Is bringing his bullion home
“I never will be renowned,
As my twin that swings to the Western marts,
For I am she of the humbler parts—
But I am the joy of waiting hearts;
For I am the Homeward bound.”
From “Flint and Feather,” by E. Pauline Johnson. Published by arrangement with the Musson Book Company, Limited.
CHAPTER XII
Guardians of the Road
Now that we have followed the main line of the Canadian Pacific to the coast and have paid tribute to the actual builders it is fitting to devote a brief chapter to a body of men who, while not taking part directly in the work, did so much to make that work possible that they were often officially thanked by the railway heads for their extraordinary assistance. I refer now particularly to the part played on the stage of Western development by that famous corps, the North-West Mounted Police. I am giving here the original title. Since the time when they were so designated, the prefix “Royal” was given by King Edward, as a recognition of the great services of these knights of the saddle. Still later, when, shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, they were for obvious important reasons distributed all over the Dominion, they were given the present name of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Names have changed, but throughout the fifty years from their organization these riders in the scarlet and gold uniform have done their duty as law-and-order men, inflexible, untiring and incorruptible, in their guardianship of life and property on the widest frontier in the world. The fact that they became an important factor in the conception and building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was foreshadowed in the famous report made by Capt. W. F. Butler (afterwards Sir William Butler, of South Africa,) in the year 1871, when he travelled over the “great lone land” and made recommendation how to preserve law and order in that vast prairie country. The railway would not have come into a country that would not some day be populated, and no country would be populated unless immigrants and homesteaders were given assurance that their lives and property would be protected in the new country. So it was that Butler recommended the formation of a “mobile force,” because a force located at fixed points or forts “would afford no adequate protection outside the immediate circle of these points and would hold out no inducements to the establishment of new settlements.” And Butler says he made his recommendation because he saw “a vast country lying, as it were, silently awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls unceasingly from Europe to the American continent.” Butler added that, though the Western plains were far from the Atlantic seaboard, “still that wave of human life is destined to reach those beautiful solitudes and to convert their now useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence.” And it is historically true to say that homesteaders began to come to the great lone land with more confidence once the Mounted Police had taken control of the country in the early 70’s. The notable painting, “Any Complaints?” by Paul Wickson, is based on this idea. It represents the police patrol riding up to the homesteader at his plough and asking if he has been troubled by horse thieves, or cattle stealers or lawless Indians. It was because the homesteader could pursue his way in peace that a railway to carry what he imported and exported, had a future. And not only from possible human enemies, but from the terrific danger of prairie fires and such like, did the rider of the plains stand on guard. When one, for instance, sees Constable Conradi, despite warnings that he was attempting the impossible, spurring his horse through rolling clouds of smoke and saving a family from death at the risk of his own life, one realizes how these knights of the saddle gave people a sense of security. Or when one sees thirty of these gallant riders sweeping the plain till they found a lost child and restored her to her mother’s arms, he understands how the presence of these men robbed the life on the prairies of the sense of insecurity. The element of security drew settlers to the plains and thus encouraged railway building.
Coming to railway construction time we have the cases in which the contractors and engineers were terrorized by the Indians in the early stages of their work. One chief, Pie-a-Pot, who had always been a source of trouble on account of his ugly disposition and his evident determination not to acquiesce in the incoming of civilized life, took it into his head one day to camp on the railroad right-of-way on the prairie. The surveyors and engineers worked up to that point and found Pie-a-Pot’s tent squarely in the way. Around him were many other tents and all supported by a big band of braves who, mounted on their ponies, circled around, discharging fire-arms into the air and indulging in war-whoops and other hostile demonstrations. The surveyors and engineers asked the hostile chief to move, but he only laughed at them and urged his braves to more violent exhibitions of their prowess. The men of peaceful occupations discreetly withdrew to a safe distance and halted their work, but at the same time managed to send back word to the Mounted Police headquarters as to the situation. Headquarters sent a message to the detachment of police nearest the scene of disturbance, though it was many miles away. That detachment of police consisted of only two men, a sergeant and a constable. Numbers have never counted either way with the Mounted Police, and so these two in the scarlet and gold uniform rode miles to Pie-a-pot’s camp on the railroad right-of-way. They told Pie-a-Pot that they were instructed to ask him to move out of the way, but the defiant chief sat in front of his tent and encouraged his braves to rush the two police horses with their ponies. The sergeant and constable, however, sat their horses unmoved and again warned the chief, who laughed in their faces. Then the sergeant, pulling out his watch, indicated the minute hand and gave the chief ten minutes to move. The Indians became more violent, but the police sat tight and at the end of the ten minutes the sergeant, throwing his reins to the constable so that the horses would not be stampeded, leaped over Pie-a-Pot’s head and, entering the chief’s tent, kicked out the centre pole and brought it down in a hurry. He did the same with the four tents of the chief’s head-men and then told them to get out at once. The Indians saw the kind of men they had to deal with and so they moved swiftly, and the Canadian Pacific surveyors and engineers went on with their work.