IN THE GOLD COUNTRY
Away on the banks of the Red River hard by where the City of Winnipeg
with its aggressive business marts and its surging polyglot population
now stands, there is the old Kildonan Church, which the original Selkirk
Settlers, pioneers of the West, built for themselves and their children.
These early colonists, unmindful of worldly gain, had the traditional
hospitality of the Highland race to which they belonged, and the
proverbial absence of class distinction which always obtains on a
frontier:
"No bolts had they to their doors
Nor bars to their windows,
But their houses were open as day
And the hearts of the owners."
It was natural that to such a place should come on frequent visits the
Hudson's Bay men, the explorers and pathfinders, most of whom were of
the same race and creed as the pioneers. And it was natural too, that
when these pathfinders came to the end of the long trail their bodies
should be brought back to rest in the God's acre around that old church,
the famous cemetery where
"Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
There were other lines of Gray's immortal poem that could be applied
with great appropriateness to that churchyard that lay in the midst of a
settlement in which were men of undoubted talent and power had their lot
been cast in other surroundings. Such lines, for instance, as these:
"Some village Hampden, who, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood:
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest:
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."
But there are many resting there who became known far beyond their early
circle. Most of them are not connected with our present story, but one
monument in that ancient churchyard bears the name of a man whose record
shines out with splendour in the history of the Yukon, which region was
afterwards the scene of one of the most brilliant, successful and
grandly tragic chapters in the record of the Mounted Police. The name is
that of Robert Campbell, the famous Hudson's Bay Company explorer, who
threescore years before the famous gold-rush which required the guardian
presence of the Police had discovered the Yukon River, and had travelled
for years in the regions which later on became known as one of the great
gold-fields of the world. Campbell was not looking for gold or caring
for it. He was opening out a new Empire for trade with the usual
self-forgetful devotion of its employees to the interests of the great
Fur Company.
I remember Campbell, guest often in my father's house on the Red River
in my boyhood, and later, for he lived to a great age. A Highlander too
was he, from Glenlyon in Perthshire, tall, stately, handsome, with black
hair and beard, his whole bearing suggestive of power. A modest man
withal, for he refused to call after himself the great river he had
discovered, and he left no material out of which a real biography could
be written. But it was because he had blazed the way and because another
Hudson's Bay man, Hunter Murray, had built Fort Yukon, that others
throughout the years began to penetrate into the wild until, in the
nineties, there came the discovery of acres of gold which attracted the
wildest rush in the history of mining. There have been many wild rushes
in different parts of the world, but those who went on the Yukon rush
faced climatic conditions in blizzards, bottomless snow drifts and
desperate cold, as well as on torrential streams and treacherous rapids,
which, from the standpoint of hardship and privation, dwarf all other
mining expeditions into insignificance. Of all this burden and exposure
and hardship the Mounted Police, in the simple discharge of their
duties, bore the lion's share, and that without any financial
compensation such as others expected who were drawn to the north by the
lure of gold. The Police had nothing beyond their small pay, and they
kept themselves strictly and sternly aloof from opportunities to enrich
themselves either in the way of business or in the way of allowing any
offers to be made them as a price for shielding law-breakers. They did
not make any money, though it was being made by thousands all around
them. But they did their duty so valiantly and so uncompromisingly that
they added to their already great prestige and showed the world a new
record in keeping potentially dangerous frontier camps almost entirely
free from crime. There was hardly any gun play. There were only two or
three homicides, and there were no failures in justice and no lynchings.
When in 1894 the first rumours of a probable rush into the region came
to the outside, the Dominion Government felt that it was imperative
that, in order to prevent lawlessness as well as to protect the
interests of Canada in respect to the area within her boundary, the
famous corps that had policed all the western frontiers should be
represented immediately in the gold regions of the far north. And it was
vitally important that a man should be sent in as officer commanding who
would be specially fitted for such an unprecedented and extraordinary
task. That man was found in the person of Inspector Charles Constantine,
and he, taking with him other picked men in Inspector D. A. E.
Strickland, Assistant Surgeon A. E. Wells, Staff-Sergeant Brown and
twenty non-commissioned officers and constables, left for their distant
field of action in the month of June. Strickland, who had done fine
service on the plains, was to be of great value in the north on account
of his knowledge of woodcraft logging, building and such like, in
addition to his regular police duties. Wells was to have his hands full,
since for some time he was, as some one said, the only doctor in a
region as large as France and had, with sometimes inadequate means, to
fight scourges of scurvy and the other diseases incident to food and
climate. The men in the detachments were experienced and hardy enough to
face anything that might turn up either in the shape of man or beast or
difficult atmospheric conditions.
Constantine had served in the Red River expedition, and then, on account
of special qualifications, had been made chief of the Provincial Police
in Manitoba, where he was a terror to evil-doers. When the second Riel
rebellion broke out and a volunteer regiment was being hurriedly raised
in Winnipeg for service in the Big Bear country, Constantine, to the
great delight of all of us who joined up with that regiment, became
Adjutant. During that campaign he was always to the fore in every crisis
and showed particular skill in rooting out men who were inciting the
Indians to revolt. One morning of dense fog away beyond Fort Pitt our
outside picket was fired on when I had charge of the guard. Calling out
the guard and getting them under arms I went over to notify the officer
commanding in the camp, but met Constantine with his forty-five ready
for action. He had scented the alarm and did not wait for notice before
getting out to see what was doing. A less keen-sighted or an excitable
man would probably have shot anyone looming up through the fog, as I did
from the direction of the shooting, but Constantine, though as quick as
a flash, always had himself in hand. After the rebellion he became an
Inspector in the Mounted Police, and had so approved himself as a
wide-awake, intelligent and courageous officer that when the Yukon
sprang up with its special demand he was appointed to be the pioneer in
that far region of the north. Of medium height but very compactly built,
Constantine was immensely strong, quick in his movements and capable of
enduring tremendous strain. If it came to a rough and tumble he was as
hard a man to handle as anyone would care to find. These qualities,
along with his mental alertness and judicial training, made him a good
man to send to a region where he had to exercise many functions until
fuller government could be established. Constantine first of all made an
investigating and exploratory trip accompanied by Staff-Sergeant Charles
Brown. Leaving Moosomin in May in obedience to orders to report in
Ottawa for special duty, Constantine received instructions to proceed to
the Yukon and make recommendations as to general administration. He
accordingly left for the north and by crossing over by the Lewes-Yukon
he reached Fort Cudahy on August 7, where he remained about a month
before returning by St. Michaels and arriving at Victoria in October. He
reported elaborately on the resources, climate and possibilities of the
whole country. This was in 1894, and in consequence of Constantine's
grasp of the situation and his talent for organization he was sent back
next year with the officers and men above indicated, arriving at Fort
Cudahy on July 24.
It was well that Strickland was a practical logger and builder, for
quarters had to be provided. It was a land of extremes, with intense
cold in the winter and equally intense heat in the summer. Constantine
speaks of an occasional 75 degrees below zero in the winter and the heat
as high as 120 degrees. In another report he writes, "The miners have a
simple method of determining when it is too cold to work by hanging a
bottle containing mercury outside the house. When it freezes it is time
to remain inside." We should rather think so. Albeit, the climate is dry
and healthy when people are prepared for it and are not found fasting
after prolonged exposure.
It was in the hot weather that Strickland and his picked men went up the
Yukon amid the heat and flies, cut down the logs and floated them to
where Fort Constantine was built before the extreme cold struck the
region. The men who stayed with Constantine had cleared the ground of
moss and brush with great effort. The moss varied from one to three feet
in depth. Below it was ice, so that the report says the men worked a
good part of the time up to their knees in water. "If it was not 90
degrees in the shade it was pouring rain." Up the river Strickland and
his men were getting out the logs as stated, but without any appliances
except their own physical strength and energy. Only men of the finest
type could have stood it, and the Inspector gives them unstinted praise.
The buildings were rushed up as stated before the winter. They were
chinked with moss and the roof covered with earth, there being no time
to saw boards to cover. All this was not so bad for the winter, but when
the spring came the men who had fought the intense cold were subjected
to another kind of hardship. Constantine says in a later report, "During
the heavy rains the roofs leaked so badly that oil sheets and tarpaulins
had to be put up over all the beds to keep them dry. The earth roofs of
this country will only absorb a certain amount of moisture and when the
limit is reached, a deluge of very dirty water is the result." Evidently
the men were not having a picnic.
However, Constantine and his detachment keep the country in order,
administer justice, collect customs due to the Dominion and generally
make conditions civilized and British. There was a time when it was
generally believed that most of the gold-bearing creeks were on the
American side of the line, but a survey made under direction of the
Police revealed the opposite to be the case and Constantine notified the
miners on Miller, Glacier and other creeks that they were on Canadian
territory, subject to British law and amenable to regulations as to
mining fees, Constantine's modesty and determination are illustrated in
one quiet paragraph, which some of us who knew him will find luminous
between the lines. He says, "A few miners denied Canada's jurisdiction
and right to collect fees on the ground that there was a possibility of
error in the survey. However, I went up to Miller and Glacier Creeks and
all dues were paid without any trouble except that of a hard trip, but
as all trips in this country are of that nature, it was part of the
bargain. On Glacier Creek a number of miners undertook to run matters in
accordance with their own ideas of justice and set themselves up as the
law of the land. The trouble ended, however, by the Canadian law being
carried out." Constantine was clearly serving notice on all and sundry
that the Mounted Police were on hand to live up to their reputation of
seeing justice done and playing no favourites. The authorities had made
no mistake when they sent him in as the pioneer.
Then he speaks in 1896 of new discoveries which began to cause the mad
rush from all parts of the world as the news percolated through to the
outside. "In August of this year a rich discovery of coarse gravel was
made by one George Carmack on Bonanza Creek, a tributary to the
Klondike. His prospect showed $3.00 to the pan." Not bad picking for
George, who became wealthy. But George's shovel and pick and pan,
clattering as he worked, awakened echoes to far distances and the wild
stampede of all kinds of people, prominently the adventurous and the
get-rich-quick class, began with a vengeance.
Constantine got ready for it, strongly recommending the establishment of
civil courts, the appointment of an administrator and law-officer and
the reinforcing of the Police so that they could be scattered up and
down the new mining areas as required. A post called Fort Herchmer,
after the Commissioner, was built at Dawson which was to become the big
centre shortly, and the Police Force was augmented by the arrival of two
small detachments under command respectively of two well-known officers,
Inspectors Scarth and Harper. And not any too soon were these
precautions taken, for Constantine lets light in on the kind of people
who began to head for the diggings when he says in his graphic way, "A
considerable number of people coming in from the Sound cities appear to
be the sweepings of the slums and the result of a general jail delivery.
Heretofore goods could be cached on the side of the trails and they
would be perfectly safe, now a man has to sit on his cache with a
shotgun to ensure the safety of his goods. Cabins in out-of-the-way
places are broken into and everything cleaned out." That was before the
newcomers realized that the Mounted Police were to the fore. Constantine
and his men kept on their track and perpetrators of ordinary offences
were astonished when they were run out of the country in order to save
food for the decent people who were willing to work without preying on
others. And the Inspector gives parting salute to the deported
individuals by saying, "Many of them could well be spared in any
community, for the rush had brought in toughs, gamblers, lewd women and
criminals of almost every type, from the petty thief to the murderer."
But Constantine gave them no quarter, and so it was that by the time the
big stampede took place into Dawson and the Creeks it had become known
far and wide that the Mounted Police would stand no nonsense. So the way
was made simpler, though not at any time a sinecure, for those who
followed the intrepid pioneers in the scarlet tunic. But coming at the
summit of an active and strenuous life, the exposure, responsibility and
general wear and tear of his Yukon years undermined the once rugged
strength of Constantine. He was transferred to the prairie after nearly
four years in the Yukon, but never fully recovered his vigour. His
leaving the Yukon had a very human side. The miners showed their
appreciation of his manly, straightforward character by crowding in and
presenting him and his wife and boy with nuggets of gold and indicating
in their diffident but genuine way that if ever any of them needed help
they could count on their Yukon friends for anything required. Which
reminds us that tribute should be paid to the wives of these policemen
who braved the wilderness places of the west and north to be helpers to
their husbands and to make their homes centres of social refining
influence where such influences were of untold value.
[Illustration: CHILCOOT PASS: N.W.M. POLICE AND CUSTOM HOUSE.]
[Illustration: KLONDYKE RUSH: SQUAW RAPIDS, BETWEEN CANYON AND WHITE
HORSE RAPIDS. 1898]
Inspector Cortlandt Starnes, the present efficient
Assistant-Commissioner at Ottawa Headquarters and who has done valuable
service all the way across the country from Hudson Bay to the Yukon as
well as on the plains, took over the command from Constantine and
remained in charge till the arrival of Superintendent Steele, a period
extending from June to September, 1898. Starnes, who is a short, heavily
built and powerful man, capable of enduring much hardship, had come
through in the previous winter, staying some months at Lake LaBarge and
Little Salmon, accumulating stores of goods from the coast to be taken
through in the spring to Dawson, where a shortage was impending. He had
no easy time getting over the route, he and his men only saving
themselves from wreck on Lake Bennett by throwing overboard some of
their freight. With forty below zero and everything frozen up, Starnes
had to build winter quarters at Little Salmon, and with the true
democracy of the frontier we find the officials he was escorting into
the Yukon giving a hand--Judge McGuire, Mr. F. O. Wade, Crown
Prosecutor, Dr. Bonnar and others. But early in the spring Starnes moved
on to Dawson. The rush was setting in and with Inspector F. Harper and a
few men he had to hold the place for law and order during a sort of
interregnum period. No civil courts were established till Judge McGuire
came, and to administer the law under such conditions was always trying.
But it was done. Offenders were given no rest. "Gunmen" were made
impossible and gamblers found no city of refuge in the gold country. In
three months Starnes and Harper, principally the former, tried 215
cases, these being all the way from dog-stealing (dogs were dogs in the
north), drunkenness, keeping or frequenting disorderly houses to
vagrancy, using vile language and refusing to work. If men would not
work when free they were sentenced to jail with hard labour, because
these experienced men knew that idleness is the prolific progenitor of
crime. In consequence crime never got a start in the most quickly
crowded mining camp in the world. It had been held down from the
beginning. The place had its saloons and dance hall and fools were
fleeced there as they are in older centres, but the superb strength and
incorruptibility of the Mounted Police proved too much for the lawless
element, and the whole period makes one of the proudest records in the
history of this wonderful force.
The big stampede for Dawson started in 1897-98, and to cope with the
incidentals and probably accompaniments of it, there was a whirlwind
series of movements by the Mounted Police which seemed to anticipate
every contingency, head off all manner of calamities, make provision for
protecting the boundary line against infractions of the customs
regulations, and generally see that law and order should prevail all
over the wide area that was soon teeming with a nondescript
heterogeneous population of excited gold-hunters. Two of the big men of
the Force, Superintendents A. B. Perry, a masterly organizer, and S. B.
Steele, a determined enforcer of law, were called on to go up to the
north and meet the unprecedented situation. That these two superior
officers did not shirk any of the hardships could be demonstrated from
many an instance like the following related casually by Steele as to an
incident at the outset. "At Dyea I met Perry and together we returned to
Skagway in a small sailing boat. The weather was very cold and as the
tide was out we were obliged to wade through the pools in our moccasins.
When we embarked we were soaked to the hip and our clothes were frozen
like boards." And they came that way the whole distance to Skagway,
where they got no time to change as Perry had to leave for Vancouver
that night in regard to further arrangements.
With these two from the beginning, indeed some were in the country ahead
of them, was a group of very able officers, Superintendent Z. T. Wood,
Inspectors P. C. H. Primrose, C. Starnes, F. Harper, W. H. Scarth, A. E.
Strickland, R. Belcher, A. M. Jarvis, F. L. Cartwright, Surgeons W. E.
Thompson and S. M. Fraser. Non-commissioned officers like Tucker,
Macdonnell, Barker, Bates, Graham, Hyles, Corneil and Raven were amongst
those in charge of early detachments or attached to hospital bases in
the first year of the big rush, and these with the help of as able and
resolute a body of men as ever wore uniform led the way to a new world
record for policing a country in a paternal method of oversight which
guided and controlled but never resorted to shooting. The use of the
word paternal calls to mind the way they threw a cordon around the
country to prevent at the threshold the entrance of men who were
unprepared for the hardships with either clothing or supplies or
physique. And the manner in which the Police interposed against the
madness of inexpert men who were anxious to run the White Horse Rapids
and the Miles Canyon in crazy boats on the way to Dawson was admirable
in its quiet forcefulness. A good many of these people were men and
women from offices and stores in American cities who knew boats only by
hearsay. So when Steele arrived at the Rapids he gathered the stampeders
together and said:
"There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted
Police make the laws as they go along, and I am going to do so now
for your own good, therefore the directions that I give shall be
carried out strictly and they are these: Corporal Dixon, who
thoroughly understands this work, will be in charge here and be
responsible to me for the proper management of the passage of the
Canyon and White Horse Rapids. No women or children will be taken
in the boats. If they are strong enough to come to the Klondike
they can walk the five miles of the bank to the foot of the White
Horse and there is no danger for them here. No boat will be
permitted to go through the Canyon until the corporal is satisfied
that it has sufficient free board to enable it to ride the waves in
safety. No boat will be allowed to pass with human beings in it
unless it is steered by competent men, and of that the corporal
will be the judge. There will be a number of pilots selected, whose
names will be on the roll in the Mounted Police Barracks here, and
when a crew needs a man to steer them through the Canyon to the
foot of the rapids, pilots will be taken in turn from that list. In
the event of the men not being able to pay, the Corporal will be
permitted to arrange that the boats are run without charge."
Some of the impetuous who were willing to risk everything for the
glitter of gold rather demurred at this strong paternalism, but when it
was all over they thanked their stars that the Mounted Police had been
on hand to head off the folly of fools.
We have anticipated in the last paragraph in order to illustrate how the
Mounted Police guided the wild stampede. But let us get back and find
Superintendent Perry on the ground just as the rush was starting for the
passes. He made a swift trip and placed detachments of police on the
Chilcoot and White Passes, putting those reliable officers Inspectors
Belcher and Strickland in command. Up to a certain date it had almost
been taken for granted that the whole country was on the American side
as the names of Miles, the Indian fighter, and Gordon Bennett had been
given by enthusiasts to the Canyon and the lake. But when Perry put
Belcher on the Chilcoot and Strickland on the White Pass to hoist the
British flag and collect customs levies, intimation was given that the
great gold country was on the Canadian side of the line and that all who
wished to pass that way must contribute to the Dominion exchequer and
thus swell the revenue of Canada. Weather conditions were nothing less
than awful. Steele, who, with Constable Skirving, went up the Chilcoot
from Dyea where they had come on a craft which was covered from stem to
stern with six inches of ice, says, "As we proceeded up the pass we
faced a wind so cutting that we had often to make a rush for the shelter
of a tree or walk in a crouching position behind the tailboard of a
sleigh for a few minutes' respite. We overtook some on the trail next
day out of a notorious tent town known as Sheep Camp. Many of them were
staggering blindly along, with heavy loads on their backs, some of them
off the trail and groping for it with their feet. These we assisted or
they would have fallen by the way."
The same writer goes sympathetically into the following vivid
description: "It would be difficult to describe the hardships gone
through by the Mounted Police stationed at the passes. The camp at the
Chilcoot under Inspector Belcher was pitched on the summit, where it is
bounded by high mountains. A wooden cabin was erected in a couple of
days. The place where it was in the pass was only about 100 yards wide.
Below the summit, on the Canadian side, was Crater Lake, named after an
extinct volcano. On its icy surface the men were forced to camp when
they arrived. In the night of February 18 the water rose to the depth of
six inches. Blankets and bedding were wet, the temperature being below
zero with a blizzard. The tents could not be moved and the sleds had to
be taken into them to enable the men to keep above the water at night.
The storm blew for days with great violence, but on the 21st abated
sufficiently to admit of the tents being moved to the top of the hill,
where, although the cold was intense, it was better than in the
water-covered ice of Crater Lake."
"The nearest firewood was seven miles away and the men who went after it
often returned badly frost-bitten.
"Belcher, collecting customs, performing military as well as police duty
on the summit, lived in the shack, which had all the discomforts of a
shower-bath. Snow fell so thickly and so constantly that everything was
damp and paper became mildewed. For some weeks the weather was very cold
without storm, but on the 3rd of March there was a terrific day when the
snow buried the cabin and the tents on the summit, the snowfall for the
day being six feet on the level." The occupants had to shovel constantly
to keep from being suffocated.
On the White Pass Inspector Strickland and his men had to pitch tents on
the ice at first, no timber for cabins or firewood being nearer than 12
miles. Logs were cut and hauled in by horses. There were raging
blizzards and great danger constantly threatened the men, who had to be
on the alert to avoid being lost or frozen. However, on February 27 the
Union Jack flew to the breeze and collection of customs began. A strong
guard kept the trail and men were told off to examine the goods of the
stampeders. There was a tremendous rush, and Strickland, overworked and
suffering from severe bronchitis, struggled along, ably assisted by his
splendid men. An enormous amount was gathered from those who were
rushing in by thousands from the other side of the line bringing their
supplies with them.
About this time Inspector Cartwright arrived from Regina with twenty
men, and Steele, going up the White Pass with him, put him in charge,
sending Strickland to Tagish, where the dry air soon restored him to
health. It is an illuminating comment on Steele's disposition to look
after others and forget himself that he was also, as Dr. Grant said,
suffering from bronchitis which he had contracted weeks before when
wading through icy waters to a boat. But as there was no one around to
order him off duty he just kept right on, trusting that his strong
constitution would see him through.
If physical conditions were bad with storm and cold, moral conditions
from the coast to the summits were worse. The authorities on the
American side seemed to accept as a sort of axiom the statement that a
frontier had to be lawless. Anyway "Soapy Smith," a notorious gunman and
gambler, who was eventually killed by a United States Marshal who was
going to arrest him and who was killed by "Soapy" at the same time, both
firing at one moment, had, with a big gang like himself, terrorized
Skagway and the trails for months. Murders, robberies, shell games and
the rest were practised without cessation up to the Mounted Police line
on the summits, where they suddenly ceased because things of that sort
would not be tolerated for a moment. At that point the incomers put
their "guns" away and went quietly about their business. One finds it
difficult to account for this difference unless by the assumption that
immigrants into the American Republic had taken advantage of her wide
proclamation of the ideal of liberty and had abused the ideal by turning
it into licence. In this way nests of law-breakers and anarchists were
allowed too much opportunity by local officials, where in a similar case
a compact force like our Mounted Police with no local strings on them
and with intense sentiment for the honour of the whole force, never
permitted a situation to get out of hand in any locality however remote
from the centre of government.
In a preceding paragraph I mentioned the name of Dr. Grant. He is the
Rev. Dr. A. S. Grant, a Presbyterian Missionary who went in over that
White Pass trail with a pack on his back. He could stand it better than
most men, for he was a broad-shouldered and powerfully built man. Going
as a missionary he was a man of peace, but he would not allow anyone to
be imposed on in the difficult road. Hence one day when a bully elbowed
a grey-haired man roughly into the snow, Grant interposed and receiving
only insult, taught that bully a lesson he did not forget. To the credit
of the bully be it recorded he took his medicine and shook hands with
the man of peace who believed in protecting the weak.
Grant had taken a course in medicine which proved of immense value on
the trail and during the early days in Dawson. Steele says of him, "Dr.
Grant, a clergyman as well as physician, treats hundreds of sick without
remuneration. Our force owes him a heavy debt of gratitude for the way
he saved our men. More than half of those at the summit and Lake Bennett
had pneumonia but were so well treated that we lost none. I have never
seen men in such a dangerous state and it seemed impossible that they
should recover, but they were pulled through."
This same Grant when he got into Dawson started the Good Samaritan
Hospital with his own funds and became a large factor for the physical
and moral well-being of the place. And his tribute to the Mounted Police
is unstinted, for once he wrote me saying, "Canada owes to these men a
debt of lasting gratitude. A true history of the West will say much
about the self-sacrifice and heroism of this body of men. Many of their
noblest deeds will remain unknown but they will be registered in a
higher type of civilization expressed in a truer type of citizenship.
Many of these deeds will find register only in the writing of the
recording angel."
The official reports of the officers of that period as of others are
full of self-suppression. For instance, that able and unassuming officer
Superintendent Z. T. Wood, says in one place, "I received orders to take
the money of the Government in customs, licences, fees, etc., to be
deposited in the bank at Victoria. I accordingly left Bennett going out
by the Chilcoot and Dyea and took $150,000 in gold and bills. I reached
Victoria in due course and handed over the money." That is all, but in
fact it was a very dangerous journey. He had the stuff in police
kitbags, but those were the days of "Soapy Smith's" gang of ruffians.
Going from Dyea to Skagway, Wood had to threaten to fire on a boat that
was following. Soapy Smith and his toughs were on the wharf at Skagway,
but the determined bearing of Wood and his few men, together with the
presence of the crew of the C.P.R. boat _Tartar_, got them through. It
was a ticklish situation.
A word should be added here as to the famous gold escorts. The practice
was to turn the gold into ingots and send these to the coast under care
of the Mounted Police in small detachments of from two to six men. The
amounts thus carried often ran into tens of thousands and the care of
these valuable loads of gold could only be given to men of the highest
trustworthiness such as these guardians of law and order had always
proven themselves to be. Not a mite ever went missing. It is a fine
thing to quote this as a testimony that strengthens our faith in
humanity. And this splendid incorruptibility was shown by men serving
amidst difficult conditions in trails and rivers in all sorts of weather
for a mere pittance a day.
Inspector A. M. Jarvis speaks about the "continuous roar of the
snow-slides" which one would imagine to be rather disturbing music. He
relates that when he started to collect customs at Dalton cache the
first man to pay was a doctor from St. Thomas, Ontario, who had been
living in the Western States for over twenty years. "The doctor came
over, saluted the flag by taking off his hat, and said it was the first
time he had seen it on British soil in that period." Of a trip taken with
Constables Shook and Cameron on snow-shoes Jarvis says, "The snow was
soft, and despite the snow-shoes we sank deep at every step. The
following afternoon we returned to camp, having been travelling
forty-six hours without blankets and only one meal."
Inspector Cartwright, who relieved Strickland at the White Pass, gives
us a little insight into the problem of keeping warm in rather porous
canvas tents by remarking that wood cost as high as $110.00 a cord. It
was a case of supply and demand. And so in the manner recorded in this
chapter did these pioneer policemen in the Yukon possess the land in
gallantry under the Union Jack.
Meanwhile back on the prairie, the Mounted Police were alive to every
movement and much was done to save people from their own overweening
desire to get into the gold country by any route that might show
possibility of success. Thousands had gone in by the front door of the
coast and then over the passes, but a good many tried to enter by the
back door, going by Edmonton and then over the routes that had been
trodden years before by great explorers like Alexander Mackenzie and
Robert Campbell. Hence Commissioner Herchmer thought it wise to send
patrols out over this vast region of the Peace, Athabasca and Mackenzie
rivers in order to prevent the loss of any of these more or less
inexperienced gold-seekers.
The big patrol of that period was made by Inspector J. D. Moodie, who
was sent out from Edmonton on September 4, 1897, to discover the best
route for those who intended to get to the Yukon by the way of the Peace
River and then over the Mountains. Moodie was accompanied by Constable
F. J. Fitzgerald, Lafferty, Tobin and a French half-breed guide Pepin.
They went part of the way with horses, part with dogs and part with
boats. There was endless hardship through difficulty as to supplies and
transportation and this long patrol to Fort Yukon took a year and two
months. Moodie made a detailed report and his complete diary was
published. Some idea of what the patrol involved may be gathered from
the following paragraph in the report: "We arrived at Fort Graham on
January 18, and were then entirely out of supplies for men and dogs.
There was no dog-feed here and very limited supplies in the Hudson's Bay
Store. Hearing that fish could be secured from some lakes about 25 miles
away I next day sent out some of the men to fish with nets through the
ice while others tried their luck after moose. Neither, however, were
successful. I sent out in different directions to find Indian camps
which were supposed to be somewhere within 50 miles of the post. These,
however, could not be located. The dogs were almost starving, the snow
was five feet deep in the bush and no guides to be had. I had therefore
reluctantly to give up all idea of going farther till spring." In spring
a start was again made and Fort Yukon reached as stated in about
fourteen months after leaving Edmonton. Moodie's description of the
route and the difficulties was not such as to encourage anyone else to
try it. In that way the patrol did good service. For the rest of it, the
collapse of the gold rush after 1898 made it practically unnecessary.
But it demonstrated again the endurance, judgment and reliability of the
police in carrying out any duty assigned to them.
To show the thoroughness with which the country was covered by the
police in order to prevent danger and catastrophe to the rather
improvident gold-seekers, a patrol was made by Inspector (later
Assistant Commissioner) W. H. Routledge a distance of 1,100 miles or so
from Fort Saskatchewan away north to Fort Simpson. This patrol was of
value in getting into touch with many groups of "Klondikers," taking in
their mail and bringing it out and also in making known at remote points
the laws that were specially applicable to their situation. And there
was also a patrol under Inspector A. E. Snyder undertaken with a view to
seeing whether Inspector Moodie had been successful in getting forward
towards the Yukon. This patrol under Snyder went as far as Fort St. John
up near the sources of the Peace River and returned to report that
Inspector Moodie and his men had gone on to Fort Graham, whence their
way would be clear in the spring for the last lap of the long patrol as
above related.
While the Yukon was being opened up the members of the Force on the
plains and in the mountains were steadily doing their duty. They were
perhaps less in the limelight for the time being since the attention of
a good part of the world was centred on the gold country, but their
presence was equally necessary as a terror to evil-doers and an
encouragement to those that did well.
The construction of the Crows Nest Branch of the Canadian Pacific
Railway entailed a very heavy amount of work on the Mounted Police. This
came under the oversight of Inspector G. E. Sanders, who in turn was
under the nominal direction of Superintendent Deane, then in command at
Fort MacLeod. Deane had a busy time, as he had to cover about 400 miles
of front with less than 200 men, of whom as many as fifty at a time had
to be at certain construction points in British Columbia. Referring
especially to the railway part of the work Deane says, "Inspector
Sanders' report which I enclose will give a good idea of the amount of
duty devolving upon him and his men, and I beg leave to record my
opinion that it was well done. The effect of even a single mounted
policeman's personality upon a lawless mob requires to be seen to be
fully appreciated, and there were countless occasions where the
qualities of tact and readiness of resource were required to supplement
the prestige which is begotten of discipline alone."
"It would be impossible to estimate the thousands of men that have
passed hither and thither along the line during its construction. A
considerable proportion of them were entirely unsuited to the work. The
construction authorities claim that by the operation of the Alien Labour
Act they were deprived of the services of the professional railroader,
the man who travels with his outfit all over the continent from railway
to railway, and who would have made light of the difficulties of which
so much has been said. It is undeniable that many men have suffered
great hardships, but it is equally true that many of them should never
have turned their attention to railway construction. Some have never
done a day's work on the railway in their lives, and some have never
done it at all."
There was a good deal of wage dispute on the line, but Inspector Sanders
says, "As to the amount of wages received by the men and their not
having any money to send to their families in the east, it was very
noticeable to me that the men who complained most drank most." This
needs no comment.
It is interesting to note here the outside opinion of the "Fort Steele
Prospecter" as contained in an editorial in that paper in February,
1898. After giving a general description of the mixed class of men on
the road it says, "The crimes along the road, however, are surprisingly
small, considering the vicious element which comprises the contingent of
camp followers" in the way of whisky sellers, gamblers and disorderly
characters. "This happy state of affairs is due to the innate fear of
Canadian justice and the scrupulous surveillance of the efficient corps
of the North-West Mounted Police into whose hands the enforcement of law
is committed. No one can travel over the line without a feeling of
admiration for the system which can produce such excellent results, the
absolute security of life and property in a region infested by rogues
and adventurers from every clime." Sanders agrees that hosts of men had
taken up work to which they were wholly unaccustomed. A lot of men were
happy when handling an axe, but the pick and shovel had a saddening
effect on them. And Sanders is in keeping with the general habit of the
Police when he says, "We tried our utmost to have the real grievances of
the men settled, and my representations to the general manager of
construction always met with prompt attention." So they should, for they
would be fair and just.
Inspector Howe, who was in charge in 1898 at Regina, had a wire from
Boston about a man who had robbed the merchants of that æsthetic city of
large sums of money. The man was supposed then on the train heading
towards Regina. Howe sent a sergeant to Qu'Appelle, who boarded the
suspected train and located his quarry in a Pullman compartment, which
was locked. The man within, who was accompanied by a lady, would not
open the door. At next station a Mounted Police constable got on board
and the two men in scarlet uniform smashed the door. The woman
threatened to blow their brains out, but failed. The runaway couple had
the money and bonds, and after due process went back to Boston to serve
a term.
Inspector Howe tells rather a rich story of a Police Inspector in
Montana who apologized profusely to Howe for not answering by wire a
telegram in which Howe had notified the said Montana Inspector of the
whereabouts of a man much desired by the Police in that State. The
Montana Inspector writes, "I handed my deputy a telegram and told him to
send it off to you at once. He went out to send it but was shot dead,
and this morning the coroner handed the telegram to me. It had never
been sent, so you will see I am not altogether to blame." Howe
considered the excuse valid, but the estimate of the value of human life
in Montana it disclosed did not suit the ideas of a Mounted Policeman.