THOMAS FALKNER MILLER.
"I was born in 1848 in the county of Lanark, Ontario, and am of Scotch
descent, my people coming from Glasgow and being of the Presbyterian
faith. I went to Minnesota in 1873 being attracted by the prospect of
high wages. At that time railroad building was beginning to be general
in the Western States. Railroads were being built in all directions, in
fact railroad building was just running wild. In the spring of 1875 I
came down from Okagema Lake in Minnesota to Minneapolis. There
was an advertisement in the St. Paul Pioneer Press by the Clifton Glass
Company (the head of which was the fatber of Sir Clifford Sifton and
the Hon. Arthur Sifton) calling for a thousand men to cut out the right of
way for the C. P. Railroad from Selkirk east in Manitoba. The adver-
tisement read 'A thousand men wanted to commence cutting the right of
way, etc.' At that time Canada was just dead-nothing doing at all.
"I may tell you just before I left Canada to go to Minnesota, I was
shantying for W. C. Caldwell on the Ottawa. I came by Chicago and
Milwaukee on to Minneapolis. I worked for one John Watson, a big con-
tractor, for two summers. In the winter I worked in the pine woods for
one Fred Clarke around Minneapolis. I worked there two months on this
job and then I left. Capt. Moore was employing men to take his outfit to
the Saskatchewan. I first met Captain Moore on the first of July, 1875.
It was in Winnipeg. I asked him for a job, right on the grounds where
they were having their games on Dominion Day. Captain Moore and I
were not very far from an age; we were in the neighborhood of 24 or 25.
He would not hire me. He thought I was an American as I had come
from Minnesota. A few days later I was talking to an Andrew Miller
(no relation) ; he was a brother of old man Miller who died by the Prince
Albert Lumber Company's mill. When Moore saw that I knew Andrew
Miller he came up to us, and asked Andrew to allow him to speak to him
a few minutes. They walked off a few yards, and turned back to me and
asked me if I was still in the notion of going to the Saskatchewan. I said
if I had not a strong notion of going to Saskatchewan I would not have
followed him for a job so long as I had. Capt. Moore said 'You can go
for $30 a month'. I immediately entered on my duties in loading the
carts, with the first pioneer mill in Saskatchewan. It was a combined
saw mill and grist mill.
THE TAKING IN OF CAPTAIN MOORE'S MILL.
"Captain Moore was an Irishman. Capt. Moore was inexperienced
and he had John Haverty with him. Haverty and I used to go with Moore
to buy cattle brought in by the drovers from Minnesota. They drove
them into Winnipeg from Minnesota all the way on foot. He bought eight
yoke of oxen which were broken and hitched double. I had four oxen to
look after; the others had two. He had also 14 head of steers unbroken,
which I broke into the carts. We broke the steers about three quarters
of a mile out from Main Street, Winnipeg. I did not put a yoke on, I put
them right into the collars and hitched them to the carts, and ran them
around for about an hour or so, and a day or two afterwards I put them
into the carts and loaded them up with from 700 to 900 pounds of freight.
After we had got about four miles on the road towards Silver heights we
considered the steers broken right for the trail.
"On the first of August, 1875, we started for Saskatchewan; we had
eight yoke of oxen hitched to seven wagons. One of the wagons had a
four ox team to draw the mill boiler. My two teams were hitched on the
boiler, the 14 young steers were in the carts, and they all took the trail
fairly well but one. He just laid down. Moore and I tried to induce him
to get on his feet but he wouldn't budge. At last I said, 'Captain, I think
I can raise him'. I went back to where the tent had been and got a hand-
ful of hay. I laid it on his head and set a match to it. It was not long
before he was up. Moore had a fashion of smoking a pipe all the time,'
he would hold it in the centre of his mouth. When I put the hay on the
steer's head and he was bolting ahead, I was hanging on to him, and
Moore hoofed it behind us with his pipe in his mouth. I steered the steer
in behind the other carts, until Moore came up. When Moore came up
he said, 'We will do that with all of them if they don't behave themselves'.
Moore was a great boy. We got along first rate from there until we struck
th Bd Woods, 30 miles west of Portage. We had to fix our own bridges.
We made them of poplar poles laid down from bank to bank and with pop-
lar rails put on top of them. The boiler weighed 5000 pounds and as I
said before it took four oxen to draw it, on one wagon, which I drove all
the way to the Saskatchewan after we got the steers civilized. After we
got the steers settled down they did not do at all bad. We had to repair
the bridges on the trail as we came to them. The first one we had to re-
pair was at McKinnon's Creek west of Portage. Before we had gone a
mile and a half we had to repair another bridge. When the bridge was
not strong enough to carry the boiler two or three men would go and cut
five or six more stringers, the balance of the men would tear the top of
the bridge off; then we would put the new stringers on alongside of the
old ones until we were sure we had enough to carry the weight; then we
would throw the old covering poles back and cross the bridge. At the
third creek which we had to cross, Capt. Moore was walking alongside of
me. The train was ahead of us just then (14 carts and seven wagons)
and I said, 'Captain you had better go ahead and see that they are not get-
ting into trouble.' This was at the last of the three bad creeks west of
Portage. He went ahead. He used to travel on foot like the rest of us.
When he got to the creek there were two or three carts upset and one of
the oxen was drowning in the creek. He jumped in and took the ox by the
horns and held his nose above the water. When I got there I jumped in
and loosened the hauling pins used for the trace. There was a strap about
18 inches long with an iron bolt on the end of it, and that iron bolt went
into a hole in the shaft of the cart. It was held in place by a string of
shagginappi (buffalo rawhide). We unhitched the ox and led him out
of the water. The ox had got off the ford into deep water. After getting
the ox out of the creek we got the whole bunch across without more trouble
and camped for the night. Then we came to Bad Woods. It was a piece
of bush about a mile and a half long and the trees were big, and it had
been travelled on so much that it was worked down into very bad ruts.
You could not straddle a rut with a single steer that you could with a
double yoke. It was a beastly hot day, and it took us all day to get about
three miles. When we got out of the bush in the open we camped. I said
to Capt. Moore: 'These steers have been about a week in harness. They
are now pretty well broke, but they are teetotally fatigued. Give them a
day or two's rest and they'll go a-whooping'. Moore took my advice. There
was a saddle mare in the outfit, a bay. She was a blooded running horse,
just fast enough to lose money on, but she was a cracking good saddle
horse, and Moore took her and rode back to Portage to put in the time
there while our oxen were resting.
"The only hotel at Portage at that time was one kept by a man named
Lyons. Moore and Lyons were chummy. We stayed three days giving
the oxen a good rest and on the fourth day we struck out without waiting
for Moore. We had gone four or five miles when Moore and Lyons caught
up to us with a democrat wagon. They had a ten gallon keg with five
gallons of Hudson Bay rum in it. We filled the keg up with water at Pine
Creek and made the five gallons of rum into ten. When we came to Boggy
Creek west of Carberry we had to go clean across that boggy plain. Moore
said, 'How the devil are we going to get across Tom'" It was like the
bed of an old river heaved up with a bog. I had provided 4 planks, 16
feet long and a foot wide, blocks and 300 feet of inch rope. We put a
deadman on the west side of the bog. A deadman is a hole or trench with
a log in it to hitch onto. We brought the boiler down to the edge and
strung planks under the wheels. We hitched the rope to the end of the
tongue with a block over onto the deadman on the other side. The yoke
of cattle was on the other end of the rope. We drew our heavy loaded
wagons over the muskeg by changing the planks two at a time ahead of
the wheels and in this way we took all our wagons across without mishap.
We crossed the River Assiniboine right where the town of Brandon now
sits. It was called the Rapids. We took the trail up the river, up to
within 9 miles of Fort Ellice, which would be about 50 or 60 miles. That
is where the Qu'Appelle River enters into the Assiniboine, but we did not
go into Fort Ellice. When we got within about 9 miles west of it, we
struck out for Fort Qu'Appelle.
"The Indians were then assembled at Fort Qu'Appelle with 400 or 500
tepees for the treaty that was negotiated by the Dominion Government
in 1874. This was a treaty with the Sioux, Stonies and Crees. We heard
on the road that the Indians intended to stop us. Captain Moore had a
shot gun, a repeating rifle and a revolver and lots of ammunition. He
said 'We will go as far as we can'. He was a quiet~mannered, good-
hearted man, 6 feet or more tall and fair complexioned. I liked him; in
fact I never thought so much of a man in my life as I did of Captain Moore.
You would not know he was Irish from his talk. The only wild and woolly
thing about him was his leggings to keep his pants from wearing out. He
was fond of his bed in the morning; he never would get up. He slept in
the commissary department where our grub was, and he slept in there
so we would not come into contact with the 'creepers' of former campers
on the old camp grounds. I had to leave a camp one day. We were all
having our dinner in a tent as it was raining; we usually had to tent on
the old camp grounds, and Jack McKenzie said: 'We will get some com-
pany here'. I was not looking for them until I saw one climbing up my
pants leg. Moore saw it! We were as lousy as wolves when we got to
Prince Albert. Sometimes the trail was not very plain. We kept going
on in the direction of Touchwood Hills and came in on to the old Hudson
Bay Fort. The Salt Plain was about 40 miles across. We had to carry
wood and water. The north side of the Salt Plain is about 40 miles south
and west of Humboldt; we were 40 miles without any brush. In one place
in the centre of the plain the alkali got three or four inches deep. It was
pure white dust. Moore left us on the east or south side of the plains
to go to Prince Albert to get fresh oxen, riding his saddle horse.
"We had not a spare hoof; all our oxen were hitched to loads and
some of them were now commencing to get footsore; Moore came back and
met us between Gabriel's Crossing and Humboldt. Gabriel was a man who
had a ferry on the South Saskatchewan. It was the furthest up-crossing
but we did not cross there; we crossed at Batoche. Moore came back with
three or four head of cattle; with him were old man Wm. Miller, a Scotch-
man from Huron, Adam McBeth and Bill Delworth, formerly of Huron
County and High Bluff, Manitoba. I had met Miller and Delworth in
Manitoba. From the time we met them we had lots of help to bring the
outfit in and had no more trouble. We crossed the South Branch of the
Saskatchewan at Batoche, crossing on the old ferry. I will give you an
idea of how we had to handle that ferry. It was a small sized one capable
of hauling four carts of freighters outfit. On loading Capt. Moore's boiler,
we had to go very careful to balance the ferry. After we got the boiler on
the ferry we had to tow it several hundred yards. We had to track it up
stream with a line, then strike for the other shore and row. By the time
we got to the other shore, we would be two or three hundred yards down
from where we wanted to land, and then we would have to track back
again for the next load. The ferry was a flatboat built of spruce lumber
whipsawed. We had a very high bank to climb on the north side of the
river at Batoche, and we had to put on six yoke of oxen to take the boiler
up. From Batoche to Prince Albert we made good time on a good trail.
The trail was partly used by the Hudson's Bay Company, but more par-
ticularly by the Presbyterian Mission, and by what few settlers there
were, because the trail proper for the Hudson Bay Fort would come from
Canton to Prince Albert instead of by way of Batoche. We finished our
Journey in Prince Albert where the present site of the Prince Albert
Lumber Company's Mill is. We landed there with Capt. Moore's saw
and grist mill plant on the last day of September, 1875, which was just
two months from the day we started from Winnipeg.
"Captain Moore's mill was delivered in Prince Albert but was not as
complete as what the manufacturer could have delivered it. He got it
from Goldie & McCullough of Galt. It was an outfit for a steam stone
mill, 25 horse power engine, and 40 horse power boiler. Owing to the ex-
cessive freight the plant was not complete. Moore was worth twenty-five
or thirty thousand dollars, and he put it all in this enterprise. He said
to me: 'If I don't make something out of this I am busted'. I saw he had
a heart in him as big as an ox. He was an unassuming man; he would
take a handful of pemmican out of the sack, and throw it into his mouth
the same as an Indian, when he had to. All the main belt pulleys to drive
the combined outfit were lacking, to save freight. We whipsawed lumber,
and Jack McKenzie made the pulleys in the winter out of the whipsawed
boards. Jack McKenzie was an engine driver from Nova Scotia. He
camp up to drive the engine and he finally turned out to be full superintend-
ent of the little plant. Broadly speaking, the site of Capt. Moore's mill was
right on the site of the present mill. We dug down five or six feet at the
river bank and put the first story of the mill down in the hole, the base-
ment.
"The sawing department was on the second deck, and the grist mill
was attached on the upper side of the sawmill above ground. There was
one run of stones. The sawmill run in the summer, and the grist mill in
the winter. They would shut the sawmill down when they commenced
to grind wheat. By the time the mill was ready to operate it would cost
about $30,000; it was his pile. Three years afterwards Capt. Moore took
in D. H. McDowall. Ultimately Tom McKay got the old mill. Capt. Moore
was wounded at Duck Lake. He lost his leg in the fight and owing to his
sore leg he could not stand the climate and went back to Ireland. After
he had been there a couple of years he came out again and I went to meet
him. I could not help but cry to see him. He was hobbling along on a
stick and the tears were in his eyes. He said, 'These fellows have been
living in luxury in Saskatchewan while I have been begging in Ireland;
I never got a nickel out of this thing'; Moore and McDowall never got
anything out of the mill; the Bank of Ottawa never got anything; the
Prince Albert Company got it.
"I actually had to cry when I met that man. He was one of those fel-
lows who tumbled quick. As I told you, he would not hire me at first
when I tried him because he thought I was an American. Old country
people are peculiar in a way. The first winter we were going to take
logs out-Bill Leittell and I-we had a yoke of oxen; Leittell was driv-
ing the ox team; Alex Lowden and Moore were ahead with a horse and
fiat sleigh. We camped with old Robinson the miner, just west of the
third meridian on the Saskatchewan for dinner. When we got around to
what they used to call the smoking tent which was by Mrs. Kennedy's
west of Prince Albert, I hoofed it up on foot and left the others to come
on. They called it the smoking tent because the Indians used to smoke
the pipe there. Moore and Lowden were there half an hour ahead of me.
They had the tea kettle boiled. Moore said to me, 'Where is Leittell"'
I said, 'With the oxen-they are coming along.' He said, 'Why did you
not stop with him"' I said, 'One man is enough to drive your cattle.' The
sack with the pemmican and bannock was lying on the floor between
Captain Moore and Lowden, and they were starting to eat their lunch.
Moore takes up a piece of bannock and hands it to me. I said, 'No, I am
not a dog, I eat the same as other people eat, or not at all.' Then he got
another cup from the old miner, and passed the sack to me. He did not
treat me right then. It was not Canadian. He handed the bannock to
me instead of letting me help myself.
"Peter Hourie built the log building which stands in the yard as part
of the Kennedy farm. Peter was a clean living man. I camped with Peter
on the South Saskatchewan. We camped and he put up a good prayer
right in the open. In those days it was sometimes difficult to get a plough
point fixed or an axe ground. Peter Hourie had two grindstones; I
tried to buy one of them, but couldn't get it. The first deal I had with
Peter was buying an ox from him. At the time, cash was of very little
good. You could buy much more with furs, produce, etc., than you could
with cash. We set a date to kill the ox and I went down to Peter's; Moore
was going to take half of the ox and I was going to keep the other half
of the meat for myself. I took my ox and cart with me to bring away
Moore's meat and mine. The ox was killed buffalo fashion. The guts
were taken out and were lying on the ground. Peter was pulling out the
kidney tallow, and I said the kidney tallow went with the meat. He
was pulling it out with the guts. He said, 'Take it or leave it.' I could
not help myself. I went to cut the head off. He unjointed the head just
behind the ears. I said, 'The half of the head goes with the neck any-
how.' Peter said, 'Take it or leave it.'
"There was a farming settlement in 1876. The grist mill was started
in the course of the year 1876. She would grind probably 25,000 bushels
of wheat and five or six thousand bushels of barley that year. Old Jack
McKenzie would blend the barley with the wheat. The barley was not a
good flour by itself but mixed with wheat flour it was passable. The
Hudson's Bay had a big run on the wheat. They wanted to send it to the
north of Green Lake in 1876. The Mounted Police came in from Pelly.
The Board of Works was at Battleford. Moore got a market for his
surplus product; for three or four years he supplied the Mounted Police
at Battleford.
"There was a certain amount of economy in mixing barley flour with
the wheat. For the Indian trade the barley would be mixed with the
wheat flour, but the flour that was supplied to the Mounted Police was a
better kind than that supplied to the Indians, because it was straight
wheat flour. Flour would bring $10 a sack in '75-76-77. In '78 it cost
something less. Flour was brought in from Minnesota from '75 to '78. It
was brought down from Moorehead, N. D., in flatboats or in steamboats.
"The first boat to come up the Saskatchewan River wintered in the
mouth of Shell River, three miles above Prince Albert. It was a Hudson's
Bay Company boat. I think it was the Lily or the Northcote. That was
in the year 1875. She would bring up merchandise to Carlton, which
was the principal distributing centre up there then, but after 1875 they
began to change the distributing centre from Canton to Prince Albert.
They commenced to build warehouses and to enlarge their store and stock
at Prince Albert about 1878. At the first election we had here, Captain
Moore and Lawrence Clarke ran. Captain Moore ran against Lawrence
Clarke in '80 or '81. I made a speech in that election over in Jimmy
Griever's old house. There was nothing particular in that election from
a political point of view. A great many thought that Captain Moore had
his individual capital invested in the settlement and that he was enter-
prising, and that his interests were more identical with ours than those
of the Hudson Bay Company's store. One thing I said in a speech I
made was that when Captain Moore's mill was getting constructed and
before it was completed, some of those who were now his opponents told
their children who were crying for bread that they would get bread as
soon as Mr. Moore's mill was running. I got credit for that speech.
Clarke won but did not have anything to blow about. The half-breed vote
went with Clarke. Tom Agnew and the old pioneers were with Moore.
I scrutineered for Moore. Lawrence Clarke was in the polling booth, and
Charley Mair. Mair said to Clarke, referring to me, 'He is giving you
the law in a nutshell.' Fred Myers was returning officer. The question
was whether we would let a man back in the polling booth a second time.
Captain Moore died in Ireland about two years ago (1910).
"If Lawrence Clarke thought anything of you there was nothing in
his great big heart good enough for you. If he did not think very much
of you he would not try and crush you as he was able to do, but he would
give you to understand quick that you had differences, and they were not
yet settled. You could not browbeat him.
GOVERNOR ROYAL AT THE RIDGE.
"I will tell you what I did with Clarke when Governor Royal came
down here the first time. There was a citizens' committee of 16 mem-
bers to receive him and present him with an address. Lawrence Clarke
and John Stewart were on it. I wanted two or three of that sixteen to
be farmers. They all kicked. Clarke and Stewart could not carry the tide I
against us, so Clarke came driving up from the Hudson Bay and was
standing on the street and he sees me. Clarke says, 'Come here; I came
down to talk to you. They are shelving you farmers, but by God you
have Lawrence Clarke behind you. I will see that the Governor gives you
farmers of the Ridge an audience. All you have to do is to call on Law-
rence Clarke at the Hudson Bay store and he will get you what you want.'
I did not stop for the banquet, but my brother Bill did. I did not hear
anything about the audience. We organized a committee to receive the
Governor at the Ridge, and the idea was that we would receive him at
the schoolhouse. The Governor was to arrive at 11 o'clock, and Bill said
he would not go as we were not in a position to receive the man, and we
should only be like a lot of cattle and would be tramped on. I said it would
be all right, and he said, 'What will you do"' I said, 'I will make a dinner
and receive them if you will back me up.' He said, 'I will do so.' When
I went to my wife and said, 'Do you think you can cook a dinner by to-
morrow at 11 o'clock, so that instead of the Governor meeting the people
at the schoolhouse he can meet them right here"' She says, 'Go and get
Mrs. Poacha and we can do it.' So I went to get Mrs. Poacha, who was
a rattling good cook, belonging to the mixed breed. She and my wife
went to work that afternoon and next day at 10 o'clock they had a table
set for 40 people in that house (pointing to a building which was visible
from a window of the room in which we were sitting). That house was
built in 1880. It is not my first house; I dumped my belongings first on
the prairie on June 8, 1876. I had a yoke of steers and a cart, 100 pounds
of pemmican, two sacks of flour, a jack-knife and a tea kettle. I had no
capital; I had no money. This is called the Ridge school district.
"Well, on the day of the reception the first to come along was Jack
Betts and Royal, the Governor. Jack Betts (Hon. Speaker Betts subse-
quently), was holding the lines, with the Governor beside him. He said,
'Where is the crowd, Tom"' I said, 'At the flag down there, that is where
the crowd is.' Royal looked and then said, 'Get in here on my lap.' Jack
did not want me to get in, but Royal drew the rug back, and I got in and
sat on his lap. We drove down to the schoolhouse, and waited, and it
was ten minutes before Clarke and Stewart came down. Clarke said, 'Is
this the way we are going to be treated"' I said, 'Let us drive down to
the house.' He said, 'Are we going to have it in your house"' I said, 'I
may be presumptuous, but I have a spread for you all at my house.' He
jumped out of the rig, and when he saw the spread he said, 'I never met
your wife, but if there is anything inside the Hudson Bay store that you
ever want just say you want it and there it is for you.' Royal's daughter
was also there, and it pleased her and the Governor to see the dinner laid
out. We all sat down to the tables. John Betts was a member of the
House at the time. I put Lawrence Clarke at the Governor's right hand.
It cost me about $40, and I shouldered the whole dam thing.
CAPTAIN MOORE ON A HUNTING TRIP.
"In the spring of '77 wheat was worth $2.50 to $3.00. The first horse
power came in in '78. My brother Bill and I brought in the first thresh-
ing machine. It was a ten-horsepower. I ordered it straight through
from John Abel of Woodbridge, Ontario. It came in on two wagons.
"Clarke was a good man. He was despotic, but he was a combination
of humanity and impulsiveness. Moore was retiring. He was Irish.
Clarke could take all the flattery you would give. That would annoy
Moore. Captain Moore first came up into this country in the winter of
1873-74 on a hunting expedition, and made his home with Jimmy Stevens,
who was then trading for the Boyd firm in Winnipeg. He is now out
by Lac La Rouge. They hunted, and hunted, and their grub was all
ex-hausted. It was a cold winter and deep snow. Finally they ran across
an old scabby buffalo bull in a bluff. It could not go any further. This
was in the winter away on near Christmas. They killed the bull and cut
him up. Then Moore wanted to go out and hunt for more, but the Indians
and half-breeds who formed his party, wanted to stop and have a big
pow-wow and feast while the bull lasted. They said they would not go
on until the old bull was eaten up. Moore stepped out one morning and
nearly fell over a dog. He had moccasins on. He gave the dog a h-l of
a kick, and pretty nearly broke the toes off his foot. The dog was frozen
to death and as hard as rock, a bad thing to kick with moccasins on.
"Moore had to go to Clarke to get money. Moore left Prince Albert
with a horse and carry-all and got at last up somewhere about Stony
Lake. It was one or two o'clock in the morning when he got to Fort
Carlton. The dogs raised hell. Clarke lifted a window and hollered out to
see who it was prowling around the stockade, and he ordered him off, no
matter who it was. Moore unhitched, turned his horses into a haystack,
went to a blacksmith shop outside the stockade, blew up a fire, and laid
down in his blanket in the forge and stopped there until morning, be-
cause Lawrence Clarke would not let him in. Moore introduced himself
next morning, and I think possibly this was the first time that Moore and
Clarke met. If it was not the first time it was the second."
Bibliography follows:
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