Some of these pioneer stories are we believe unique. They are given
in the language in which they were told to the writer, and are devoid of
any embellishment or coloring. They will be found interesting now; in
fifty years when all the participators in the events narrated have passed
away they will be priceless.
THE LATE SENATOR DAVIS.
"I was born in Sherrington, County of Napierville, Quebec. I came
to Winnipeg in 1879, through Detroit, Chicago and St. Paul, over the old
Manitoba and St. Paul road. The railroad was just getting to St. Boni-
face; I left Sherrington by myself. I stayed in Winnipeg two or three
weeks. I crossed the river on the old cable ferry and went to a little hotel.
It was a little old board shack and was on the ground that the Winnipeg
Hotel now stands on in Main Street. It was run by a man by the name
of MeEwen. The old Davis House was on the Main Street where the Mc-
Intyre Block is. It was an old building with a pitched roof; was 1-1/2 story
high. The old Hudson Bay Fort was there with palisades and store houses,
and everything was in its original state. There were cannon and every-
thing else in the fort. The city was just a straggling street of shacks and
little board houses. The most pretentious building in the city was the
little old Queen's Hotel. There were just a few straggling buildings at
the back of the Main Street and all back of it was simply like a swamp.
A TWO THOUSAND MILE WALK.
"I remember going out to shoot ducks right in the heart of the present
Winnipeg. I shot ducks not half a mile from where the present City Hall
stands. I went up the Red River shooting one day and killed wild pigeons
where Fort Rouge now is. The larger portion of the inhabitants around
Winnipeg were half-breeds and Indians. That piece of property now oc-
cupied by the C. N. R. yards and shops and everything else was all cov-
ered with willow brush, with a lot of half-breeds and Indians camping
there all down the fiat. It was a favorite camping place for Indians. I
left Winnipeg and went across the plains to Fort McLeod in Southern
Alberta, having hired on a survey party in Winnipeg. I think the sur-
veyor's name was Stewart. We left Winnipeg with six or seven ponies and
carts loaded with provisions, but walked all the way because the carts
were loaded right up to capacity. We saw lots of buffalo, and the half-
breeds and Indians were killing them quite recklessly. We ran across a
lot of half-breeds on the plains. We followed the old cart trail by Wood
Mountain and Cypress Hills. I did not stay very long and came back dur-
ing the summer with a couple of ex-mounted policemen. The name of one
wa~ Dawson. It was a wet season. There was lots of rain and thunder
storms and the rivers and streams were full. We had to ford a lot of
creeks and streams. We had two carts and two ponies. I got back to
Winnipeg after having been away about four months, travelling about
2000 miles, walking all the way.
RUN INTO LAKE BY A BUFFALO BULL.
"We never thought of riding in a rig those days. I worked around
Winnipeg, and in the spring of '80 I formed a partnership with a fellow
to start a store out at Stony Mountain. The C. P. R. was grading out
there. All the land at Stony Mountain was a big swamp. My partner's
name was Joe Curren who came from Oak River, Manitoba. He is now in
business in hardware in Brandon. We purchased an old sorrel horse and
a wagon and a grocery outfit with a tent, etc. My partner had been
out on the plains. We bought some goods in Winnipeg and started out to
keep a tent store at Stony Mountain. All the country around Stony Moun-
tain was a big morass, a swamp partially covered with water.
"In trying to cross over the swamp to get to Stony Mountain we got
stuck in a slough, and I remember old Col. Bedson, the Warden of Stony
Mountain, came out in a buggy and a team of horses, and he hitched the
back of his buggy to our horses and helped us to get out of the mud-hole.
They had the rails laid out as far as Stony Mountain. I went into Winni-
peg one night and the water was so deep on the railroad that it put tbe
fire out in the engine, and we had to get out and wade through the water.
Col. Bedson had a band of buffaloes prowling around. My friend Curren
started to keep the little store we had. I had a barber-shop in connection;
then I took a pack and started to peddle around the country, as we were
not doing enough business in the store.
ON THE TRAIL TO FORT ELLICE.
"I remember one day a buffalo bull ran me into the lake, pack and all,
and I had to stay there about an hour until he went away. In about a
month I sold my share of the whole business to Curren and went back to
Winnipeg. I hired to another surveyor to go out into the Fort Ellice coun-
try. I forget his name. As I could talk French he employed me to go
out and buy horses for his outfit. I went to Fort Norbert to Solomon
Ben's place. He is now ranching in the Birch Hills, Sask. He went out
and brought in a big band of horses and I bought seven horses out of the
bunch. We started out for Fort Ellice with seven carts. Our grub con-
sisted of black tea, boiled in a big black kettle, no milk, no sugar, hard
tack, bread and salt bacon. I was appointed hunter for the party, being
the only one who possessed a shot gun. I had a gun I had bought for $4
of a Jew in Main Street, Winnipeg. I kept the outfit pretty well supplied
with ducks. We went out to Portage La Prairie from Winnipeg by Head-
ingly, and from there by Rat Creek where Kenneth McKenzie was living
in a log house; then we went by Pine Creek where Carberry is now,
through the hills and on up to Rapid City; from there to Shoal Lake, which
was then in the North West Territories. It had not yet been included in
Manitoba. There was a North West Mounted Police Post there and the
Police came and searched our carts for liquor. From there we went to
Birtle. There was not a settler between Shoal Lake and Birtle, and that
would be a matter of 25 miles without a homesteader. We crept up to-
wards Birtle in the evening.
MEETS BROTHER.
"We saw a man riding in a cart coming down the trail. He had a little
red pony. He was dressed in overalls and we stopped and talked with
him and asked him where he was going. He said he was going to Winni-
peg. He had left the North West Mounted Police and was going to buy
an outfit. After talking for a considerable length of time I discovered
that he was a brother of mine. He had been seven years in the Mounted
Police and we were so changed that we did not know each other. He was
so anxious that I go back to Winnipeg with him that I got the surveyor
to let me off, and I went back to Winnipeg with him. At Winnipeg my
brother wanted me to go to Prince Albert district with him, so we pur-
chased a pair of wild steers and a big yoke of oxen and five carts and
wagons. After we got the oxen we took them down to Main Street to buy
harness; we went to a harness maker by the name of Stocker and pur-
chased some harness, and the man who came out and fitted the collars on
our oxen was E. W. Hutchings who became the great North West sad-
dlery man. We broke in the steers ourselves, and bought a lot of merchan-
dise of all kinds, and loaded the carts and wagons. We had a young fel-
low with us named Bob Fish, whose father I knew in Montreal.
We three struck out for Saskatchewan on a Saturday evening. On
the first night we camped near old Sandy Murray's. We had a great time
with the wild steers, and it was raining very hard; I rolled up in my
blanket and got under the cart. When I woke up in the morning I was
lying in six inches of water; that was in September '80. We got to Port-
age all right, but from there to Rat Creek and on through the bush to the
place known then as McKinnon's at Pine Creek, it was a continual case
of stick and unload and reload the carts. Sometimes we did not make
three miles. a day.
ON THE OLD CARLTON TRAIL; ROUGH GOING.
"From there we went over the Old Carlton cart trail to Rapid City.
We joined in with a French half-breed family; the half-breed was a man
With long red whiskers. This man was moving out to Batoche. He had
two ponies, a cow and three carts. The cow drew a cart and he milked
her every night. We got to Fort Ellice after a lot of hard work. We
crossed the Assiniboine River there. It took us two days to get up the
Fort Ellice Hill. We went out by the way of the Wolverine muskeg back
of Ellice down to the Cut Arm Creek. There was no settlement at all
west of Ellice. We went on through the Pheasant Plains. The country
was full of water from one end to the other and the creeks were bank
high. On the Pheasant Plains at one place we were a whole day getting
over a creek. We ran across two priests with a lot of flour. They were
wet to their waists. They had been to Fort Ellice for the flour and were
taking it to a mission some place in the File Hills. When we left Fort
Ellice we went through the File Hills and the Touchwood Hills and we
did not see a so~ except these two priests.
"We once worked on Pheasant Plains for three days in sight of a little
bluff, loading and unloading and carrying stuff on our backs out of the
mud. When we got to Fort Ellice we ran across Chas. Nolin; he had just
located in Touchwood Hills. He had been Minister of Agriculture for
Manitoba. There were two or three families of half-breeds settled around
Touchwood Hills and three miles west of the Fort was a trader named
Rae. We stopped there in passing. There was a boy there then who is
still in the Touchwood Hills. His name was Wolff Huhlbach. After we
left Huhlbach's we crossed through Touchwood Hills by the Indian farm
where the Instructor was and from there on we travelled until we came
to the edge of the great Salt Plain that included the territory south of
the Quill Lakes, bordered on one side by Humboldt. Quill Lake is on
the north, Touchwood on the east and the big Humboldt plain on the west
and the place where Nokomis and Watrous are is on the south. The lake
at Watrous was known as Devil's Lake. It was about 40 miles across
this plain. It was covered with grass and large lakes and tracts of alkali
and we had an awful time getting through it.
"At one place in the middle of the plain we got stuck. We tried to
pull the wagon out but failed. The oxen got mired and we unhitched and
unloaded the wagon. We had to take the wagon to pieces. We took the
wheels off to get it out of the mud. It took us ten days to get across that
plain. It was hard work day and night. Along the trail we occasionally
met half-breed freighters going down for freight. They were Hudson
Bay people. After crossing the plain and before we got to Humboldt we
met a freighter who was a great traveller. He is now a church of Eng-
land missionary at Onion Lake. His name was Matheson. After we got
to Humboldt we struck the old telegraph station on the edge of the plain
about five miles west of the present town of Humboldt. It was the line
that ran from Winnipeg to Edmonton. We followed the old survey of the
C. P. R. made in Alexander McKenzie's regime. When we got to this
place we found a large shanty on the edge of the bush. There was a man
there by the name of Weldon. He and his wife and his wife's sister were
living there. His wife was the operator, and the husband was the re-
pairer of the line. We met Jack Leittell who died years ago. He was in
charge of the line there. We had a little whiskey with us and they had
not had any for a long time. We had a good time there. From there we
trekked across the Old Canton trail to Batoche, over what are now known
as the Hoodoo Plains. We passed what is called the Hill of the Cross.
"There was a hill there on the edge of the plain with a cross on the
top. We were informed by the half-breeds that the cross was put there
over a girl who had committed suicide. She was a half-breed girl. Her
people had refused to let her marry the man she wanted. It was a great
big cross about 10 or 12 feet high, made of birch logs. The girl's name
was on it,-carved on it-Miss McKay. She was about nineteen years old,
I think. Her people were out trapping and hunting; she poisoned herself.
That cross would be between Humboldt and Bruno. I saw it several times
afterwards. The last time I saw it was 21 years ago.
BATOCHE.
"We got to Batoche. Mr. Batoche was there. He had a big store piled
up with stuff for trade with the Indians. It was a swell house for that
country. He had a big staff of servants, and he entertained us royally.
He was a French half-breed. His proper name was Letandre, but he
was nick-named Batoche. Batoche is an Indian word. He was a great
trader and very wealthy. They were all half-breeds except the carpenter
who had been building his house. His name was Garoud and he is now
living near Bellevue. The post office was named after him-Garoud Post
Office. He crossed the ferry at Batoche. It was run by Alex. Fisher who
was afterwards supposed to be Lieutenant Governor under Louis Riel;
he was a little dark man. The mode of crossing the river in those days
was to track (tow) the ferry up. A man got in the boat with a pole, and
another man got a long rope and tracked it away up the river; then he
would load on three or four carts, push the ferry out, and start with two
big oars and row, and so he kept going across. He would keep going
down-down-down and would take us a mile down the stream before we
landed on the other side. Then you had to track the ferry back again
with a rope up stream. The ferry was a scow made of lumber that had
been whip sawed at Batoche. There were not many saw mills in the
country then. Around Batoche we found a large settlement of half-breeds.
They had a lot of cattle, and raised grain. They had wheat, oats and
barley and potatoes. They were all French half-breeds. From Batoche
we struck down to Prince Albert and got there about the first week in
November, having been about two months on the road.
THE PIONEER TOWN OF PRINCE ALBERT.
"The town of Prince Albert then was built on what was called the
Porter property. Dr. Porter came in the year before from Nova Scotia
and he started the town. St. Mary's Church was there, and Bishop Mc-
Lean erected the Emanuel College that year. There was a little town then,
part of which had been built that summer. Jimmy Ashdown of Winni-
peg and Tom Agnew had started a hardware store and a man named Smith
had a tailor shop. We opened a store there too. There was a blacksmith
named Plaxton, whose brother was afterwards a member of the Legisla-
ture. We also had a firm of contractors called Bishop & Coombs. Every-
body cooked for himself. We were all bachelors. Down on the fiat was
Charles Mair who had a store, and a little further was a man named Bill
Delworth. Charles Mair was the poet and author of Tecumseh. The
next house down close to the bank of the river was a log store kept by
Stobbart & Eden. It was a store or trading post. The next building to
that down the river was a shack with a thatched roof belonging to Sandy
McBeth. It was about where Gilmore's furniture store is now (1910). It
was out on the line of the river where River Street now is. There was
nothing back of the river front; the buildings were strung out along the
river.
"Down farther from Sandy McBeth was the old Mission Church, a
little log Presbyterian Church. An old man named Cevright was the
preacher. He was a sort of circuit rider. He used to ride on a pony going
around preaching. The old Presbyterian mission house was on the corner
of what is now known as Central Avenue and River Street. It had a pal-
isade around it. Away on the hill above Prince Albert was an old wind
mill built of rough logs and frame and this was used by the settlers to
grind their grain. There were a few scattering white people back on
the Red Deer Hill, but the first real settlers came in in 1879. William
Miller and Capt. Moore had a little grist mill which was brought in that
year and down at the lower end of the town at what was now known as
Prince Albert East, the Hudson's Bay had a trading post, and Lawrence
Clarke was the factor. He was the absolute ruler of all the breeds. Old
Philip Turner was in charge of the post. Lawrence Clarke lived at Carl-
ton; he would come down in a buckboard with a half-breed driving, and a
couple more following him and a bunch of loose horses behind so he could
change horses. On the hill at the east end of the town was old Bill Miller
who came in in 78, and who drove all the way from Huron, Ontario. He
came through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Dakota and Manitoba
right up to the Saskatchewan with wagons. He died about 1907. The
party consisted of himself, three sons and a brother who is also dead, but
the sons are still living in the Prince Albert district. At Red Deer Hill
were old George Glester and Big Joe Coombs who is dead now. He was
one of the men whom Riel had as a prisoner in the first Rebellion. There
was a lot of wheat grown that year. When we got in we found big fields
of wheat there, but it was pretty nearly all frozen. The half-breeds were
growing it, and also the English speaking people, who had come in. Down
in what Is now known as Colliston, and which was then known as the
Lower Flat, there was quite a colony of English speaking people. There
was Lestock Reid the surveyor, and his nephews, and a family named
McFadden, and a chap named Bartlett, who is now dead. The wheat
was sold to Capt. Moore who ground it up and sold it to the Indian De-
partment to feed the Indians.
THE FIRST WINTER; DANCED TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS.
"The first winter that I wintered there I went across the river after
the river was frozen up. I went with a man who came out with Smith
the tailor and who was named Dan Wilson. We took a yoke of oxen
over, and built ourselves a shanty, and dug a well. We put a mud chimney
on the shanty. We had a log stable for our oxen built right in the bush.
I lived there all winter getting out logs and hauling in wood which we
traded to the Hudson's Bay Company for flour. There was a mounted
police detachment here in charge of Sergeant Harry Keenan; there were
about eight policemen. Among them were S. J. Donaldson, afterwards
the local member of Prince Albert, and Jos. Hannifin now real estate
man, and W. C. Ramsey, now a business man in Prince Albert, and some
boys who have left.
"In that winter that I put in in the bush, I assisted in getting out the
logs for the first Methodist church which was built in Goshen. The mis-
sionary's name was Whiteside. The settlers got out logs and built the
church. Myself (T. 0. Davis) and Kate Hayes, (Mrs. Simpson) were the
chief performers. Kate played the organ, and I did the singing; she was
governess for Surveyor Lestock Reid's children. Kate came in that fall.
I sang some Irish songs: 'Never Take the Horse Shoe From the Door',
'The Old Wooden Bucket', etc. That winter we organized penny readings
and we used to give concerts. Up the river near Emanuel College was an
Englishman, J. J. Campbell; he came out from Calcutta, and he became
chief clerk in the Indian Department in Ottawa. He was generally chair-
man of our penny readings. He was farming at the time. We also had
lots of dancing. There were half-breeds. I attended one half-breed wed-
ding that winter. We danced two days and two nights. The half-breed's
name was Andrew J. McKay.
SITTING BULL'S INDIANS; AN AWFUL SCARE.
"There was a large band of Sioux Indians camping across the river
that fall. They had run over from Dakota after the Custer massacre.
They had all kinds of things they got in the massacre. They had their
children all dressed in blue clothes made out of the soldiers' uniforms and
all covered over with brass bugles and ornaments they had taken from the
soldiers' caps and helmets. They had all kinds of jewelry, watches, etc.,
they had taken off the dead soldiers. They used to keep up a pow-wow
all night long. I attended a feast there that winter when all the Indians
killed a white dog. I tasted the dog, but it did not taste good.
"I remember one night I got an awful scare; on coming into Barracks
from the woods, I came upon an Indian encampment. I saw something
up a tree. It was a dead Indian in the branches of the tree, frozen stiff.
They kept him there all winter and buried him in the spring. He was
wrapped up in an old blanket and his face was visible and his feet. It
was a ghastly looking thing. The thing was right over my head. It was
a bright night; I could see him quite plainly.
DROVE NINE CARTS.
"Next spring I hired out with two contractors here (Bishop &
Coombs)
and assisted in building a lot of log houses in the Colliston district on
the Lower Flat. Some of the houses are standing there yet.
"In June, 1881, I purchased a trading outfit consisting of nine
carts
and oxen and started freighting on my own account to Fort Ellice, a
Hudson's Bay post on the Assiniboine River. I used to cart the stuff from
Fort Ellice and back that summer. I walked every step of the way both
ways. I drove the carts all myself, (9 carts) I was alone. I hitched and
unhitched four or five times a day. The harness was a shaganappi har-
ness made out of rawhide. They were made out of ox hide soaked in water
and cut in strips. The lead ox was a better judge of a soft place than I
was. He was a white ox, and his name was Wabascow which means
'White' in Indian. I had him leading with all the rest tied behind, the
whole nine in a string. When he came to a soft place he would stop and
look up and down and turn up the coulee or down as the case might be,
according to his judgment. He would go very slow crossing a soft place
so as not to mire those behind him. His intelligence was really remark-
able. He knew his business.
SHOEING OXEN.
"The last trip that I made to Fort Ellice, I left Fort Ellice for home
after the snow fell and I had to make 400 miles. It froze up. I had an
old fellow named Jaxon with me. He came from Wingham, Ont. He was
only with me the second time coming home. We had to wade the rivers
with snow on the ground. We slept under the carts on these trips or in
front of a big fire, which we would make when we could get wood. We
would charge about $5.OO a hundred for freighting from Fort Ellice. The
freight consisted of all kinds of merchandise such as tea, sugar, bacon,
and a little dry goods and clothing. When we got to Wolverine Creek
about six miles from where Humboldt is now we found the creek frozen
but the ice was not strong enough to carry the carts. We had to chop
the ice on the creeks. We had in all, with Jaxon's outfit and mine, 25
carts; Jaxon had one man with him. The man and I had to get into the
water, and work over our knees in the water because the creeks were
all frozen, and we had no shoes on the oxen. We had to get hold of the
wheels of the carts and lift them to help the oxen with the loads up the
hill. Jaxon's carts had ponies, not oxen. When we got them all through
Wolverine Creek we had to go two miles to get to where there was wood.
My pants were frozen stiff. I could not bend my knees until Jaxon built
a fire to thaw us out. Jaxon's man, who was a breed, was in the same fix.
"That was where I tried my first hand at shoeing oxen. At the Tele-
graph Station at Humboldt four of my oxen were worn out, and could not
travel. Their feet were worn out on the hard frozen ground and so I
undertook the work of shoeing the oxen, which was something I had never
seen done before, but I had heard of it. I rigged up a piece of iron I had
on the carts and found an old hoop of a coal oil barrel near the mail sta-
tion, and I made shoes out of that and shod the four oxen. I did that
on a Sunday. I had some nails with me. I had to shoe these oxen or stay
there all winter. The shell of an ox's hoof is thin and the nails going
the least bit on one side would lame him, but I made a good job of it, and
they came home all right. It was late in the winter before we got home
and we had a hard time. It was quite cold weather by the time we got to
the South Saskatchewan crossing. The ice was frozen sufficiently hard
for us to cross it. From the time I left Fort Ellice until it froze up bard
at Humboldt, I laid down every night in my clothes, rolled up in my blanket
wringing wet, and went to sleep. We were kept quite busy because we
had to bake our own bread, mend our own harness, and sometimes mend
our carts. We got to Prince Albert at the latter end of November, ragged,
dirty, and lousy; I turned my oxen loose in a pile of straw, and burned
my clothes for obvious reasons. I put them in the stove. I brought in a
lot of freight for myself including coal oil. I got that at the Hudson's Bay
Company at Fort Ellice. It brought $5 a gallon at Prince Albert. Salt
was 25" a pound; needles were S" apiece. I wintered that winter in Prince
Albert. We had dances, concerts and general festivities all winter. A
number of us~had a kind of a club house in the west end. We paid a man
named John Whitlock to be cook. There were about ten of us, and we di-
vided the cost of keeping house. We slept and lived there. It was over
Bishop & Coombs workshop. Next spring I started down again forfreight.
COULDN'T SLEEP ON FEATHER BED.
"In 1882 I brought freight up from Fort Ellice making in all three
trips that season to and back. The last trip I made that fall the snow
was on the ground and when I got to Fort Ellice my stuff had not arrived.
I got on horseback, and I left my outfit at Ellice, and rode across country
to Portage La Prairie. I had a big roan buffalo horse. I put up for the
night there with a man named Purvis who was secretary of the Farmers'
Union. It was the first time I had the luxury of a good bed from the time
I came into the country. I stopped at a little hotel at Portage. They
gave me a feather bed. I had been used to lying on the floor so long that I
got up and left the feather bed and rolled myself in my blanket on the
floor. I could not sleep in the feather bed. When I got to Portage I found
my goods had been shipped by a different route. I went back to Ellice
and ran across my freighters at the river-just across the river from
Ellice. I got home in November with all the usual hardships. I stopped
at the first mail station and was passed by the mail. The mail used to
come every three weeks. Old Flat Boat McLean was running the mail.
There were mail stations every 40 miles along the road, where they
changed horses. There were also nooning places: Soop-In Chuck, Hungry
Hall, Take-Em-In and Hoodoo were the names of some of these places.
There was a man at each station looking after the horses, and it was his
business, of course, to have fresh horses ready for the mail. Flat Boat
McLean lived in Winnipeg, but he had the contract. The mail contract
went right through to Edmonton. Charley Mair was post master at Prince
Albert.
THE TELEGRAPH LINE FIGHT.
"Between the second and last trip I made that season, we had a great
fracas in Prince Albert about the telegraph lines. That was in the fall
of '82. At this time the town had been pretty well established where
it is now. The centre of the town was known as the Mission. A lot of
stores had been built and the settlers had taken up the question of tele-
graph communication. In the fall of '82 we had our newspaper started
by two men named Spink & McVeety; and the editor was an old lawyer,-
Old Fitz Cochran. They made an arrangement with the Dominion Gov-
ernment that they were to furnish the poles and distribute them along
the line, and the government would put the wire in and erect the line.
Money was subscribed by the settlers and townspeople and the poles were
got out and distributed along the line as per agreement. The Dominion
Inspector of the telegraph lines was a man named Grisbourn. When the
line was constructed close to Prince Albert, Grisbourn informed us that
he could not place the Telegraph Office in the town because he had no lot
to put it on, and so he would have to take it about two miles down in the
east end at the Hudson's Bay Company's Post. The people objected to
this, and in order that he could have no excuse, we called a meeting at
which it was decided to purchase a lot. We purchased a lot from T. E.
Baker on the Hurd & Baker Estate. We got the deed of the lot and pre-
sented him with it and fulfilled all the conditions, but he was bound to
take the telegraph office down to the Hudson's Bay Company's store. He
went to work and erected the poles along River Street past the village,
and right down to the Hudson's Bay Company. We immediately called a
mass meeting of the settlers and people, and over 100 men gathered to
discuss the situation. With the advice of Fitz Cochran, who was a lawyer,
we started to act. Fitz Cochran instructed us that as the poles belonged
to us, Grisbourn had no business to erect them further than we wanted to
erect them, and we would be justified in taking them up; so we started
out after the meeting, and we dug up all the poles between the Mission and
the Hudson Bay store and carried them on our shoulders, and piled them
on the lot we had purchased. Next morning, Lawrence Clarke, the factor,
and Grisbourn, went to J. J. Campbell, who was the only magistrate in
the place, and got out warrants, and ten of the citizens were arrested by
the police. The Court was held in the old barracks and Factor Clarke
came there in a buckboard with Grisbourn. All the settlers for miles
around trooped into town prepared for trouble, and when the Court was
opened there were about 200 stalwart settlers gathered around outside.
The magistrate who was a creature of Lawrence Clarke's, refused to listen
to our lawyer, or to anything we had to say. He was bound to convict.
He made a ruling against our lawyer that did not suit the crowd. They
let out a yell, and made a rush at the Court, and the table and the magis-
trate went up against the wall, and the table and the books fell on him,
and he got through the window. Lawrence Clarke came out of Court,
and tried to get into the buckboard with Grisbourn. The crowd hooted
and pelted them with rotten eggs. Then the Court crawled out from under
the table and adjourned until next morning, as the police informed it that
they were not strong enough to enforce its dignity. There were about
eight police there.
THE PEOPLE WIN OUT.
"That night a mass meeting of the settlers was held at which olci Van
Louvin, a Dutchman, and an old Forty-niner who had been a member of
the Vigilance Committee in California and assisted in lynching lots of
people, was President. He was then farming. It was suggested that we
immediately go up and treat Mr. Grisbourn to a dose of tar and feathers.
We procured the tar and feathers. We started up to Factor Clarke's house,
and when we got there Clarke appeared at the door. He was white as a
sheet, in fear and trembling, and he informed us that Mr. Grisbourn had
taken to the woods, and started for Battleford in the afternoon by the
back trail.
"Next morning the magistrate appeared on the scene with Clarke and
the prisoners, and all the settlers were on deck. Clarke appeared with the
magistrate and got up and made a speech. He said that he wanted to
shake hands over the bloody chasm, and he would withdraw all the charges.
The magistrate with a look of relief on his face gathered up his books
and departed. Grisbourn got to Battleford, and he sent down 40 police
from that point, but when the police arrived the trouble was all over.
However, after they got here we thought we would give them something
to do, to see what they would have to say about it, and so the committee
who had charge of the pole transaction employed a lot of citizens at a
dollar a day to dig up the balance of the poles through the town. John
F. Betts (who was afterwards Speaker of the Assembly) had a pick and
I (Davis) had a spade. Old Antrobus was the police inspector, and he
wanted to know what we were doing, and said that we were breaking the
law. Our foreman (I think it was Van Louvin) immediately asked An-
trobus if he could show us any law to prevent a man from taking his own
property. He said if there was such a law he would like to see it as the
poles were ours. Antrobus had no legal adviser, and so he thought he had
best go home, and he turned round and went back to Battleford witb his
police and that was the last we heard of them. About a week afterwards
Grisbourn sent men to construct the building on our lot but he never
came back himself.
"In the spring of 1883 I started 'down to Brandon with an outfit
of
freight. The road was in there then to Flat Creek which is now known as
Oak Lake. Virden was Gopher Creek. When I got to Brandon I found
there was a boom on and any amount of people were coming out from
Eastern Canada. We had to wait hours to get our mail. I sold my outfit
to new comers at big figures. At that time I had 9 carts, 9 oxen and 3
horses and I sold them all. I stayed in Brandon for a month doing a job-
bing business, buying and selling horses, etc. I used to go out and meet
half-breeds out on the trail. I would buy a bunch of ponies from them,
bring them into Brandon and sell them again. After I had been there
about a month, I decided to buy a stock of goods and a couple of teams of
horses and freight the stuff up to Prince Albert, and start business on
my own account. That spring the fiat valley of the Assiniboine River,
where the Brandon Experimental Farm now is was all covered with water.
It was just a big lake, and steamboats from Winnipeg came right across
the corner to what is actually the farm now. I remember it well. A big
fellow from Battleford named Bill Turner and I got a boat and rowed
across to the foot of the hills to the other side from Brandon. We rowed
right across what is now the Experimental Farm.
THE FIRST POOL TABLES IN SASKATCHEWAN.
"I bought two teams of horses and brought my freight up to Prince
Albert and started a store for myself. While I was in Brandon I went
down to Winnipeg on the train and purchased there two pool tables and
I sent them around by Grand Rapids on the Saskatchewan River to get
them into Prince Albert. When they got to Grand Rapids the water was
at such a stage that the boat could not get up any further, so my stuff
was unloaded there. Word was sent back to my agent. I was afraid of
water when the tables were shipped, and as per previous arrangement
the tables were brought back to Winnipeg, and shipped from there out to
Broadview on the train, and I hired half-breeds and wagons to team them
from Broadview to Prince Albert, so I had the first pool tables that were
ever brought into Saskatchewan, and I put them up in an old place we
called the Woodbine and we ran them all winter. We charged 25" a game.
I also brought in the first case of oranges that was brought into Saskat-
chewan and I sold them for 25c an orange. Old Tom Swanson who was an
old H. B. man and very wealthy, bought the whole case at that price. No
one else could get an orange. There would be about 10 dozen in the case.
When he saw the case he said he would take the whole case, and I let him
have it.
"From '83 to '85 I freighted from Qu'Appelle to Prince Albert. In
the summer of '84 Louis Riel came in and held a meeting. I was at his
meeting. An old Irishman built a hotel called the Trescott House. Com-
m on spring, in 1885-Rebellion Year-I went to Winnipeg to buy my
stock of goods. I shipped my stuff from Winnipeg and had half-breeds
freighting it. The half-breeds were bringing it up from Qu'Appelle sta-
tion, but when the rebellion broke out they pitched the stuff out along
the trail and skipped home. I had shipped out 100 sacks of flour and
this they took to Batoche and used it. I got $300 altogether subsequently
from the government as compensation for my goods. That was all I got,
because I was on the wrong side of politics. I freighted until 1890. In
1885 I got married in Qu'Appelle. In the winter we made trips to Qu'Ap-
pelle with ponies and sleighs, a tent and a little camp stove.
THE DRINK HE DIDN'T GET.
"I will now go back to the fall of 1880 and tell you a little incident. I
was freighting and had a big yoke of oxen. Near Rat Creek I heard an
awful noise in the valley. An English family in a wagon were stuck right
in the middle of the creek. There was a young Englishman who had a
long rope hitched to the wagon trying to pull the wagon out of the creek.
The oxen would not pull. I said: 'You will never get them out'. The
women and children stuck in the creek looked very desolate. I went
through and got to the other side, I was wading in the water but when I
got my wagon on to dry land, I hitched on and got them on to dry land
also. There was also an old man and he and the young man came over
through the water. The old man fumbled around in a hamper and pro-
duced a bottle of brandy and a glass. He poured out a glass and they both
had a drink. They said they were much obliged to me, but they did not
give me a drink. I was cold and shivering and I made a big fire and
camped. Next morning I hitched up and started and overtook them and
found them stuck again in another creek. They said "Come and help us
out". They were going out to Fort Ellice to settle. I did not respond to
their request. I remembered the drink I didn't get and left them to their
fate.
"In the early days hoes, nails, forks, axes and all kinds of imple-
ments were made here by blacksmiths and others. Ploughs and harrows
were made out of wood, and points and teeth put on them by blacksmiths;
and a blacksmith's forge was brought out from the Orkneys."
Bibliography follows: