The Great Lone Land / A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

by Sir William Francis Butler

"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."

This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.

And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly, and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction, through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching, now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh, sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale, meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.

So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great, boundless, solitary waste of verdure?

The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson, played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate; but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life, this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun brought forth the flowers.

October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.

On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night, and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war, firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and space!

I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse, or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer, drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions. By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees, uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact. Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination. Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them. They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold, and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.

The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan, attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees. The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees, half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of the disease.

"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease. You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie, the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me, nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So, lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories, for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into the solitudes.