With rare exceptions, which were swiftly thrown out on discovery, the Mounted Police were not only brave but considerate, scrupulously fair, and neither to be bribed nor wheedled. That is, they upheld the true British standard of honor. The Indian learnt to trust them because they proved themselves worthy of trust. I have known tribesmen come to a police corporal, rather than any one else, for advice in all sorts of social and domestic difficulties.
Unfortunately, the Indians south of the line had had a very different experience. There was no great company interested in protecting them, and no one did protect them, from irresponsible and rascally white men. Even the Indian Agents appointed by the Government at Washington to “father” the tribes often proved the worst of step-fathers. The Indians, swindled and outraged, took vengeance in their primitive way on any one of the same race as their oppressors. The innocent settler suffered for the deeds of his guilty fellow-countrymen. Then the army was sent to punish, not the white criminal, but the red avenger. Long and desperate “Indian Wars” were the result. [a]“Where’s Your Troop?”]
The Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, after wiping out a force sent against him in one of these wars, fled to Canada. That was in 1877. Already, the year before, 3,000 Indians had come in from the States, saying they had not been able to lie down in safety for years, and their grandfathers had told them they would find peace in the land of the British.
The new incursion was decidedly embarrassing. Even if they behaved themselves in Canada—as they did, under the watchful eye of the Mounted Police—the name of Sioux had a terrifying sound, and their presence wandering over the prairie would hardly encourage farmers to settle there. Besides, the buffalo were being swept off the prairie, and it would soon be hard enough to provide for our own buffalo-hunting tribes. The newcomers, therefore, were not given a Canadian reserve to settle on, and to our great relief they went back to their own country in 1881, accepting an offer of peace from the Washington Government.
A few years later, a band of our own Indians fled across the line to avoid punishment for the unprovoked rebellion which I shall soon have to narrate. When the trouble had blown over, they decided to come back. A whole troop of United States cavalry escorted them to the frontier at a point where they were to be handed over to the Canadian Mounted Police. There they found a corporal and one constable, with an interpreter. The United States officer was puzzled. “Who is in command?” he asked. “Myself,” said the Canadian corporal. “But where’s your troop?” said the officer. “Here they are,” replied the corporal, pointing to his solitary constable.
Fort Chipewyan
Buffalo Herd and Prairie Fire
