chapters anywhere in the records of history.
It is in keeping with the general attitude of the Police towards the
Indians, whom they considered the wards of the nation which the men in
the scarlet tunic represented, that we find many fine incidents
scattered up and down throughout the years. At Qu'Appelle, about the
time above noted, an epidemic of smallpox threatened in the winter time,
when its deadly effects are most in evidence in the Indian camps. The
Police never proceeded on the wretched maxim of some that "the only good
Indian is a dead Indian," and so, when these children of the wild were
attacked by plague or pestilence or other destroyer, the Police fought
for the lives of the afflicted people with all the tenacity and the
courage of their corps. On the occasion mentioned in this paragraph
there was no doctor, but Acting Hospital Steward Holmes, who had studied
medicine, though he had no graduation standing, threw himself into the
struggle against this dread disease. He vaccinated the Indians on all
the reserves, many white people and all the half-breeds in the district.
This meant travelling incessantly in the dead of winter and sleeping
without tent in the snow-drifts with the thermometer down to 30 degrees
below zero and more. He was only drawing the usual constable pay of 75
cents a day, and Steele, who was in command, recommended him for a small
bonus allowance and a promotion. For it was not only vaccination and
treatment of smallpox that had engaged Holmes' efforts, but constant
attendance upon hundreds of Indians who had been so worn down that it
was only by his devoted efforts that they were pulled through that hard
winter. To Steele's amazement neither of his recommendations as to this
toiler for others was acted upon. But I do not suppose Holmes cared. He
had done his duty and was not working for reward. But the ways of men
who could pigeon-hole a recommendation like that are difficult to
understand.
A somewhat similar case was away in another direction, where one
Corporal D. B. Smith held the post all alone at the famous old Hudson's
Bay Fort at Norway House on Lake Winnipeg. Scarlet fever and diphtheria
in the most deadly form broke out amongst the Indians and half-breeds,
who were being mowed down like corn before the scythe. Corporal Smith,
though stationed there for ordinary duty, did not hesitate a moment in
facing the situation and going into a fight against these violent twin
epidemics. He looked after the sick with the tenderness of a nurse, he
comforted the dying, he buried the dead when even relatives shrank from
the duty, and by strong disinfectants he sought to clean the huts and
tents of the poisonous germs. There was no glamour of war to lure him
on, no crashing of music, no cheers of comrades, for he was alone. It
was just a grim, determined, silent fight, in which he knew he might
fall at any moment himself, and there was no one to tell of deeds that
were worthy of the Victoria Cross. But he fought the plagues to a
finish. And it is good to know that when the story of it all leaked out
and got to the ears of the authorities the Corporal got an additional
stripe in recognition of his valorous work.
Or take a later case, where one Sergeant Field away in the bitter North
at Fort Chippewyan received word that an Indian had gone insane and
dangerous some 300 miles away at another post. Field had just returned
from a hard patrol and his dogs were fagged. Field was an experienced
man and knew the danger, as he was tired out himself. But he hired a
fresh team of dogs and started out. The Indian madman was hard to
handle, for he was violent and strong. Field had to tie him on the
sleigh, but of course had to release him at times for fear he would
freeze. On these occasions the lunatic would fight like a wolf and make
attempts to get away. It would have been easy to let him get away and be
lost in some night blizzard in the wilderness. But that was not the
Police way, and in due course the unfortunate creature was landed safely
at Fort Saskatchewan and given a chance to recover under new conditions.
When occasion required, the red-coated men could be firm enough, as all
law-breakers found to their sorrow, but there is something amazing in
the way in which these policemen risked and lost their lives at times in
making arrests rather than shoot the Indians they were sent to bring in.
In a most marked degree the police kept to the faith that they were come
to save human lives rather than destroy them. In this connection and
throwing in some incidents as above to illustrate our points, we think
of the case of Sergeant Wilde, of Pincher Creek, who trailed a murderous
Indian generally known as Charcoal into the foothills. When the murderer
was sighted, Wilde, whose horse was one of the best, spurred away ahead
of his men. Charcoal was riding deliberately along with a rifle slung
across in front of him in plain sight of Wilde, who, however, would not
fire upon him, but pressed on to make the arrest and leave the disposal
of him to the law of the land. When Wilde rode up to him, the Indian
wheeled in his saddle and shot him, following this up a few minutes
after by putting another bullet in the body of the policeman as he lay
on the ground. Wilde was one of the finest men who had ever worn the
uniform--one of the men who had built up the great tradition of the
Force. He was greatly beloved at Pincher Creek, where the citizens
erected a monument to his memory. A pathetic incident took place on the
day of his funeral, when a faithful and favourite hound that had always
kept guard over Wilde refused to allow the pallbearers to remove the
body and had to be shot before the funeral cortège could proceed. It was
a pity to have to do this drastic thing, but the loyal and devoted dog
would no doubt have died in any case of a broken heart.
And then there was the case of that other gallant young man, Sergeant
Colebrook, up in the Prince Albert district, who was killed while
proceeding to arrest a notorious Indian called Almighty Voice. Colebrook
knew the character of the Indian because he had arrested him once before
for cattle-stealing. This time Colebrook was trailing him for killing
cattle and for breaking jail, and in company with an interpreter guide
caught up to him on the open prairie. The Indian unslung his gun and
called to the guide to tell the policeman to halt or he would shoot. But
halting was not the Police way, and Colebrook, with the warrant to
arrest, not to kill, as he said to the guide, went steadily forward and
received a fatal bullet through the heart. It was the price he paid for
his devotion to orders, but it maintained the Police tradition. Almighty
Voice, of course, was not allowed to escape. He and two other Indians
took up a stand in a clump of bushes, where they fought like rats in a
hole against the Police and civilians, of whom they killed several
before the bush was shelled and the Indians found dead when Assistant
Commissioner McIllree with several men rushed the position from the open
plain.
It was the willingness of the Police, even at great risk to themselves,
to allow the alleged wrong-doer to get the benefit of a fair British
trial after his arrest, that gradually gave the Indians a new sense of
obligation to the men of the scarlet tunic. This splendid part of the
Police tradition won its way steadily till great war camps came to
realize that the Police stood for the square deal, and that if men the
Police wished to arrest were innocent, they would not be punished. And
with that lesson came also into the heart of the Indian the conviction
that if any of their number did wrong they should, as westerners used to
say, take their medicine and reap the due reward of their deeds. In
either case the Police approved themselves to the Indians as their
friends, not their enemies, and thus the famous corps became a very
great asset to Canada in the interests of law and order.
CHAPTER VII
THE IRON HORSES
For some ten stirring and formative years the Mounted Police had been
riding their gallant steeds over the virgin sod of the untracked prairie
before the iron horses, crossing the Red River, hit the steel trail for
the mountains and the Western Sea. It is quite certain that the presence
of the men in scarlet and gold on western plains was an element in the
situation which encouraged the promoters of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, our first transcontinental, to undertake their tremendous
project with more assured confidence. For these shrewd students of human
nature knew quite well that people would look in various ways upon the
coming of the railway.
There would be some who, like Thoreau, the hermit sage of Walden, would
resent, though perhaps for a less æsthetic reason, the intrusion of this
noisy and energetic sign of a new era. It was he who cried, "We do not
ride on the railway, it rides on us." For, while there were some in our
West who actually did feel regret at the passing of the quiet day of
their pioneer life, most of those who had the aggressive spirit of the
white race in them, were glad to see the vision of the earliest
colonists being fulfilled by the opening up of the country. But there
were others who had lived on the frontiers, and had been a law unto
themselves, who said, like a trader who saw three wooden shacks built
where Calgary now stands, "I am going to move back--this is getting too
civilized for me," and the man who said that represented a class that
had to be made to realize the presence of government.
Then there were the Indians, who saw in the advent of the railway the
necessary disappearance of big game from the plains, which would become
the habitat of the settler. More than once there were Indians who would
have blocked the way of the railway builders or would even have swooped
down in the night and torn up the rails, but for the restraining
presence of authority. And besides all these, there were some amongst
the huge gangs of navvies and general track-makers who had alien tastes
and habits, who required to be, on occasion, reminded that, while in a
British country no law-abiding man should be coerced into working
against his will if he was not satisfied with conditions, he must
respect the rights of human life and must not destroy the property of
others. All these cases and conditions became actualities in the West,
and with all these the Mounted Police dealt as occasions arose, in such
a way as to enable the march of civilization to proceed unchecked and
unafraid.
For the settlers who made the continuance of the railway possible, the
Mounted Policeman was a sort of guardian angel, and the well-known
painting by Paul Wickson which hangs in the Premier's office at Ottawa
shows how the patrol went about asking the homesteader if he had any
complaints. Only those perhaps who have lived on these far-sundered
homesteads know how much this meant to these lonely men and their
isolated families. Fighting prairie fires, when the mad battalions of
flame wheeled with the gale and charged at the humble dwelling or the
precious hay or wheat-stacks of the settler, was the willingly assumed
duty of many a rider of the plains. One recalls the case of Constable
Conradi, who, while on patrol one fall day when the dry grass was as
inflammable as tinder, asked a settler if there was any homesteader
living in the direction where a fire was rushing. The settler said yes,
that there was a man named Young, his wife and children, that way, but
it would be impossible to reach them through the fiery wall that was so
plainly visible. "Impossible or not," says the constable, "I am going to
try," and putting spurs to his horse he was soon lost to sight in the
rolling smoke. The horse was so badly burned that he had to be shot, but
Conradi saved the family. He found Mr. Young, the settler, exhausted.
They both fought the fierce blaze, and when hope of saving the home was
gone, the constable, plunging through the fire, found Mrs. Young and the
children standing in the water of a slough. He saw that they would be
suffocated when the fire encircled it, and so he plunged and carried the
children to the burnt ground, the mother following. From the settler's
grateful letter to headquarters we make this extract: "His pluck and
endurance I cannot praise too highly, fighting till he was nearly
suffocated, his hat burned off his head, hair singed and vest on fire.
My wife and family owe their lives to him, and I feel with them we shall
never be able to repay him for his brave conduct." Thus did the Police
make the settlers' work possible, that they in turn might make the
railway a reasonably safe investment. Then, when the Indians became
awkward and threatened to stop the progress of the transcontinental
railway across the prairie, it was the Mounted Police that stepped in to
see that the road was not blocked. Eastern contractors and workmen, who
had not been used to seeing war-paint, were somewhat alarmed when a band
of Indians would swoop down with the air of people who owned the earth,
and in all such cases the Police were quickly called by wire or
otherwise. Superintendent Shurtcliffe tells of a rather odd case in
which an Indian chief with the appropriate name of "Front Man" stopped a
railway contractor from getting out ties and caused the whole outfit to
leave the bush in a good deal of panic. Shurtcliffe, a capable officer,
immediately sent for "Front Man" and told him how dangerous a thing it
was to interfere with the progress of work authorized by Canada. "Front
Man" realized that he had rushed in where he had no business, and on his
promising Shurtcliffe that he would behave himself, the contractor and
his men went back to their peaceable but very important tie business.
Then there was the case of Pie-a-Pot, who from the earliest days of
treaty-making was crochety and rather defiantly opposed to the incoming
of anything or anybody that would interfere with his nomadic habits and
general inclination to please himself. He showed a disagreeable tendency
to leave his reserve and wander with his camp following and general
entourage, much to the discomfort of others who were not desirous of his
presence. One day this chief took it into his head that he would wander
on to the right-of-way being mapped out for the Canadian Pacific, and by
spreading his camp across it put a damper on the enterprise. And he
succeeded up to a certain point. The engineers worked up to his camp and
politely asked him to move, but he laughed at them, enjoyed their
discomfiture, while his braves circled around with their ponies and kept
up a rifle fire to indicate what they could do to the engineers in case
of emergency. Of course, the engineers were glad to retire as gracefully
as possible, but they wired the Lieutenant-Governor that they were at a
standstill. The Governor sent word to Police headquarters, whence a
telegram went to the nearest Police post: "Trouble on railway. Tell
Indians to move on." There were only two men there, a sergeant and a
constable. They rode off at once, and when they arrived at the camp of
the Indians and delivered the order, Pie-a-Pot and his chief men, who
had not been much in contact with the Police, only laughed, while the
braves performed their usual firearm feats and the squaws jeered. Then
the sergeant indicated by showing his watch that he would give fifteen
minutes for them to start moving. At this the braves on signal circled
closer, backed their ponies against the troop-horses and made every
effort to get the Police to start trouble, the idea being to let them
take the offensive and be wiped out. But the Police were never to be
drawn that way. In this case the two scarlet tuniced men sat coolly on
their horses, which stood at the door of Pie-a-Pot's tent. And when the
time was up the sergeant, throwing the lines to the constable, sprang
off his horse, leaped past the surly Chief, entered the tepee and kicked
out the centre pole, thus bringing the wigwam down nearly on the head of
the defiant Indian. Without waiting, the sergeant moved to the next tent
and repeated the operation with great precision, and then said to the
chief and his men, "Now move and move quick." The chief was very angry,
but he was no fool, and so in a very short time he and his whole outfit
were on the trek to their reserve. The engineers went on with the
transcontinental, and the two athletes in scarlet and gold, whose names
were not even given out, rode back to their post, having made one more
unadvertised contribution from the Police to the making of the West.
Now let us instance a case in which the Police had to deal with
turbulent navvies on the railway who went on strike and threatened to
destroy the company's property. The Police have never acted in any sense
as strike-breakers, nor have they interfered between the parties. They
simply saw fair play, took care that the country's lawful business was
carried on and provided against destruction of human life and property.
This was the position for instance at the Beaver in the mountains while
the Canadian Pacific was under construction. For the time being it was a
terminus, and all manner of lawless, desperate and disorderly characters
were there to prey upon the navvies, many of whom were foreigners and a
good many of whom were just as reckless and offensive as could be
imagined. To keep these rough men in order, and there were several
hundreds of them mostly armed, there were only eight Mounted Police, but
they were under the leadership of the redoubtable Superintendent, Sam B.
Steele, who had as his non-commissioned assistant Sergeant Fury, a
short, heavy set, bull-dog type of a man, whom I remember well, quiet,
determined and undemonstrative, but who could, while keeping cool, at
the same time be everything his name suggested if occasion required.
When the strike was starting, Steele did not interfere, but warned the
strikers that they must keep the peace and not commit any acts of
violence or he would punish them to the full extent of the law. When the
strike did start, Steele was in bed with mountain fever and Sergeant
Fury had only six men. One of them, Constable Kerr, who had gone for a
bottle of medicine for the Inspector, found on his way back a riotous
crowd with a desperate character, well known to the Police, inciting the
mob to violence and especially to an attack on the barracks. Kerr, who
was not a man to stand nonsense, promptly arrested the man, but a score
of men overpowered him and released the prisoner. Sergeant Fury at once
reported to Steele, who said, "It will never do to let the gang think
they can play with us." Then Fury and another man tried to make the
arrest without resorting to using weapons, but in a little while
returned, with their uniforms torn, to report that once again the
rioters had taken the prisoner from them by force. Steele said, "This is
too bad. Go back armed and shoot any man who interferes with the
arrest." He started off again with Constables Fane, Craig and Walters,
while the other four constables with their Winchesters stood ready to
guard the barracks, which were slated for attack by the mob. Johnston, a
magistrate, was there to read the Riot Act if necessary. In a few
minutes there was a shot. Steele got up and went to the window. Craig
and Walters were dragging the prisoner across the bridge, the desperado
fighting like a demon, and a scarlet woman following them with cries and
curses. Fury and Fane were in the rear trying to hold back the gang of
some three hundred men. Steele called on Johnston to come with him to
read the Riot Act and then rushed out, got a rifle from one of the
guard, and ignoring his fevered condition ran across the bridge,
covering the crowd with the rifle and saying he would shoot the first
man who dared to cross. The crowd could hardly believe their eyes when
they saw Steele and shouted, "Even his death-bed does not scare him." In
the meantime the desperate prisoner was struggling fiercely with the men
who had him, but when on the bridge Walters raised his powerful fist and
struck him over the temple, and with Craig trailed him like a rag into
the barracks. As the woman passed screaming, "You red-coated devil,"
Steele shouted, "Take her along too." Then Johnston read the Riot Act
and Steele made a straight statement that the Police, though few, would
not flinch and that if he saw more than twelve rioters together he would
open fire and mow them down. And the eight Mounted Police stood there
under Sergeant Fury with magazines charged, ready to act when ordered.
The riot collapsed right there, the ringleaders were sentenced next day
and there was no more trouble. The roughs at the Beaver had tried the
game of rioting with the wrong men.
And in order to show that the Police took no sides, but sought to hold
the balance level in these matters, we might recall an instance related
by Superintendent J. H. McIlree, where men had been hired by contractors
on the understanding that when a section of the railway was finished to
Calgary, these men would be paid off and sent back to their homes in the
East. However, the contractors, when they came to that point, would not
provide transportation to the East, but wished to send them farther
West. The men refused, and after a few days took possession of a train
of empty cars going eastward. The Police could not allow this
commandeering of the property of the railway company for the failure of
certain contractors, and so they caused the men to leave the train, but
these same Police, once they discovered the real situation, made it so
hot for those contractors that they were glad to yield and give the men
what they had agreed. So all along the line, from the time it crossed
the Red River in 1881 till it reached the Pacific five years later, the
Mounted Police stood guard over the railway which was the first to link
together with steel the scattered Provinces of the new Confederation and
the construction of which within a given time was required to get
British Columbia to become part of Canada. Thus were these red-coated
men nation-builders, in that it was under their protection that the vast
enterprise was carried forward to completion.
It is not unexpectedly then that we come across two special letters from
the builders of the great railway expressing their warm appreciation of
the work of the Police. The first is from that remarkable man, Mr. W. C.
Van Horne, who was afterwards President of the Railway, and who was
knighted for his distinguished services to the Empire as a builder of
railways. Van Horne was a somewhat extraordinary composite. I recall
having the privilege of being under his guidance around the fine art
gallery of Lord Strathcona in Montreal, and had evidence not only of his
genial companionship, but of his being an art connoisseur as well as a
skilled user of the brush himself. Socially and in his home he was full
of comradeship and bright joviality, but as a railroader he was as
inflexible and apparently unemotional as the material with which he
worked. He was not given to gushing letters, so that the following from
him from his office as General Manager of date January 1, 1883, is
noteworthy:
"DEAR SIR,--Our work of construction for the year 1882 has just
closed, and I cannot permit the occasion to pass without
acknowledging the obligations of the company to the North-West
Mounted Police, whose zeal and industry in preventing traffic in
liquor and preserving order along the line of construction have
contributed so much to the successful prosecution of the work.
Indeed, without the assistance of the officers and men of the
splendid Force under your command it would have been impossible to
have accomplished as much as we did. On no great work within my
knowledge, where so many men have been employed, has such perfect
order prevailed. On behalf of the company and of all their
officers, I wish to return thanks and to acknowledge particularly
our obligations to yourself and Major Walsh.
"I am, sir,
"Yours very truly,
"W. C. VAN HORNE,
"_General Manager_."
"Lieutenant-Colonel A. G. IRVINE,
"Commissioner,
"North-West Mounted Police,
"Regina."
And at the close of the year 1884 the General Superintendent of the
Western Line, Mr. John M. Egan, who was even less than Van Horne given
to incursions into the sentimental, wrote the following:
"MY DEAR COLONEL,--Gratitude would be wanting did the present year
close without my conveying, on behalf of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, to you and those under your charge most sincere thanks for
the manner in which their several duties in connection with the
railway have been attended to during the past season.
"Prompt obedience to your orders, faithful carrying out of your
instructions, contribute in no small degree to the rapid
construction of the line. The services of your men during recent
troubles among a certain class of our employees prevented
destruction to property and preserved obedience to law and order in
a manner highly commendable. Justice has been meted out to them
without fear or favour, and I have yet to hear any person, who
respects same, say aught against your command.
"Wishing you the season's compliments,
"I remain,
"Yours very truly,
"JNO. M. EGAN."
Taken together these letters, with tributes from two such men, more than
substantiate the claims we have made for the part played by the Police
in that critical era of Western Canadian history.
It is anticipating in order of time, but this is our railway chapter,
and so we note here another service of enormous value rendered the
railway by the men in scarlet and gold. The road was completed in 1886
from Montreal to the West Coast, and people used to wonder how this
railway, traversing some 3,000 miles across lonely prairie and lonelier
mountains, escaped having its trains held up by robbers, as was so
frequently the case in other countries. The reason emerged in a report
given by Superintendent Deane, of Calgary, and that reason was the
preventive power of the presence and prestige of the Mounted Police.
Deane, in his annual report for 1906, refers to the only effort that had
ever been made to rob a train, and starts with the following revealing
statement: "It has for years been an open secret that the train-robbing
fraternity in the United States had seriously considered the propriety
of trying conclusions with the Mounted Police, but had decided that the
risks were too great and the game not worth the candle. After the object
lesson they received last May, it may be reasonably hoped that railway
passengers will be spared further anxiety during the life of the present
generation at least." And Deane's hope has been justified.
The special event of May to which he refers was a train robbery at
Kamloops in British Columbia by a notorious train-robbing expert, Bill
Miner, _alias_ Edwards, etc., assisted by two gunmen, William Dunn and
Louis, _alias_ "Shorty" Colquhoun. A robbery had been committed by the
same parties before nearer the coast, but it had been dealt with by
local authorities and no trace of the robbers was found. However, the
railway authorities were now thoroughly alarmed and, though the
Provincial Police, one of whom, Fernie of Kamloops, did good work, were
on the trail, were not inclined to take any chances. Accordingly, a wire
was sent by C.P.R. Superintendent Marpole to General Manager Mr. (later
Sir) William Whyte, of Winnipeg, who in turn telegraphed to Commissioner
Perry, of the Mounted Police, asking that a detachment of his men be put
on the work of hunting the robbers who had escaped into the difficult
country south of Kamloops. Perry wired Calgary for two detachments to be
in readiness, and left to take charge of the arrangements. From Calgary
Inspector Church, with Sergeant Fletcher and ten men left for Penticton,
so as to cut off the escape of the robbers over the boundary line. The
Commissioner left for Kamloops, accompanied by Staff-Sergeant J. J.
Wilson, Sergeants Thomas and Shoebotham, Corporals Peters and Stewart,
Constables Browing and Tabateau, Wilson being in charge of the
detachment. The weather was bad, the horses they secured at Kamloops
were poor, but despite these handicaps this posse came on the robbers
within forty-eight hours. The outlaws were armed to the teeth, but when
they were discovered off guard were in the bush at dinner. Wilson
reported what happened as follows:
"We all dismounted, leaving the horses standing, went into the bush and
found three men eating dinner. I asked them where they came from. The
eldest man, who afterwards gave the name of Edwards, said, 'Across the
river.' I asked them where they were before that. Edwards said, 'From
over there' (pointing towards Campbell meadows). I asked how long since
they had left there. Edwards said, 'Two days.' I then asked them what
they were doing. The one who afterwards gave the name of Dunn, answered,
'Prospecting a little.' I then said, 'You answer the description given
of the train-robbers and we arrest you for that crime.' Edwards said,
'We do not look much like train-robbers.' Just then Dunn rolled over and
said, 'Look out, boys, it is all up,' and commenced to fire his
revolver. I immediately covered Edwards. Corporal Peters was standing
close to Colquhoun, who was reaching for his revolver, and he covered
him and ordered him to put up his hands, at the same time snatching away
Colquhoun's revolver. Sergeant Shoebotham, Corporal Stewart and
Constable Browning ran after Dunn, firing as they went, he returning the
fire as he ran. After some twenty shots had been exchanged Dunn fell
into a ditch and threw up his hands, saying, 'I am shot.' The men ceased
firing and took two revolvers from Dunn. On taking him out of the ditch
it was found he had been shot in the calf of the leg, the bullet going
right through."
The Mounted Men brought the whole gang into Kamloops, refusing to give
them up to anyone till they landed these desperadoes in jail, whence
they were taken to serve sentences in the penitentiary.
It is interesting to note that at that time Mr. Marpole, in a statement
issued to the press, strongly advocated the extension of the Mounted
Police Force to other parts of Canada in addition to the Middle West. In
recent years that has been done, and the result has been enormously
beneficial, as we shall later consider.
And so Deane's expectation, as we indicated, was fulfilled, for, except
for the clumsy efforts of a couple of foreigners, the train-robbers have
evidently concluded to give a wide berth to any region where the Mounted
Police stand for British Law.
And it is not inappropriate at the close of this railway chapter to
quote Steele's account of the ride given him out of compliment to his
work and that of the Police generally, on the train which was the first
to go through to the coast after Donald A. Smith had driven at
Craigellachie in November, 1885, the spike which united the two oceans
across Canada. Steele was back on duty in the mountains again and, as he
knew some of the party, was invited to go through from Kamloops on a
private car with Mr. Dickey, the government engineer, and the manager of
construction on the coast end of the huge undertaking. And Steele writes
in his most interesting book, _Forty Years in Canada_, "Dickey knew the
Manager well, which was sufficient to ensure a warm welcome, and the
train rushed along at the rate of 57 miles an hour, roaring in and out
of the numerous tunnels, our short car whirling round the short curves
like the tail of a kite, the sensation being such that when dinner was
served Dickey, the manager and I were the only men in the car who were
not suffering from train sickness. I think this was one of the wildest
rides by train any of us ever took. Many years have passed since that
memorable ride, and to-day one goes through the mountains in the most
modern and palatial observation cars, but the recollection of that
journey to the coast on the first train through is far sweeter to me
than any trips taken since. It was the exultant moment of pioneer work,
and we were all pioneers on that excursion." And we add again all due
honour to the famous corps that had watched over the destinies of the
long steel trail.
CHAPTER VIII
RIEL AGAIN
Some years ago a well-known Senator told me that he was at a dinner
party in Sir John Macdonald's house in Ottawa, when a telegram was
delivered to the Premier at the table. He read it and put it under his
plate. Nothing could be gained by throwing that bombshell in the midst
of his guests. But in a few minutes, as the friends were saying
good-night, Sir John came to the door with the Senator and said, "Mac,
there's the very mischief to pay in the North-West." The wire had
communicated the news of the Duck Lake fight, by which the rebellion,
under that mad egoist, Louis Riel, was publicly staged in its opening
act. And the Senator told me he recalled for all the years that followed
the look on the Premier's face as one of pained surprise and unexpected
shock. If the Senator was a good reader of faces and read that
expressive countenance aright, he could doubtless see indications of
pain, for Sir John was a tender-hearted man. But, if he saw surprise on
the face of the Premier, it is proof positive that official pigeon-holes
in the West had not divulged their secrets to Ottawa, or that his
subordinates were hoping to quell the discontent of the half-breeds on
the Saskatchewan without worrying the "old chieftain" unduly.
And this we say because the outbreak of rebellion was a surprise to
Western residents only in the sense that the resort to arms was
considered unlikely. But every one knew something of the discontent. The
Mounted Police saw it coming to a head, and Superintendent Crozier, who
was in command at Fort Carleton, on the North Saskatchewan, has reported
in July, 1884, some eight months before the outbreak, that Riel had been
brought from Montana to champion the "rights" of the half-breeds.
Superintendent Gagnon, who understood their language well, reported as
to Riel's presence and the discontent of the half-breeds more than once.
The causes of the discontent were not far to seek. Many of the
half-breeds on the South Saskatchewan were the same who had taken part
in Riel's first rebellion on the Red River fifteen years before. They
were not people of a settled temperament. They did not take naturally to
the farm. There was enough of the Indian blood in them to make them
nomadic hunters rather than settlers, and enough of the fiery volatility
of French blood to make them susceptible to the appeals of aggressive
agitation. And Riel, though not specially anxious to fight himself, was
a past master in stirring others up to get into conflicts. And when
Superintendent Crozier notified the Government that this hot-headed,
vain but magnetic agitator had come amongst his old compatriots, steps
should have been taken to deport him, or otherwise put him where he
could do no harm.
Gagnon was quite right when he stated later that the main cause of the
discontent amongst the half-breeds was the introduction by the
Government of the rectangular survey of land on the prairie. Under this
system settlers had to hold their farms in square blocks of 160 acres or
more, and in consequence such settlers would be necessarily some
distance apart. This was not to the mind of the half-breeds, who were
more given to social gatherings than to agriculture, and who preferred
the old survey that they knew on the Red River and the Assiniboine,
where their holdings were in narrow strips fronting on the river and
running two miles back. To introduce this on the prairie, the Government
contended, would lead to confusion, and so it was easy for the agitator
to stir up discontent amongst these inflammable people who had always
been accustomed to the freedom of the plains. It was easy for the orator
to say that the Government was trying to break up their old social
customs, and when such a statement was followed up by saying that their
patents giving them title to land were being long delayed, and that
possibly they would never be granted at all, a live coal had fallen on
material as combustible as the dry grass on the prairie. And once the
half-breeds began to consider revolt it was not hard for them to stir up
certain bad Indians with the proposal that by combining they could drive
out the whites and have the country to themselves again.
In any case our main interest in this book is the story of the Mounted
Police, and we repeat that they did their duty in warning the
authorities a long distance ahead. When their warning was not he
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