PREFACE [George Shepherd, Museum Curator of Western Development
Museum, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has written quite a lengthy story
on the Mounted Police for a local paper. He condensed it for the
readers of Iron-Men Album, thinking they would enjoy it. While it
does not deal directly with our hobby material of the magazine, it
is representative of our past history. We feel it will be well
accepted. Our hats are off to the Mounted Police and their century
of significant work Anna Mae]
On the 23rd day of May 1873, only six short years after
Confedertion, the Dominion Parliament authorized the establishment
of the North West Mounted Police. It had been the intention to call
the Force ‘Mounted Rifles’ but in deference to protests
from Washington as to the advisability or necessity of Canada
having an armed body of mounted riflemen patrolling the
International border, where the United States already had military
posts established, Sir John A. Mac-Donald reached for a pen.
Crossing out the word Rifles he wrote in the word Police. This year
of 1973 the North West Mounted Police celebrate one hundred years
of brilliant and colorful history. It was a breath taking project.
A force of men, hastily recruited, was to patrol an inland empire,
the size of Europe -on horseback.
Much organization work was done during the first winter, but on
June 6th, 1874 two special train-loads of men, horses and equipment
left Toronto bound for the Far West. The country, now known as
Western Canada, was unpeopled by white men, except for isolated
Hudson’s Bay Trading Forts, and had an estimated population of
some 25,000 warring Canadian Indians, assisted by sporadic
incursions of Sioux and Crow Indians from the Montana Territories.
The two special trains travelled via Chicago and St. Paul to Fargo,
North Dakota, which was, at that time, the end of steel.
Pictured are my Dad’s two model steam engines. The small one
is modeled after a Case and Woods Bros, as parts permitted. He made
this one with hand tools only. The cylinder is made from a
hydraulic brake cylinder. The back wheels are 8 inches high, front
are 4 inches.
The large one is a 4 inch scale Avery return flue. This engine
was made by J.W. Parolek and formerly owned by Artie Hudson, both
two true Iron-Men.
We also have eight gas engines, several small stationary steam
engines and a model A Ford
THE GREAT MARCH BEGINS
By early July men and equipment were all assembled at Dufferin,
south of Winnipeg, and on July 8th, 1874 the cavalcade moved off
the camp grounds for the West. With bugles blowing, lance pennants
fluttering in the breeze in full marching order, the line extended
for a distance of three miles. It was an historic occasion. Law and
order had come to the Canadian West. Queens law was to be imposed
upon a fretful realm.
Their destination was Fort Whoop-up, the Montana whiskey traders
stronghold operating in Canadian territory. It flew a Stars and
Stripes flag, was armed with two small cannons and was one thousand
miles away in the Foothills of the Rockies over the treeless
sunbaked plains.
As the travel-worn expedition struggled on day after day over
the unmarked and unmapped plains, there developed a stamina and
endurance among the little Force that augured well for future
traditions that were being forged on the one thousand mile march.
On October 13, the Police reached the Old Man River and here they
built their first log fort naming it Fort Macleod in honor of their
commanding officer Col. F.G. Macleod.
By the spring of 1875 it was realized the Mounted Police had
overshot their mark and in May 1875 Major Walsh and a detail of 30
men returned to the Cypress Hills and established a strongly
stockaded log fort on Battle Creek naming it Fort Walsh. It is
often alluded to as the cradle of the Mounted Police.
The following year, in June 1876 the civilized world was shocked
and horrified by the wanton slaughter of General George A. Custer
and his entire command of 280 men in the Valley of the Little Big
Horn River in southern Montana by the Sioux under the leadership of
Sitting Bull.
Fresh from the Custer Massacre, Sitting Bull and the Sioux
crossed the ‘Medicine Line’ into Canada at Wood Mountain
seeking the protection of the Great White Mother. The controlling
of over five thousand warlike Sioux was placed squarely on the
shoulders of the Mounted Police personnel at Fort Walsh. This
developed into a test of strength and willpower between Major Walsh
and Sitting Bull. In many tense confrontings Major Walsh and
Sitting Bull were eyeball to eyeball but Walsh never blinked. This
is one of the epic chapters in Mounted Police history until the
Sioux moved back to the United States three years later. It had
been a keg of dynamite with the Mounted Police sitting precariously
on the lid.
During the Riel Rebellion of 1885 the police performed a vital
role in keeping the unrest from spreading and Crowfoot, due to the
good relations, established by the police, was able to prevent the
Blackfoot Confederacy from joining in with Louis Riel. Riel met
death on the gallows at Regina, November 16, 1885, while Gabriel
Dumont fled to Montana. He was later granted amnesty. He died at
Batoche in 1906 at the age of 68.
With the Klondike gold strike in the late 1890’s one of the
most thrilling and colorful pages in the history of the Mounted
Police was turned. The placing of the Yukon under the supervision
of the Mounted Police called for the utmost in courage and
determination. Skagway on the United States side of the
Alaska-Yukon Boundary had earned the title of ‘the roughest
place on earth’. But on the Canadian side of the boundary, the
law of the Police prevailed. By 1898 there were 252 officers and
men doing duty in the Arctic and Yukon, almost one third of the
entire force of Mounted Police.
The police took part in the great procession in London
celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. In 1900
the Boer war broke out and 245 members of the Police served with
distinction on the veldt in South Africa. For their services, the
Force was given the prefix Royal and in 1904 the force became known
as the Royal North West Mounted Police.
In the meantime the police on the prairies were supervising the
last great land rush on the North American Continent. Settlers from
the four corners of the earth streamed out on the prairies of
Western Canada and never in the history of any country was such a
wave of settlement accomplished with so little violence and crime.
Credit for this is almost entirely due to the Mounted Police. Their
small detachments, often manned by one lone constable, dotted the
countryside. Under their beneficial care the settlers knew that
persons and property were safe.
The late Ward Rennie of Montezuma, Kansas at the controls of
Ernest Bressler engine at the Bird City, Kansas Show.
Today
At the present time the total command of the Force stands at
some 13,000 members policing Canada from sea even unto sea. In 1920
the title of the Force was again changed to Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. The top man of the Force, Commissioner W.L. Higgett, is
also president of Interpol, which in effect makes him top policeman
of the world. Could anything more be said to show the high regard
in which the Mounted Police are held? We congratulate the Police on
their one hundredth anniversary on a job well done. And they are
still doing it.
