Policing the plains

by R. G. MacBeth

CHILCOOT PASS: N.W.M. POLICE AND CUSTOM HOUSE.

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.