Within the last few years a great human cry has been heard throughout all Canada; it has rolled from east to west with an infinite longing like the pulse of a homesick heart; it is the sad-voiced cry of regret at the passing of nineteenth century romance. It was heard first in Quebec, when the old semi-baronial Seignories gave place to the powerful majesty of lumber kings, or yielded to the modern demands of the small French farmer. Then it extended to Ontario when the last of the old stage coaches gave up its route to the ties and tracks of a recently built railway. It travelled westward to Manitoba, where the renowned “Red River Jig” is danced no more by the great fur traders and their wives in the social gatherings in Winnipeg. It crept up to Saskatchewan with the catch of a sob, for the lost Province of Assiniboia exists no more. It has been swept from the map of the Dominion by ruthless hands; it has been rended and torn and wrenched apart, and with it died most of the picturesque figures of frontier life. No longer is the Indian's tepee fashioned from buffalo-hide, and seldom is he seen clad in buckskin and beads except in remote reservations. The Northwest Mounted Police force has sent the flower of its men to the Yukon, or contributed them to the South African Constabulary. The prairies of Saskatchewan contain little of anything primitive, or romantic; it is nothing but wheat, wheat, wheat in this granary of the world. Gang-ploughs, harvesters, steam thrashers, grain elevators, advancement, prosperity, civilization and the King's coin.
But the cry of lost romance grew more poignant as it reached Alberta, where the foothills bubble up along the western horizon—foothills that are daily saying good-bye to that most fascinating devil-may-care figure in all the frontier—the dashing gambling, cartridge-belted cowboy, in his blue shirt, scarlet neckerchief, Stetson hat and leather chaps. The cut of his quirt, the clank of his horse's bit, the jingle of his spurs may still be heard as he gallops into “town” up some foothill trail; his exquisitely shaped and adorned Mexican saddle is still a little throne upon which he sits with the confidence of a king; but he and his kind are growing less numerous every year, for the vast ranges of Alberta are harnessed in barbed wire that was born of the all-pervading craze and cry of “wheat, wheat, wheat.”
And now, across the “Great Divide” comes the first faint wail of the nation's mourning for its lost romance. The mountain passes where in erstwhile days only the daring hunter and the sure-footed cayuse, the old-time stage driver and the cautious pack horse ventured, are being torn and blasted, excavated and levelled for the world's greatest iconoclast—the railroad. The last remaining bit of the real west, our glorious old Cariboo trail is being given over to motor cars and motor freighters. The old-time adventurer and gold seeker has vanished, the businesslike land buyer, the monied investor, the keen love of the dollar are all throttling the old-timer and desecrating his haunts by their greed.
But to those who care to step a little aside from the beaten track of travel may yet come an echo of the old west, though the sound is so faint in these days that it is overpowered by the shriek of the locomotive, the hum of harvesting machinery, and the harsh rattle of accumulating coin. But over the horizon's rim a bit of yesterday still lingers, remnants of color, snatches of song that are loth to fade or die because of oncoming modernism. They may be animate or inanimate, but they were the Tillicums of the old-timer and the traveller is indeed fortunate if before it is lost for ever he catches even a far glimpse of the last Great West.
It is a far cry from being bowled across Canada in a luxurious Pullman car, to travelling up a north-western trail by means of some of its crude but fascinating means of transportation. But if you leave the main line at Calgary and go either north or south, you may by chance see the replica of any one of the illustrations accompanying this article.
At Calgary an occasional cowboy yet lopes into town, his lariat looped easily across his pommel, his genial western manner greatly in evidence. He is an unpolished, brilliant diamond set in another coming wheat country, and when the West loses him altogether, it loses its most brilliant coloring.
But it is up in the foothills that you see the first thin blue columns of smoke ascending from the apex of a canvas tent. There is no mistaking the tepee of a Sarcee Indian—and you see at last where Frederic Remington got his inspiration.
A conical erection from the smoke-stained summit of a which bristles tent poles enveloped in drifting clouds of wood smoke, whose acrid odor penetrates a half mile in the clear, still airs. Arabasques in animal and astronomical designs, done in native pigments, embellish the canvas of the tepee, the door of which is thrown back, giving a glimpse of the center “ground-fire” about which crouches an aged woman doing bead work, and a splendid dignified old man, who with omnipresent pipe between his lips, sits polishing buffalo or cattle horns. Both workers are richly garmented in buckskin; their moccasins finely beaded with small turquoise colored “Hudson's Bay” beads, eagle feathers, elk tooth necklaces, yards of fringe, consisting of ermine tails alone, each strand representing one entire skin, bracelets of rare claws—in fact, a wardrobe that would bring a small fortune in London or New York.
At one side of the tepee are piled up a dozen or so heavy fine wool Hudson's Bay blankets, crimson, green, yellow, grey, each and every one of them interwoven by the short black stripes or “points” that bespeak the best goods of those potent rulers of the North. Atop the “company's” blankets is spread the luxurious “rabbit robe,” made of fine strips of pure white rabbit skin, “knitted” together with fingers so cunningly deft that the fur side alone is visible, its warmth and feathery softness unequalled by either eiderdown or satin.
Outside the tepee children play about their young Sarcee mother, who is tanning skins and hides, while the silent reticent father is occupied “curing” cattle or antelope meat. Evidently the family is preparing to move to fresh camping grounds for the hunting season, for nearby is a cayuse or perhaps a moose harnessed to a travois, the most primitive vehicle of transportation to be seen in all Canada. It consists of two shaft poles fastened together by a cross-bar, some 20 inches from the lower ends. That this quaint “carriage” is prairie born and bred, is beyond doubt, for in any country but the level lands on smooth, rolling foothills, it would be most impracticable.
It is amazing to what uses the resourceful Sarcee of Blackfoot can put the travois, his folded tepee and its skeleton poles, his cooking utensils, his blankets, furs, robes, guns, traps, provisions and wardrobe, are all packed with incredible neatness, and balance across the shafts. On top of all, he seats the children and the journey begins. His wife walks beside the cayuse in the capacity of driver, while he and his dogs round up his little bunch of cattle and horses, and the cavalcade “hits the trail.” The most unique bit of color and movement to be seen in all the “Great Lone Land.”
Another old-time mode of locomotion may be seen even yet from remote railway stations, although it is not in as general use amongst the Indians as its predecessor, the travois. It is the “Red River cart,” indigenous to Manitoba and the early 60's, but only in the far reaches of the Saskatchewan, Assiniboia and Red River, is the marvellous structure now to be met with. A short, high two-wheeled cart, built entirely of wood, not a nail, bolt, hoop, tine or axle of metal, it is all rivetted together, and even the wheels being kept in place with wooden pegs, and is renowned throughout the land as being the noisiest habitant of the trail. The coming of a string of Red River carts is heralded for miles by a steady, high, prolonged squeak, that could never be mistaken by Indian or settler for anything else, upon the surface of the earth, nor yet above or below it. Only the tenderfoot will even stand rooted to the spot in alarm, and with shaking fingers, reach for his gun, when assailed by the weird shriek of a distant Red River cart. But to the Hudson's Bay traders, the Indian hunters, the Metis trapper, the uncanny sound is as the voice of an old Tillicum—their ears have been attuned to it since the days when Winnipeg was but a slough and the carts sank to their hubs in the sticky mud where Main street and Portage Avenue now stretch their majestic pavements.
It may easily be surmised that great distances are not made in haste by means of a Red River cart attached to a cayuse, and a hundred-mile trip was some day's undertaking; but its uses are not to be despised, even in this age of progression, and with all its rarity, the accompanying photographs of a typical Metis woman, her cayuse and cart, was taken within ear-shot of the church bells of the thriving city of Edmonton.
But the standby of the Red Indian of the North is his horse, and the native-bred prairie cayuse or bronco is as essential to the paleface as to the redman. It is not a graceful animal, it is illy formed—a large headed, shapeless-limbed beast with the staying powers and endurance of a machine. It is always branded with its owner's “totem” and amongst the Indians, the distinguishing flank mark is equivalent to the crest on an Earl's carriage. Amongst cattle and horse owners this brand must be regarded with a vast measure of respect; that is the unspoken creed of the West. Defacing a brand on the flank of a bronco, merits any punishment to the culprit from the owner, and woe to him at whose door the charge is laid.
The Redmen of the plains are far-famed as riders. Their seat is further forward than that of the cowboy, and the peculiar grip of their knees directly back of the horse's shoulder is a trick that has come to them through generations of buffalo hunters to whom riding was not counted as a grace. It mattered not to the old-time hunter whether he sat erect or crouched low along the back of his horse, as long as he kept a clinging seat. The main art of the chase was having an unerring aim, a steady finger on the bow-strings, and an eye that could sweep the horizon, and leave not even the smallest moving object unseen.
Incredible distances can be covered in a single day by an expert Indian horseman, and after long hours of steady galloping, he whirls towards some little town in the foothills, to perhaps leave some important tidings at the Mounted Police Barracks, or the “H.B.C.” store. He may yet be seen occasionally, clad in buckskin and blanket, his head crested with an eagle plume, his cayuse adorned with brilliant ribbons, beads and fringes of fur, braided into its mane and tail. In short, together they present a type that is rapidly disappearing, and the Easterner must hasten if he would see such originals as the chief who posed, mounted, for the illustration.
It was in '95 that I first saw this Chief ride up from the south-eastern horizon into Fort McLeod. He was followed by at least 50 of his tribe, the Bloods of southern Alberta. They all wore fringed buckskin leggings, and were stripped to the waist, their bodies stained and painted in soft pastel tints, and over-lined with streaks of scarlet and dark brilliant blue. At his belt, the Chief wore, by actual count, 17 scalps, all taken in wars across the border, when the Bloods invaded the territory of the Sioux and trouble continued for years, that had first been stirred up by the wars in Sitting Bull's time. This particular Chief was a great “Britisher,” and an American Indian's scalp was, to him, a veritable Victoria Cross.
The desire of my life had been to possess an Indian scalp, a Sioux scalp particularly, so I interviewed the inspector of the N.W.M.P. and asked what chance there was of securing the treasure. He shook his head gravely. “None, I am afraid,” he replied. Then I offered a sum of money far in advance of what I was able to spare, but the inspector said money would not count with the great Blood Chief; that he was worth at least $50,000, which he had made in cattle.
“However,” said the policeman, with the gallantry and effort to please, that so strikes the Easterner when they first meet any of the force, “I shall try my best to secure one for you; perhaps we can appeal to him through your ancestors, the Mohawks always fought for the British—did they not?”
“Always,” I affirmed; “my great grandfather fought against Washington for King George, my grandfather fought as a boy of 16 under Sir Issac Brock at Queenston Heights. My father carried dispatches from Niagara Falls to Hamilton during the ‘Fenian Raid’.”
“Then we've got our good friend the Chief, and I think you have got your Sioux scalp,” laughed the inspector.
Afterwards, I heard how it happened. The inspector approached the Chief, and diplomatically opened negotiations. The Chief sat and smoked for a full hour in silence, then he asked, thoughtfully:
“You say this lady's father, and his fathers before him were great warriors?”
“Yes; great warriors,” replied the inspector.
“Who did they fight for—Yankee or Queen?” demanded the Chief, with suspicion.
“Oh! the Queen, always, and the British crown before the Queen was born,” the inspector assured him.
The Chief removed a single scalp from his belt, and rising to his feet, said:
“Send this to the lady who comes from the Land of the Morning, and tell her I take no money from the daughter of fighting men.”
“But you never would have got it,” the inspector told me, “no matter how well your ancestors may have fought, had they not fought for the British.”
It is a beautiful braid of long brown-black hair, the flesh “cured” and encased in tightly stitched buckskin, and coiled about it close rows of turquoise blue “Hudson's Bay” beads.
But only out of the Far North in these days, will ever come our old Tillicums, the train dogs, those hardy, wiry, little creatures that are the main-stay of the gigantic fur trader, that has enriched so many adventurers and pioneers. From the top of the world they come, across the blue-white snows of Rupert's Land, Athabasca, and Saskatchewan. Their Indian or Metis driver, fleet of foot as they, is enveloped in furs. The toboggan they drag is deftly packed with furs, the land they have left teems with furs, marten, mink, beaver, fischer, otter, ermine, bear and sable. No foot but theirs could traverse the leagues of hummocks, nothing but the strain of wolf blood in their veins could guide them with such infallible instinct across a trackless world. The illustration is of the purest-bred huskie dog team in Athabasca, that is well accustomed to travel six, eight, ten hundred miles. I saw them pull into Edmonton late one winter, when the suns were growing warm and the snows threatened to melt, already bare patches of earth were showing. The “train” had been late in leaving the North—an early spring and a haunting thaw, had urged them to work overtime; they dragged their precious cargo up the slushy streets, their sides lean and palpitating with exhaustion; every bone in their bodies showed, and every muscle was strained to snapping point.
With dripping tongues and dully glaring eyes they dropped as they stood in their harness, as their driver, equally lean and fatigued as his dogs, halted them before the H.B.Co.
The factor came out; he had watched anxious-eyed for days for this team with its cargo. He shook hands genially with the driver, who had seated himself on the wet sidewalk, weak from lack of sleep and overwork.
“Good boy! Pierre!” said the big trader. “I was mighty afraid this thaw would catch you.”
“No,” panted the Metis, “I say bedam, I beat this thaw, an' I beat it—me.”
And man and animals had raced against the coming spring to reach this rim of civilization with a priceless cargo, from where it was shipped to old London and sold at fabulous prices to “My Lady,” who little dreams of the hardships that driver and dogs must endure so that her dainty throat and shoulders may be swathed in the wealth of the Far North.