HENRY HUTCHINSON AND THE SHIER SETTLEMENT.
Among the interesting groups of settlements in South Eastern Sas-
katchewan, along the American boundary, is the Shier settlement, so called
after its pioneer Philip Shier, who, however, was not of the very earliest
settlers for he did not come in till 1892. There were homesteads to be
had south of the Souris Extension railroad till as late as 1901 when the
American invasion took place. Numbers of the original settlers from 1882
on abandoned their homesteads, without proving up their claims, in dis-
appointment and failure, because the looked for rail extension was not
made. These homesteads were open for entry and were taken up when
the railroad came in in 1892, but the pre-emptions reverted to the Gov-
ernment. When the regulations were changed that a homesteader could
obtain his pre-emption as a second homestead on performing certain
specified duties, the Government threw open the abandoned and unpaid
for pre-emptions for homestead entry. There were quite a few of these
pre-emptions in the Shier settlement. Breaking had been done on some
of them, but not much, and this had gone back to weeds and grass.
The Shier Brothers were men of gigantic stature and magnificent phy-
sique. The shortest of them, and he was looked upon as a kind of minnow
among Tritons, was six feet. They were respectively, Philip, Samuel,
Wesley and John A. Shier with their wives and a whole raft of sturdy chil-
dren. They came from Cannington in Brock Township and of all the
thousands that Ontario sent into the west, it never sent a better or more
honorable contingent either physically or morally than the Shiers. The
general impression got around in the district somehow that they were
descendants of the old Pennsylvania Dutch but this was not so, because
the founder of the family was an Alsace German, viz.: one Jacob Shier.
This Jacob was a Protestant, and over two hundred years ago be fled
from Alsace to the South of Ireland, so that, although of German origin,
the family is Irish. The mother of the Shier boys was a Miss Dawson,
who was born in the north of Ireland not far from Belfast. The Shier
who first came to Canada about 100 years ago was a British officer, and
the Shiers all belonged to the County of Cork. There were two uncles,
John and Joseph, who came from Cork and settled in Kincardine Town-
ship, Bruce.
A NEPHEW OF WORDSWORTH.
The Shier settlement is six miles south and four miles west of the
town of Carnduff, and extends to the banks of the beautiful valley of
the Souris River. The original settler in the district was Mr. Henry
Hutchinson, who claims something more than a mere passing word. Mr.
Hutchinson came from Herefordshire, England, in 1882, and homesteaded
on a piece of open prairie on the bench of the Souris. At that time the
C.
P. R. had just broken into the prairie country, but he was over a
hundred miles from a store of any description. His father was the Vicar
of a parish a few miles from the cathedral city of Hereford. Mr. Hutchin-
son had some means, so that he was not dependent on the homestead.
During the thirty-one years that he lived upon it, he made periodical
visits to England. He was a bachelor and never showed a disposition to
be anything else. By no means unsociable, the tall grizzled old man of
sixty past, whom we met in 1900, had a considerable share of reserve.
There was a certain quiet dignity about him; he was of the old type of
Englishman who considered any kind of demonstrativeness to be "bad
form". He never put on "side", yet nobody ever slapped him on the back
or called him "Henry", much less "old Hoss". He was an excellent shot
and took great pleasure with the gun. He was better than a "sport",
he was a sportsman; and his British training in this regard was a source
of wonderment to his neighbors who shot frankly for the kitchen pot,
killing their game any old way so long as it was killed. Following the
English tradition, which is always to give game a chance for its life,
rabbit must be running, or chicken on the wing before he would shoot.
Anything sitting was safe till it got going. He was a true lover of nature,
and was always displeased with any one who shot hawks or any birds
who were useful. He thought the badgers should be spared.
He died on his homestead in 1913 at the ripe age of seventy-five. Mr.
John A. Shier was a good friend of his and acted as his executor as he
had no relatives in Canada. He was a member of the Church of England
and was buried according to the rites of that church.
When the writer first knew him he was past sixty, a hale wiry man
who was never in a hurry. A bond between us was that I knew his native
county, and we had mutual acquaintances there, and he never came to
Carnduff without dropping into the newspaper office to have a quiet chat.
One day I happened to quote a line or two of Wordsworth to the old
nature-lover and to my astonishment and delight I discovered for the first
time that I was talking to a nephew of the poet. Henry Hutchinson's
mother was a sister of Wordsworth's wife "the Phantom of Delight". He
distinctly remembered his uncle coming down into Herefordshire, to King-
ton, although he at the time was only six years old.
WM. IRA RICHARDSON.
"I was born in Kent, Ontario, in the village of Palmyra in 1860. I
landed in Winnipeg on the 28th of April, 1882. I came in from Ontario.
I landed at Emerson and passed over the Red River in a steamboat. It
probably was a Hudson Bay boat. The railroad track was covered up
owing to the flood. After we got out of the grip of the flood, I went to
Winnipeg; I stayed there about five days in a boarding tent. We all
slept in the tent where there were cots, and got our meals outside, inde-
pendently. We paid $6 a week for the privilege of sleeping in a cot in
the tent. We waited for a train and eventually got on a passenger. There
were washouts at Portage, but we eventually got to Brandon and stayed
there and paid at the rate of about $7 a week for board. Geo. Bishop,
also of Palmyra, was with me. His brother Steve did not come out until
1884; George was married and had a family, but he left them behind in
Ontario. George Bishop and I got a yoke of oxen and a wagon between
us and we struck out for Turtle Mountain and we landed about where
Old Deloraine was eventually. At that time there was no Deloraine,
but there was a blacksmith shop. Stuart & Cavers had a post office and
a kind of a general store. There was a land office there and we entered
for land without seeing it. They told us at the land office what was on
the market and we took the land by the map. We outfitted with about two
barrels of sea biscuits which we got of Stuart & Cavers. one of these
biscuits would make a good weapon when short of ammunition. We also
had sugar and sow-belly, tea, flour, bacon, soda and a barrel of soda bis-
cuits, but when we got about a foot down the barrel we found they had
gone mouldy. We also had an old-fashioned camp stove. We picked up
three other men who had taken up land. They were Ed and Steve Chaplin
and George Jones. They went through with us, but when they saw the
land they had taken up they got cold feet and went away. We had a
tent and a canvas cover over the wagon making the usual prairie schooner.
Four of us slept in the wagon and one would sleep in the tent which was
a little round thing with a pole.
HITTING THE HOMESTEAD WITH OXEN: A CRUDE OPERATION.
"The country was full of water, and we had to wade through lots of
sloughs. In crossing the Blind Souris we had to unload the whole busi-
ness four or five times. When we got to Sourisford the river was in flood.
We left Brandon about the 10th of May. There was a small boat for a
ferry at Sourisford. We took the wagons and goods all to pieces and took
them over in sections. There was only a small indication of a trail.
At Plum Creek, which is now Souris, we had to take the stuff apart, the
same as we did at Souris. We were fifteen days from Brandon before
we landed on our homestead near where the present village of Cane-
vale now is. I homesteaded a mile east of Carievale. The distance we
had to travel from Brandon to Carievale was about 125 miles, so that we
averaged about ten miles a day; some days we did not make more than
five miles, and some we would make twenty or over. We were much de-
layed by having to wade the sloughs. This was reversing the Portage
Business; everybody would wade. Ed. Chaplin was a very powerful man;
he stood about 6 feet 4 inches. Oftentimes when the oxen would get
stuck in the sloughs he would put his shoulder to the wheel and hoist
the wagon out. We would give the oxen a cut with the whip to assist
the process. The team we had was a young team, about four years old.
On the whole they behaved pretty well, considering that we had to prac-
tically break them in, but sometimes after a real hard day they would
rush into the middle of the sloughs, whether we wanted them to or not.
I walked ahead one day and left George Bishop with the oxen. They did
not come. He went to sleep and the oxen had made for the middle of
a slough and when I went back to see what was the matter I found he
was stuck. However he and Chaplin lifted on the wheel and I got after
the oxen and we got the wagon out. The mosquitoes and black flies were
something awful. I have seen them so bad sometimes that I have seen
the blood trickle down the backs and legs of the oxen. It was terrible
and I have never seen anything as bad since. However, we hit the home-
stead at last. All the creeks were in flood and we could not cross the
south Antler without the oxen swimming. When we put our heads over
the hills east of Carievale we saw what we supposed was snow; there
were acres of it, but when we got near enough we saw that the prairies
were covered with acres of wavy geese. This was on the flat east of
Carievale, which was covered with them. They rose very nearly in a
body. They were very nearly white with black wings. At that time
there were ducks by the thousands. We got plenty of duck eggs and plo-
vers' eggs; occasionally we would see a deer, but we had only a shot gun
and failing a rifle we would not get venison.
"There were quite a few people coming in at that time. They were
going on to the Moose Mountain. There was a kind of a Moose Mountain
fever which brought them in. Most of the people who came in would
have their provisions getting low, and so we would help them out with
the natural hospitality of the trail. On the 21st of May we had been
out of grub for two days. We had nothing but biscuit left, and we
had to do with this and the ducks we shot. On Friday about the 21st
of May we had a thunder storm and on Sunday morning it snowed about
a foot, but on the whole it was a very hot spring, and the oxens' tongues
would hang out on the trail. When we got up on Sunday morning the
sloughs were frozen around the edges, and the oxen could not drink until
we broke the ice. George Bishop shot a rabbit with a revolver. We
skinned it and put it in the pot and made some dumplings, and we were
so hungry that before they were cooked we had them out of the pot and
had to eat them. We could not wait until the rabbit was cooked. The
rabbit was in the family way with two. We cleaned the youngsters out.
We saw that our land was partly under water, but we thought that we
could not do better, so we thought we had better keep it. We had to go
back and get ploughs, and so we went to Sourisford where we bought
two ploughs from Alf. Gould. At Sourisford we sold the steers to George
Jones for $165, and got a big yoke of oxen from Dave Elliott, of Souris-
ford, for $300. We got a breaking plough costing us $25. I stayed at
Sourisford and the rest went to Brandon to get supplies. I hired with
Alf. Gould, who had a farm, as well as keeping the ferry, and also kept
a kind of a little store and stopping place. He had a log house. The
first work I did for him was to help thresh some wheat with a flail for
seed. We winnowed it in the wind, as we had no fanning mill. I worked
on the ferry boat for three weeks. The regular ferryman met with an
accident; he brought the boat over on a Sunday to ferry some people across.
There was a gun in the boat, and in pulling the gun out of the boat it
shot the bone of the wrist of his left arm. There was no doctor there
at Sourisford, but there happened to be a little medical doctor by the
name of Jakeway camped across the river. He was on the trail coming
up to Elmore district and we got him over, but he had no anesthetic, so
we decided we would hold the man down while the operation was being
performed. There was Alf. Gould and myself and a fellow by the name
of Abe Reikie, and we held the ferryman down while the operation was
being performed. He cut the flesh with the butcher knife and sawed
the bone with a picture frame saw, a little fine tooth saw. Mortifica-
tion had set in and so he took the arm right off through the center of
the bicep. The ferryman, whose name was Thomas, was a man about 30
years of age, who came from Ottawa. We held him down for fear he
would struggle, but he gritted his teeth; he knew it was life or death;
if that arm did not come off he knew he had to die. The arm was black
to the elbow. Dr. Jakeway took it off and tied the arteries. For three
days and nights the man was out of his mind. He raved all the time but
he got through, and for some years was the secretary treasurer of the
municipality of Arthur in southern Manitoba. He is still alive at this
time (1910). He lay in a wooden bunk on a straw tick. He took a fancy
to me and I was the only one he would pay any attention to. Another
incident was that Gould had to strike for Brandon with a young fellow
named Ross, who had frozen his feet. Gould was away a week or more
and when he came back he brought back stuff to put on Thomas' arm. All
that Dr. Jakeway had to treat the amputation with was some carbolic
acid. This, and putting the stitches in was all the treatment the arm got.
We fed him as well as we could, and one day we got him some beaver tail
soup and he seemed to like it.
A GRAPHIC FERRY EXPERIENCE.
"In about fifteen days Ed. Chaplin, his brother and Jones came back
from Brandon with supplies. When we came to the ferry with the sup-
plies the wagon was loaded with a barrel of pork, sugar and other things.
They took the wheels off the wagon and put the supplies in the boat. Chap-
lin sat on the hubs of one of the wagon wheels with his feet down through
the spokes. A fellow was riding over by the name of Carl. Carl was
nervous and to scare him Chaplin tipped the boat, with the result that
the whole thing went over in about eight or ten feet of water. Chaplin
could not get his feet out of the spokes of the wheel. A man named
Essensey, who was ferrying the boat, Carl and myself were the only
ones in the boat. Essensey dove down to the bottom of the water and got
the wheel off Chaplin's feet and then got him to the top. Fortunately
he was a splendid swimmer-a regular water dog, and Chaplin's life was
saved.
"We gathered up as much of the supplies as we could and took Carl
across the river and also Jones. Both of the men were very nervous. The
river was half a mile wide with the flood at the time. We got most of
the stuff out of the bottom of the river, but the sugar was irretrievably
gone. We dried the meat. The biscuits got wet and we got them out
in the sun. We got across anyway. We should have lost afl the supplies
except that Essensey was such a good swimmer and diver, and Chaplin
would no doubt have been drowned, being at the bottom of the river with
the wagon wheel on his feet. You would see Essensey wading around
in the water up to his chin watching for some little thing. One day we
took 24 ox wagons across on the ferry and we charged $4 a load. There
were, of course, 48 oxen to these 24 wagons and these 48 oxen had to
wade across with the exception of one, for we took one in the boat and
held him by the horns, and the others followed' him. They all followed
one after the other in a bunch. It was quite a sight to see this bunch
of oxen swimming the river. Lots of fellows that crossed the river in
the boat did not want to get wet and so when we got to the shallow
water I used to carry them across on my back, and I would also carry
them on my back to the boat and dump them in. After this party was
across the river they camped for the night and then started out for the
~~'Lest.
"The two Chaplins, Jones, Robt. Carl and myself then started back to
Carievale. We went to work at Carievale, where we camped a mile east
of Carievale on George Bishop's quarter, and worked from there. We
had a tent. This was in June. We broke up about five to ten acres on
each quarter section, and then at night we would come back to the tent
to sleep. I was the cook. We sowed wheat on the 7th of June and got 'a
good crop. This misled people a good deal, because they found out dif-
ferently; they thought it alright to put wheat in very late. Experience
taught them that this resulted either in the wheat getting frozen or not
ripening. Then I started back to Brandon about the 20th of June to look
for work. Bishop and I had a team between us, and we sold the wagon,
plough, oxen and everything because we had no money. In Brandon I
worked at moving buildings and digging cellars and helped build a wire
fence in the country, and altogether by the second of October I had
made about $300.
MORE FORDING: SWIMMING ON A BUCKBOARD.
"I wanted to get back to the farm before the winter in order to get a
shanty up, so I got a buckboard and pony and made for home. I put up
a little sod shanty. Will Arthur and Charles Wellstead were in there;
McCarthy was a kind of Christian Science brother; Wellstead was a farm-
er. They spent about $5,000 on section 34, east of Carievale. Wellstead
put in his time on the homestead, got his patent and sold out later and
went east to St. Catharines, Ont., where he is now. Arthur joined the
Baptists and is now preaching in Rochester, N. Y. (1910). I then re-
turned to Brandon and went east to Palmyra and put in the winter. I came
back in March of '83. George Bishop returned with me. We worked in
Brandon where he worked at his blacksmith's trade and I worked at odd
jobs until about the 15th of March, when we set out for Carievale with
a yoke of oxen and sleigh and a load of lumber. We got 'to Sourisford
where we found that the ice was breaking up in the spring. If we upset
our load once, we upset it twenty times, and we were about fifteen days
getting home. Most of the time we walked, but some times we wouldride a bit.
"We had to cross several creeks; one of the oxen would balk; at one
of the creeks, when we got out in the stream, the ox balked and refused
to go. An Englishman came along with a pony and buckboard and said
I had better ride with him, so I got into the buckboard and presently the
water got so deep that the man said, 'We had better get out or the pony
will drown'. I said, 'You offered me a ride and I am going through'.
He got out and waded ashore. He could swim but I could not. I got
through alright but the pony had to swim with the buckboard. There
was a fellow named Bowers and a minister named Wheeler watching
at the time, and they thought we were going to drown. This was at
Phinneys' Creek. Phinneys' Creek empties into the Souris river east of
Napinka. I got in with a fellow named George Thompson who used to
work in McCullough's mill at Souris. That same spring we two started
back to Brandon. We got to Souris. The ice in the creeks had broken
up pretty well and chunks of ice were floating around. We got a plank
and persuaded the oxen to walk on the plank on the ice. We connected
pretty well and got across. By the time we got to Brandon the snow had
about gone, but the bones of big drifts were left. Bishop and I had a
wagon there and we loaded this up with everything for the house and
started out again, and we landed home after ten days on the road. This
was a wagon that George had had shipped from Ontario. He had made
it himself in Ontario while he was away. It was a wide tired wagon with
tires 4 inches wide, and that wagon is still going in this district today
(1910). We now put up a little frame shanty with the lumber we brought
out. It was just one ply of lumber with tar paper. It was built up and
down like the old fashioned barns in Ontario, and we sodded the sides
for warmth, and George and I batched in the shanty that summer. Will
McArthur and Chas. Wellstead were four miles east of us. Tom Nattrass
lived south of Gainsboro. George Kidd was a mile and a half west of
us. W. A. Smith lived at Workman and had the post office. Tom Wilson
and Jacob Burke, Dave Burke and the Shouldices were all on their places,
and they all used to bring their ploughshares to George Bishop's to be
sharpened. Alf. Fenton lived at Butterfield south of Melita, and they all
came that way a couple of times with their shares; it must have been
about 25 miles. They used to come also from Alameda, 86 miles. They
would come with an ox team and put a lot of shares in the wagon and
come down just to get their shares sharpened.
LIVED ON FROZEN POTATOES.
"In '83 we put in 25 acres of oats and 10 acres of wheat and cut our
crop with a cradle. We also put up 20 loads of hay which we cut with
a scythe and raked with a hand rake. We got our grain threshed by
Will McArthur and Wellstead, who had a threshing machine. L. D.
Sawyer was the engineer. I batched on the trail and kept a stopping place
with George Kidd, and George Bishop went east after his wife and family.
People kept coming up and down, some going west and some going out
after stuff. We had a tepee of wood. There was a big pile of potatoes
that got frozen, and when they got frozen we kept them that way. W.
McArthur went out to Brandon to get supplies for we had got out of
everything except frozen potatoes. We lived on frozen potatoes and we
sold them to other people. We used to cook about four pots of these pota-
toes, before we could even get enough to make a meal, and that was all
we had until McArthur got back from Brandon. He was detained in a
blizzard, so we had to put up with the potato diet longer than we ex-
pected. We used to get our mail at Antler, where Gainsboro is now and
where the post office was kept by Jacob Hostetter. John Carnduff used
also to go to Carnduff and meet the mail from Deloraine.
"George Bishop came back in the spring with a wife and four children.
There was no doctor nearer than Deloraine, but Mrs. John Preston was
an experienced mid-wife. We sold some of the crop of '83 for seed and
kept enough for our own seed. The oats we fed. We took grist to Souris.
They charged us 20c a bushel for grinding and gave us 40 pounds of flour
and 18 pounds of bran and shorts, 58 pounds altogether. It was an old
stone mill at Souris.
FRIED WATER CRABS.
"Steve and George Bishop brought horses up from Ontario in the
spring of '84. In '84 they sent me to Malta south of Plum Creek. As
they were coming from Brandon one of their horses died on the trail,
and they had to leave a load of all kinds of household furniture and truck
including a barrel of soft soap and a fanning mill on the trail. The
load weighed about forty hundred, and they sent me down with a team
of oxen to bring it back to Carievale. I started out on a Wednesday morn-
ing from Malta to come home with the load, and I expected to be home
Thursday night. I thought two days would be sufficient, but I did not
get home until Sunday. From Thursday night until Sunday I had noth-
ing to eat. The sand hills delayed me. We had a tremendously heavy load
and we had to unload and carry the load forward piece by piece until the
load was sufficiently light for the oxen to carry the remainder. Our
food ran out on Thursday night, but we caught some water crabs from
the Souris river and ate them, and they did not go too bad. We had
matches and built a fire and fried them, on a fire of scrub pine. In the
sand hills boundary the weather was fine. We slept under the wagon and
got the load home safely.
"Throughout the summer we went to the Souris River and dug a big
pit. We filled it full of limestone and burned our lime kiln to build a
house. We burned 400 bushels of lime, using just lime stone boulders
and nigger heads. Steve Bishop built a stone and concrete house and I
did the same. My house was 16 x 20 and his was 14 x 18. They were
two story houses. George Bishop built a stone addition to his original
frame shack.
SICK FATHER IN EAST: A WINTER WALK OF 75 MILES.
"During the winter of '84 my father died in the east. I had word
in January that he was very sick and they wanted me to go home. We only
got mail once a week, and not very regular at that. I started out on
Tuesday morning. At that time there were three trains a week on the
C. P. R. main line. They went on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
On Tuesday I left Carievale on foot to walk 75 miles to Virden to get a
train. That night I stopped with a fellow named Skelton. I got to Virden
on Wednesday night making the trip in two days on foot, and got the
train on Thursday morning. I had walked 75 miles. When I got home
I found my father was dead and buried. I stayed with my sister until
some time up to the last of April. I got a team of horses and wagon. I
loaded a car with Ewen McDiarmid, who subsequently was a member for
Cannington in the Assembly. McDiarmid brought in horses, a wagon
and two cows and household effects, also two sheep and some chickens.
The cow was billed to Moosomin. The first load of Ewen's stuff went
out to his farm at Old Cannington Manor, from there it went to Old
Alameda and from there down home. This was in the summer of '85.
FROSTED WHEAT AT FORTY-FIVE CENTS.
"We made a trip back to the rail and this time we went into Moosomin
by John Farr's, north of Carnduff. Moosomin was forty miles without
a house. We had horses this time. Altogether we made three trips to
Moosomin that summer to get stuff down and also got our crop in. We
put in quite a crop and grew 1,500 bushels of wheat; the wheat got frosted
but not badly. We did not at the time understand about cutting it on the
green side. We could have had it cut quite a bit earlier than we did. The
Hostetters at Gainsboro had theirs saved without being frosted that year.
Jn the winter of '85 we made 15 trips to Virden to sell our wheat. We
would take 100 bushels a load with two teams of horses. We got 45c
a bushel for the frosted wheat. If it had not been frosted it would
have been worth 58c to 60c. Next year ('86) we broke some more land,
and a few more settlers began to come in. '86 was a dry year; we built
a new stable. By this time we were getting used to very heavy snow
storms with big drifts and holy blizzards. One thing that struck us that
was remarkable in the old days in the winter, was the extreme silence
of the prairie.
PREACHING TO HIMSELF.
"During the winters that I batched I used to study up Talmadge and
Spurgeon's sermons, and get up and preach them in the shack. A man
came to the shack one day to see me. I was preaching to myself and he
heard me going on like that. He was afraid to knock; he thought some
kind of service was going on inside, and he hated to disturb it by coming
in.
At last I opened the door and he said: 'What" Was there no church
going on"' And I said, 'Yes, but no congregation'. This man wanted to
stay all night and he stayed. I would often sit there until three or four
in the morning reading. I had all kinds of books and I read my Bible and
all kinds of evangelical works. By '85 settlers had come in pretty thick.
In '86 I had the biggest house in the settlement.
ROOF GOES AT THIRTY BELOW ZERO.
"I gave a party and George Bishop's wife and other ladies came. A
blizzard came up. They could not get away home, so we stayed at it all
night long. It was 30 below zero with a wild wind. In the spring of '84
in March I had built my house, and just got up the first story. I was
lying in bed and there was a terrific wind blowing; there was nothing
between me and heaven but boards and tar paper. I thought to myself
if the wind takes that roof off I shall be in a bad place, and no sooner
said than done. The roof was taken away and a stone about 75 pounds
rolled down on the bed. It was about four o'clock in the morning. The
stone did not strike me. I left and went over to Bishop's. I had put that
winter in with walls of bare stone and that roof of boards and paper over
my head. I had seen the gravy freeze in front of the stove after I had
fried the meat. I had an old-fashioned King stove which took a stove
stick about three feet long. This stove was minus the high oven. I had
been out of wood and I had to burn hay in it. The nearest wood was on
the Souris river 20 miles off. We would haul coal from Roche Percee,
from the Gow and Hazard Mines.
MINING FOR COAL.
"The man who ran the first drift for coal was named Pocock. He
came from England. He went away and never came back. This was in
the valley near the Hazard Mine. It was a 8 foot seam of coal. We
would use picks and axes to get the coal out of the mine. Once the bank
fell in on a fellow who was getting coal, but fortunately did not kill him.
We managed to get him out. We would make a drift right in the bank
of the ravine to get the coal. It was black but much like chips; it was
easy to mine. It was pretty hot working in these drifts in the fall. We
used to wait until it froze up and then go. We got our coal from there
from 1883 until the railroad came in. Eventually Hazard had a board-
ing-house, and we could stop there when we went for coal. He would
charge us about $1.00 a load for coal, and for this you could load your
wagon with as much coal as your team could carry. We had to help mine
it.
As we got in further we would support the roofs with balks of timber.
We would back the wagon into the drift by hand. It was less trouble
to go to the Hazard Mine for coal than it was to go to the Souris river
for wood. We would travel 65 or 75 miles by the trail to get coal, and
we used to call it a four days' trip.
BUFFALO BONES
"We used to pass by a hill which was called the Hill of the Murdered
Scout in the Boscurvis district. It was a great hill. There was a skeleton
lying on the top, but I don't know the story. In the early days the prairies
were covered with buffalo bones. Sometimes we would find a head with
some hair on it yet. In the hard years we used to pick up the bones and
draw them to Minot in North Dakota where we would get $17 a ton for
them. Elk horns were also very plentiful. There were a number of elk
in the Moose Mountain. Sometimes we would. see them on the plains. I
saw a moose in a creek once, and one spring I saw three or four elk. An
Indian shot one in the spring of '84 and it weighed 400 pounds. There
were quite a lot of jumping deer, chickens and ducks. Ducks were espe-
cially plentiful. George Bishop shot and killed eleven one time at one shot.
In '86 which was a very dry year, the ducks were very scarce. There were
all kinds of ducks, including big mallards. I had a muzzle loading rifle
and when I wanted a duck I would just pick one out and knock his head
off with a bullet.
EARLY PREACHING: A SOD CHURCH.
"The first preaching in the Carievale district was by a Presbyterian
student named Nivins. The first preacher to come to the southern country
was Mr. Hay. He was succeeded by Nivins. He held his first service
in Carievale district at George Bishop's-after that he held service at
my house. The first Sunday school was held at my place in '85. I had
five or six children to start with. I was the superintendent and teacher,
and in fact the whole works. Every Sunday I used to go four miles over
to John Frazer's and hold a Bible class. Frazer came in about '85. We
held no service of any kind in the winter. In '86 or '87 the first church
was built. It was built of sod on George Taylor's place by the Anglicans.
The Rev. Cartwright who came in about '86 used to hold services there.
The church is now used as an oat granary. The Rev. Black, Presbyterian,
also preached there. Other preachers in the district held service
there:
Lockhart, St. Clair Bros., and John Scott.
"I built the first store in Carievale for Sam Colquhoun. That was in
1891.
"The railroad was surveyed through that country in 1881. When we
came in we understood the railroad would be in next year. When the
railroad did not come in every load we drew to Virden or Moosomin we
would curse old Sir John A. because we did not get the railroad. Jack
Turriff ran in 1891 in opposition to Ex Governor Dewdney as a kind of
a protest against the government's slackness in not building a
railroad.
"After the dry year of 1886 people were discouraged and began to
get out. In 1889 was another dry year and that took a lot more out.
After we got the railroad they began to come back, but a great many
never came back to the homesteads they had abandoned.
"In the summer of 1890 I went to Deloraine and got my binding twine
at 20c a pound. Binding twine now (1910) is 9-1/2~c. The first binder we
got cost $300. That was in 1885. It was an Osborne binder with a 6 foot
cut. You can buy a Superior Binder now for $180. Our first threshing
bill was 4c for wheat and 3c for oats. I had the first threshing all to
myself. John Young from Alameda came in with a horse power. I had
1,000 bushels of wheat. That was in 1887. I had to find my own men,
except three men who came with the power. The thresher hauled his
own power. At that time we had to stack. There was no threshing from
the stook. Neighbors used to come and help thresh. I told you I paid 20c
for my twine. Mr. French got some binding twine from Deloraine at
13c. He called it moose hair. It was a kind of hemp and was very in-
ferior, and his wife and girls gave him a blowing up for buying it. I
cut his crop and his girls, Ellen and Laura, stooked it. In '85 there were
in the Carievale district the Coades, W. A. Smith, Parker, Wellstead, Tay-
lors, the Youngs, the Hedleys, the Gillilands and Smart. Bill Coade came
in the same year I did. Dave Frith in '85 got the first buckboard there
was in this country."
Note: The story of the Hill of the Murdered Scout is briefly this. The
hill, although not very high, is quite a prominent feature on a level plain.
The Indians were at war. A scout was on the look-out from the hill, and
he fell asleep. An enemy crept upon him and despatched him as he lay.
The skeleton lay at the top of the hill for a good many years, and the
landmark got to be known as the Hill of the Murdered Scout. I never
met any one who had taken the trouble to climb the hill and see the skele-
ton. The hill is close to the international boundary.
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