Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An
Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations--
Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine
River--Rossette.
One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long
prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of
which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my
last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its
close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before
a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores
of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives:
the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves
prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.
So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the
quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of
my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old
associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every
feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and
trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be
gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the
moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one
sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would
be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my
hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of
ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind,
running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea:
I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times
the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely
excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and
walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some
guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the
north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in
the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky
prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the
star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a
long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west
it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the
west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call
chance, and dreamers destiny?
A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina,
whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had
induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of
September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the
Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the
boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known
member of the Canadian bench.
"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.
"To Canada."
"Why?"
"Because there is nothing more to be done."
"Oh, you must come back."
"Why so?"
"Because we have a lot of despatches to send to Ottawa, and the mail is
not safe. Come back now and you will be here again in ten days time."
Go back again on the steam-boat and come up next trip--would I?
There are many men who pride themselves upon their fixity of purpose, and
a lot of similar fixidities and steadiness; but I don't. I know of
nothing so fixed as the mole, so obstinate as the mule, or so steady as
a stone wall, but I don't particularly care about making their general
characteristics the rule of my life; and so I decided to go back to Fort
Garry, just as I would have decided to start for the North Pole had the
occasion offered.
Early in the second week of October I once more drew nigh the hallowed
precincts of Fort Garry.
"I am so glad you have returned," said the governor, Mr. Archibald, when
I met him on the evening of my arrival, "because I want to ask you if you
will undertake a much longer journey than any thing you have yet done. I
am going to ask you if you will accept a mission to the Saskatchewan
Valley and through the Indian countries of the West. Take a couple of
days to think over it, and let me know your decision."
"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have
already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."
This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his
breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.
And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my
wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly,
and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of
mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast
stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the
central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title
for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and
ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend
into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction,
through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming
greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and
start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of
miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends
towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours
its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river
rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns
once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh,
sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a
rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake
Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its
birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale,
meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called
by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the
Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not
the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red
River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the
rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller
stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the
waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line
and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.
So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How
shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great,
boundless, solitary waste of verdure?
The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed
from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson,
played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The
coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate;
but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose
shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the
much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of
Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the
description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an
ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of
Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the
shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of
sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite
variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
brought forth the flowers.
October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.
On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
space!
I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by
name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the
most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too
legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where
the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination.
Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and
the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should
flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square
plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more
despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them.
They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white
man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold,
and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men
who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years
these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this
disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the
same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had
remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by
hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before
it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The
camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a
perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and
far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and
bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.
The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest
attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the
Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan,
attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees.
The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of
death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles
north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September
the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west
tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees,
half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines
had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of
the disease.
"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what
tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now
prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you
can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease.
You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be
deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment
of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper
treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief
officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other
intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran
this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many
curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of
physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became
the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of
the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had
consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At
length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect
them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight
cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a
remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to
visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to
him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited
printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have
already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of
Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but
much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the
snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of
the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is
a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the
mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November
delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which
made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature
of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie,
the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed
the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and
struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering
one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine
of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave
of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away
by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered
for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly
put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any
person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox
brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A
French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the
black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its
lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the
solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally
through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the
wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to
resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me,
nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach
the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of
civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a
cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts
of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the
spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many
nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little
camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there
stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a
terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So,
lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt
as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved
that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark
immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of
the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose
lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term
of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to
fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories,
for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better
never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who
have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a
sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more
substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the
prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into
strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the
other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all
the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra
incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into
the solitudes.
The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
unceasing travel; clear, bright days of mellow sunshine followed by
nights of sharp frost which almost imperceptibly made stronger the icy
covering of the pools and carried farther and farther out into the
running streams the edging of ice which so soon was destined to cover
completely the river and the rill. Our route lay along the left bank of
the Assineboine, but at a considerable distance from the river, whose
winding course could be marked at times by the dark oak woods that
fringed it. Far away to the south rose the outline of the Blue Hills of
the Souris, and to the north the Riding Mountains lay faintly upon the
horizon. The country was no longer level, fine rolling hills stretched
away before us over which the wind came with a keenness that made our
prairie-fare seem delicious at the close of a hard day's toil. 36, 22,
24, 20; such were the readings of my thermometer as each morning I looked
at it by the fire-light as we arose from our blankets-before the dawn and
shivered in the keen hoarfrost while the kettle was being boiled.
Perceptibly getting colder, but still clear and fine, and with every
Breeze laden with healthy and invigorating freshness, for four days we
journeyed without seeing man or beast; but on the morning of the fifth
day, while camped in a thicket on the right of the trail, we heard the
noise of horses passing near us. A few hours afterwards we passed a small
band of Salteaux encamped farther on; and later in the day overtook a
half-breed trader on his way to the Missouri to trade with the Sioux.
This was a celebrated &French half breed named Chaumon Rossette. Chaumon
had been undergoing a severe course of drink since he had left the
settlement some ten days earlier, and his haggard eyes and swollen
features revealed the incessant orgies of his travels. He had as
companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
two clear and beautiful lakes.
"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"
"Oui, Captain."
"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."
"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."
Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
Missouri.
On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
the fort. I had ridden that distance in five days and two hours.