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."