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

by Sir William Francis Butler

I know that it is the fashion to hold in derision and mockery the idea that nobility, poetry, or eloquence exist in the wild Indian. I know that with that low brutality which has ever made the Anglo-Saxon race deny its enemy the possession of one atom of generous sensibility, that dull enmity which prompted us to paint the Maid of Orleans a harlot, and to call Napoleon the Corsican robber--I know that that same instinct glories in degrading the savage, whose chief crime is that he prefers death to slavery; glories in painting him devoid of every trait of manhood, worthy only to share the fate of the wild beast of the wilderness--to be shot down mercilessly when seen. But those bright spirits who have redeemed the America of to-day from the dreary waste of vulgar greed and ignorant conceit which we in Europe have flung so heavily upon her; those men whose writings have come back across the Atlantic, and have become as household words among us--Irving, Cooper, Longfellow--have they not found in the rich store of Indian poetry the source of their choicest thought? Nay, I will go farther, because it may be said that the a poet would be prone to drape with poetry every subject on which his fancy lighted, as the sun turns to gold and crimson the dullest and the dreariest clouds: but Search the books of travel amongst remote Indian tribes, from Columbus to Catlin, from Charlevoix to Carver, from Bonneville to Pallisser the story is ever the same. The traveller is welcomed and made much of; he is free to come and go; the best food is set before him; the lodge is made warm and bright; he is welcome to stay his lifetime if he pleases. "I swear to your majesties," writes Columbus--alas! the red man's greatest enemy--"I swear to your majesties that there is not in the world a better people than these, more affectionate, affable, or mild."

"At this moment," writes an American officer only ten years back, "it is certain a man can go about throughout the Blackfoot territory without molestation, except in the contingency of being mistaken at night for an Indian." No, they are-fast going, and soon they will be all gone, but in after-times men will judge more justly the poor wild creatures whom to-day we kill and vilify; men will go back again to those old books of travel, or to those pages of "Hiawatha" and "Mohican," to find that far away from the border-land of civilization the wild red man, if more of the savage, was infinitely less of the brute than was the white ruffian who destroyed him.

I quitted the camp at Battle River on the 17th November, with a large band of horses and a young Cree brave who had volunteered his services for some reason of his own which he did not think necessary to impart to us. The usual crowd of squaws, braves in buffalo robes, naked children, and howling dogs assembled to see us start. The Cree led the way mounted on a ragged-looking pony, then came the baggage-sleds, and I brought up the rear on a tall horse belonging to the Company. Thus we held our way in a north-west direction over high-rolling plains along the north bank of the Saskatchewan towards Fort Pitt.

On the morning of the 18th we got away from our camping thicket of poplars long before the break of day. There was no track to guide us, but the Cree went straight as an arrow over hill and dale and frozen lake. The hour that preceded the dawn was brilliant with the flash and glow of meteors across the North-western sky. I lagged so far behind to watch them that when day broke I found myself alone, miles from the party. The Cree kept the pace so well that it took me some hours before I again Caught sight of them. After a hard ride of six-and-thirty miles, we halted for dinner on the banks of English Creek. Close beside our camping-place a large clump of spruce-pine stood in dull contrast to the snowy surface. They looked like old friends to me--friends of the Winnipeg and the now distant Lake of the Woods; for from Red River to English Creek, a distance of 750 miles, I-had seen but a solitary pine-tree. After a short dinner We resumed our rapid way, forcing the pace with a view of making Fort Pitt by night-fall. A French half-breed declared he knew a short cut across the hills of the Red Deer, a wild rugged tract of country lying on the north of the Saskatchewan. Crossing these hills, he said, we would strike the river at their farther side, and then, passing over on the ice, cut the bend which the Saskatchewan makes to the north, and, emerging again opposite Fort Pitt, finally re-cross the river at that station. So much for the plan, and now for its fulfilment.

We entered the region of the Red Deer Hills at about two o'clock in the afternoon, and continued at a very rapid pace in a westerly direction for three hours. As we proceeded the country became more broken, the hills rising steeply from narrow V-shaped valleys, and the ground in many places covered with fallen and decaying trees--the wrecks of fire and tempest. Every where throughout this wild region lay the antlers and heads of moose and elk; but, with the exception of an occasional large jackass-rabbit, nothing living moved through the silent hills. The ground was free from badger-holes; the day, though dark, was fine; and, with a good horse under me, that two hours gallop over, the Red Deer Hills was glorious work. It wanted yet an hour of sunset when we came suddenly upon the Saskatchewan flowing in a deep narrow valley between steep and lofty hills, which were bare of trees and bushes and clear of snow. A very wild desolate scene it looked as I surveyed it from a projecting spur upon whose summit I rested my blown horse. I was now far in advance of the party who occupied a parallel ridge behind me. By signs they intimated that our course now lay to the north; in fact, Daniel had steered very much too ar south, and we had struck the Saskatchewan river a long, distance below the intended place of crossing. Away we went again to the north, soon losing sight of the party; but as I kept the river on my left far below in the valley I knew they could not cross without my being aware of it. Just before sun set they appeared again in sight, making signs that they were about to descend into the valley and to cross the river. The valley here was five hundred feet in depth, the slope being one of the steepest I had ever seen. At the bottom of this steep descent the Saskatchewan lay in its icy bed, a large majestic-looking river three hundred yards in width. We crossed on the ice without accident, and winding up the steep southern shore gained the level plateau above. The sun was going down, right on our forward track. In the deep valley below the Cree and an English half-breed were getting the horses and baggage-sleds over the river. We made signs to them to camp in the valley, and we ourselves turned our tired horses towards the west, determined at all hazards to reach the fort that night. The Frenchman led the way riding, the Hudson Bay officer followed in a horse-sled, I brought up the rear on horseback. Soon it got quite dark, and we held on over a rough and bushless plateau seamed with deep gullies into which we descended at hap hazard forcing our weary horses with difficulty up the opposite sides. The night got later and later, and still no sign of Fort Pitt; riding in rear I was able to mark the course taken by our guide, and it soon struck me that he was steering wrong; our correct course lay west, but he seemed to be heading gradually to the North, and finally, began to veer even towards the East. I called out to the Hudson Bay man that I had serious doubts as to Daniel's knowledge of the track, but I was assured that all was correct. Still we went on, and still no sign of fort or river. At length the Frenchman suddenly pulled Up and asked us to halt while he rode on and surveyed the country, because he had lost the track, and didn't know where he had got to. Here was a pleasant prospect! without food, fire, or covering, out on the bleak plains, with the thermometer at 20 degrees of frost! After some time the Frenchman returned and declared that he had altogether lost his way, and that there was nothing for it but to camp where we were, and wait for daylight to proceed. I looked around in the darkness. The ridge on which we stood was bare and bleak, with the snow drifted off into the valleys. A few miserable stunted willows were the only signs of vegetation, and the wind whistling through their ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as man could look at. I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been pursuing. My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire, or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.

Watching this for some seconds in silence, I determined to shape for myself a different course. I dismounted, and taking from the sled a shirt made of deer-skin, mounted again my poor weary horse and turned off alone into the darkness. "Where are you going to?" I heard my companions calling out after me. I was half inclined not to answer, but turned in the saddle and holloaed back, "To Fort Pitt, that's all." I heard behind me a violent bustle, as though they were busily engaged in yoking up the horses again, and then I rode off as hard as my weary horse could go. My friends took a very short time to harness up again, and they were soon powdering along through the wilderness. I kept on for about half an hour, steering by the stars due west; suddenly I came out upon the edge of a deep valley, and by the broad white band beneath recognized the frozen Saskatchewan again. I have at least found the river, and Fort Pitt, we knew, lay somewhere upon the bank. Turning away from the river, I held on in a south-westerly direction for a considerable distance, passing up along a bare snow-covered valley and crossing a high ridge at its end. I could hear my friends behind in the dark. But they had got, I think, a notion that I had taken leave of my senses, and they were afraid to call out to me. After a bit I bent my course again to the west, and steering by my old guides, the stars, those truest and most unchanging friends of the wanderer, I once more struck the Saskatchewan, this time descending to its level and crossing it on the ice.

As I walked along, leading my horse, I must admit to experiencing a sensation not at all pleasant. The memory of the crossing of the South Branch was still too strong to admit of over-confidence in the strength of the ice, and as every now and again my tired horse broke through the upper crust of snow and the ice beneath cracked, as it always will when weight is placed on it for the first time, no matter how strong it may be, I felt by no means as comfortable as I would have wished. At last the long river was passed, and there on the opposite shore lay the cart track to Fort Pitt. We were close to Pipe-stone Creek, and only three miles from the Fort.

It was ten o'clock when we reached the closely-barred gate of this Hudson Bay post, the inhabitants of which had gone to bed. Ten o'clock at night, and we had started at six o'clock in the morning. I had been fifteen hours in the saddle, and no less than ninety miles had passed under my horse's hoofs, but so accustomed had I grown to travel that I felt just as ready to set out again as though only twenty miles had been traversed. The excitement of the last few hours steering by the stars in an unknown country, and its most successful denouement, had put fatigue and weariness in the background; and as we sat down to a well-cooked supper of buffalo steaks and potatoes, with the brightest eyed little lassie, half Cree, half Scotch, in the North-west to wait upon us, while a great fire of pine wood blazed and crackled on the open hearth, I couldn't help saying to my companions, "Well, this is better than your hill-top and the fireless bivouac in the rustling willows."

Fort Pitt was free from small-pox, but it had gone through a fearful ordeal: more than one hundred Crees had perished close around its stockades. The unburied dead lay for days by the road-side, till the wolves, growing bold with the impunity which death among the hunters ever gives to the hunted, approached and fought over the decay ing bodies. From a spot many marches to the south the Indians had come to the fort in midsummer, leaving behind them a long track of dead and dying men over the waste of distance. "Give us help," they cried, "give us help, our medicine-men can do nothing against this plague; from the white man We got it, and it is only the white man who can take it away from us."

But there was no help to be given, and day by day the wretched band grew less. Then came another idea into the red man's brain: "If we can only give this disease to the white man and the trader in the fort," thought they, "we will cease to suffer from it ourselves;" so they came into the houses dying and disfigured as they were, horrible beyond description to look at, and sat down in the entrances of the wooden houses, and stretched themselves on the floors and spat upon the door-handles. It was no use, the fell disease held them in a grasp from which there was no escape, and just six weeks before my arrival the living remnant fled away in despair.