CHAPTER XIII
Scarlet and Gold—The Rough Riders of the Plains—The
Fourth Semi-Military Force in the
World—Its Wonderful Work in the
Park—Why the Scarlet Tunic
Was Chosen—Some Curious
Indian Names—Primitive
Western
Justice.
The famous Royal North West Mounted Police of Canada, whose record constitutes a strikingly romantic chapter in the history of Canada, was called into being in 1873 to preserve British law and order in the vast wildernesses lying between the Great Lakes and the mountain ranges of British Columbia. The newly-formed Dominion of Canada had but recently acquired these huge preserves from the Hudson’s Bay Company, subsequently to convert them from the Northwest Territories into the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
It was the duty of the little force, some 300 strong, known as the North West Mounted Police—destined to gain an imperishable name throughout the civilized world for its remarkable efficiency and valor—to administer the law and to represent supreme authority over this immense area of undeveloped Canadian territory. Intrepid pioneers were pushing their way into Western Canadian fastnesses hitherto unknown except to the aboriginal Indians, explorers, and agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company. As may be imagined, the R.N.W.M.P. had to exercise extraordinary discretion and courage in dealing with the free and easy forerunners of civilization and the fierce and untamed Indian tribes. Most of the people feared neither God nor man, and a man had to stand upon his own naked merit and strength of character.
Mere mention of the Mounted Police recalls scores of men whose names were for long and should be for ever household words in the west. For instance, there is Lieut.-Col. George A. French, R.A., the first Commissioner, who personally commanded the expedition of 1874, which opened up the southern section of the country and cleaned out the worst of the Yankee whiskey trading forts. Col. French was Inspector of Artillery and in command of A Battery, R.C.A., Kingston, when appointed to command the police—a soldier possessing a combination of dash and disregard of red-tape which proved very useful. After returning to the army, he served in Australia and reorganized the defensive forces of that country, retiring from the service as Sir George French.
Lieut.-Colonel James F. Macleod, C.M.G., who was Assistant Commissioner under Col. French, and succeeded him as Commissioner, became better known as a judge perhaps than as a police officer, as he administered justice in the West for many years. Fort Macleod was named after him. He had been an officer in the Ontario militia and was Assistant Brigade Major of Militia in the Red River Expedition of 1870, receiving the C.M.G., for his services. Col. Macleod was pre-eminently a practical administrator of justice.
The first year the police were in southern Alberta (1874-75), Col. Macleod acted as commanding officer of the police and stipendiary magistrate. His men were almost frozen in their beds for lack of proper clothing. A raid upon one of the more or less notorious Yankee traders’ “forts,” which had been doing a roaring trade in Indian horses at a rate of a gallon of rot-gut whiskey per head, produced a welcome supply of buffalo robes; and besides exacting from the illicit traders fines to the full extent of the law, Col. Macleod judiciously seized the robes, and issuing them to his men solved a problem which at one time threatened serious results.
The gallant officer’s influence over the Indians was very great, and resulted in Treaty No. 7 (1877) with the Blackfeet and Blood Indians. It is to be regretted that his services were not adequately appreciated by the Canadian Government, and his widow and children, who had faithfully shared in the hardships of his pioneer life, were never provided for. Governments are proverbially ungrateful.