CHAPTER I. — MY YOUTH AND EARLY LIFE.
AS the principal object of this work, is to give an account of my experiences in the North-West, and my many adventures during the last few months, I would deem it out of place to detain my readers with any lengthy description of my birth-place or any details of my younger days. I have noticed many false reports that have been circulated through the press, upon the different situations and conditions in the North-West—whether as to the whites, the half-breeds, or the Indians. In the second chapter I will give a truthful version of what I saw, heard and know. Still I cannot well enter upon this work, with justice to myself or to my late husband, without informing my readers whence we came and how our lots happened to be cast together amidst the scenes of our new home, and upon the theatre of the fearful tragedy in which we played such important parts.
My grandfather, Henry Marshall Fulford, while yet a young man, about the year 1812, came from Woburn Massachusetts, and established his home on the Aylmer road, near Bytown, the Ottawa of to-day, where he carried on an extensive lumbering and farming business. My father was born there, and it was also the place of my own birth. Our home was situated about two miles and a half from Aylmer, and about five miles from the present capital of the Dominion.
In those days Ottawa was called Bytown. No one then dreamed that it was destined to become the capital and the seat of the future Federal government of the country. The town, for it was then a town, was small and far from attractive, and the surrounding country was not very much inhabited. The lumbering operations constituted the staple commerce, and the shanties were the winter homes of the greater number of the people.
Nearly all my life, except the last three years, was spent at home. I never travelled much, and in fact, never expected to become a traveller, and above all, an unwilling heroine in the North-West troubles. I had several sisters and brothers. I was the eldest of the family, and as such, for many years had to devote my time to household cares. My school-days seem now the pleasantest period of my early life. Since then I have known many ups and downs; but never felt the same peace of mind and gayness of spirit that I have felt in days now gone. I might say that I have lived three distinct lives. From my birth until the day of my marriage, which took place on the 27th of July, 1882, I led a uniform life. Few, if any changes, marked each passing year. The seasons came and went, and the winter's snow fell and the summer's sun ripened the golden harvests, and days flowed into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and year succeeded year as I felt myself growing into womanhood. The changes in my life were few and my troubles so small, that memory had scarcely ever to recall a dark or dreary scene and hope always beckoned me on to the future.
The only events that seemed to stand out, landmarks in the past, were two deaths in the family—the first my eldest brother and the second my dearly beloved and much lamented father.
Had it not been for these two events I might drop a veil over all the past and consider merely that I had lived through such a number of years:-these years, like the great desert of the east, would stretch back, an unbroken tract, with no object to break the monotony of the scene. But, as the kirches tombs or monuments of Arabia, rise up in solemn grandeur from out the loneliness of the plain, casting their shadows of the sandy waste, so these two monuments or tombs appear upon the level scene of my uneventful past. Could I, then, have caught one glimpse adown the valley of the "Yet to be," what a different picture would have presented itself to my vision! A confusion of adventures, a panorama never ending, ever shifting, of an eventful life.
My second life might be called a period from my wedding day until the third of April, 1885. And the third, the last and most eventful life, is that of three months—April, May and June, 1885. To the second important period in my career I will consecrate the next chapter and to the third and final part of my life will be devoted the last chapter.