EVOLUTION OF TOWNS AND VILLAGES.
WESTERN HOSPITALITY.
The hospitality of the west is proverbial. In the early days every
settler's door was open, and his table, with much or little, was at the
traveller's disposal. We have mentioned two cases of hospitality by
foreigners, themselves very poor. A few other instances will perhaps be
of interest. They will serve any way to illustrate in a concrete way the
life of the country in the early days.
In the spring of 1886 I was in the country south of Whitewood near
the head of the Moose Mountain Creek looking for cow stock. It became
very cold, and my hostess said I must stay all night. She was an elderly
Englishwoman, the wife of a Doctor, who appeared to have married her
for her money (her share of her father's estate was four thousand pounds,
or twenty thousand dollars). This he cheerfully squandered, and ulti-
mately deserted her, leaving her with four young children. She could
not bear to stay in poverty where she had lived in affluence, and she came
to Lindsay, Ontario. There she maintained herself and children by wash-
jug clothes. The eldest child was a boy, one of the best, always anxious
to help his mother. At fourteen he went into the bush as a cook's help
in a lumber camp, and with Charley's winter wages, she got ahead till
she owned a nice cottage. Charley being now a man, one daughter mar-
ried, one dead, and the other a boy in his early teens, she had sold out,
come to the West and taken up land. Charley still continued to cook off
and on, and at the time of my visit was away cooking in a railway camp
in the Rocky Mountains. The hospitality of this good woman was of the
finest; and her praise of the absent Charley unstinted. "When Charley's
home" she said, "he never comes into the house without bringing some-
thing, if its only a stick of wood". I noticed a peculiar chair. It was
made out of a salt-barrel, sawed out so that the upper part made a com-
fortable round rest for the back. The seat was nicely padded. Charley's
doing of course, so that she could have something more comfortable than
a Windsor chair. She asked me to try it. I did so and it certainly was
quite "comfy". "That chair" she said, "is the last chair old Robinson
ever sat in". And she told me this extraordinary story. It must be un-
derstood that we were now on the edge of the settlement. To the south
was an uninhabited plain reaching to the American boundary and far
beyond. Near the end of the previous September, old man Robinson, a
neighbor living across the ravine, a mile or so away, came over to visit,
and sat in the salt-barrel chair. About nine o'clock, when he went to
leave, a snow flurry was on, Mrs. Cross pressed him to stay all night as
he might get lost. He laughed at the idea, and went out into the snow.
From that day to this not so much as a pants button was ever found of
old man Robinson. He disappeared utterly. All honor to Mrs. Cross, one
of the true women pioneers of Saskatchewan. I have had a pleasant
recollection of her as a hostess ever since. She was a genial soul, and a
good talker.
At the risk of offending some fastidious reader, I cannot refrain from
telling an incident connected with the visit. When I struck the Cross
homestead in the afternoon the boy George was away over at Hyde's.
Cats were scarce; worth five dollars apiece in some districts. It was get-
ting dark and Mrs. Cross was manifestly worrying about the lad, for fear
he should get lost as Hyde's was some five miles away. By the way I
could tell of Mr. Hyde's funeral; how we buried him darkly, by the light
of a stable lantern dimly burning, but this is not the place for a story of
that kind. At last the boy arrived and turned a cat out of a bag he was
carrying. "What makes you so late George" said Mrs. Cross. "Well,
mother" said George, "There was four cats ahead of me". All at once
cats seemed to get as plentiful as gophers in the country.
A good many years ago I drove from Regina to Loon Creek, now in
the Cupar country, with a man named Cleveland who claimed that he
would get me there and back alright as he knew the country. We had a
very poor team and when we got lost coming 'back he said he would put
up at the first place we came to. Knowing he must feel bad at losing me I,
for the sake of saying something said "I suppose Cleveland, you are related
to Grover Cleveland". "Yes" he said, "Grover's my cousin. I had a letter
from him not long ago". Cleveland's story was that two brothers left
England many years ago. They were the sons of a "Lord Baronet" or
something of the kind. One settled in the United States and from him
the future president was descended. The other went to Nova Scotia and
was the ancestor of my Jehu. Not long after dark we struck a farm house,
and were most hospitably received by the farmer and his wife. Cleveland
knew them personally and they knew me by repute so we were all quite
at home with each other in short order. This was in the real hard times
of the dry years. As we were sitting at supper I noticed a singular thing.
My host was red-headed, his wife was red-headed, Cleveland was a red-
man and all' the children had red-heads. It was the reddest outfit I ever
struck, and to bring the thing to a climax when the pie for supper was
opened lo and behold it was a carrot pie. The very pie was red. Being
a brown man I was the only neutral bit of color at the table. Cleveland
and I slept most comfortably in the couple's bed. I found from some-
thing one of the children said in the morning that our host and hostess
slept on the kitchen floor.
I received a fine bit of hospitality from a central European family.
Some have a very curious way of living. They have two houses; one to
eat and live in, the other perhaps quite a few yards off to sleep in. I have
noticed more than once that the living place would be very shacky, not
over neat or clean, but the sleeping place would be thoroughly spick and
span. It was as though they considered that pretty nearly anything would
do for their day-light and working surroundings, but that when they en-
tered the land of nod, the land of rest, and dream and fancy nothing was
too good for them. In one case a room in the good sleeping place was
given up to me and my friend. It was the children's room as it turned
out. I was out good and early to see to my horses, and here were the
children on the floor of the other house, sleeping on some straw just like
so many pigs. At this same place the host, who could talk some English,
when we were in the yard, pointed to one of his children, a boy of per-
haps seven, and said "He ride pig, like see". I said I would. He spoke
to the boy in his own tongue, the boy called out and a three quarters grown
pig emerged from somewhere and trotted up to the boy, who jumped on
his back and rode him around the yard. The pig seemed quite proud of
his job, and it really was a very funny and amusing bit of horsemanship.
Buffalo Bill hadn't much to spare on this little foreigner.
Now comes an incident of which I am somewhat proud and if I suf-
fered from superfluous modesty perhaps I shouldn't tell it. It was in a
general election, and Prince Albert riding was on the deferred list. For
the benefit of the uninitiated I may say that in a federal election there
are always some remote constituencies where the polling takes place some
two weeks after all the other ridings have polled. The reason is that
the great distances and the comparative inaccessibility of the remoter
districts make it impossible to post the proclamation in time. I drove,
or rather was driven from Prince Albert to the South Branch of the Sas-
katchewan, about thirty-five miles. My immediate destination was the
Birch Hills. It was November and I was told that the ferry over the Sas-
katchewan might be frozen, but if so I could walk over the bridge and a
half-breed there would see that I got horses. The ferry was frozen in on
the north side; they were trying to get it loose. We waited an hour, and
then saw the men streaming away up the bank. Shouting across the river
we found they had given it up as a bad job. The ferry wouldn't run again
till the spring thaw. We drove a mile or so back to the bridge, and the
rig left me for Prince Albert. There was a recently erected trestle bridge
at this point on the Canadian Northern. Looking across from the south
bank which is higher than the northern, from this point nothing was vis-
ible but an immense expanse of second-growth poplar. There was not a
sign of any human habitation or of the presence of man except that trestle
bridge and the single track railway which soon hid itself in what seemed,
but was not, a trackless bush. I walked over the bridge in just what I
stood upright in and here on the west side was a trail leading into the
woods. I followed it and presently came to a clearing and a comfortable
farm-steading. A half-breed, a shrewd looking bearded man of fifty or
sixty gave me dinner, and there was no trouble about the horses. His
hospitality was perfect, but I was opposed to him in politics. He knew
that, for he had been told my business, and so in the heat of an election
he was not by any means disposed to throw his arms around my neck.
After talking election for a while he said, "What might your name be""
"Hawkes," I replied. "John Hawkes"" "Yes". The change in his attitude
was instantaneous. He almost shouted "John Hawkes! I am very glad to
see John Hawkes," and he grasped me by the hand. "I have heard and
read of John Hawkes and I am very glad to meet him". And as I drove
away he called after me, "I am very glad to see John Hawkes". What he
had heard or read goodness knows; but I am proud to think that hundreds
of miles from home in the northern bush I was thus greeted by a stranger
of the mixed race.
Another piece of hospitality, which I much appreciated, but which
really was only on the general line of the custom of the country, will
give me an opportunity of introducing Chief Justice Sir Frederick Haul-
tam in his old capacity of member for MacLeod, in the Territorial days.
It was the last Territorial election. For the first time Mr. Haultain was
opposed; and I was there to see. I ran the MacLeod Advance; I cam-
paigned and was generally very busy. Mr. Haultain was holding a meet-
ing in the Porcupine Hills thirty-five miles from MacLeod and I repre-
sented the opposition candidate. I had a democrat full of Harris men;
Mr. Haultain was ahead with two democrats full. The meeting was held
at the fine ranch of a Mr. Duck, a West Country English bachelor. He
had a large one-storied ranch house built of beautifully straight long
logs. After the meeting which was an afternoon one Mr. Duck cooked for
Mr. Haultain and myself. That is where the hospitality came in. Our
supporters, friend and foe, were entertained in the ram pasture where
the riders were, being another phase of the inclusive hospitality of our
host. Mr. Duck, who certainly was by the way of being an English gen-
tleman, did not sit down with us, but busied himself cooking and waiting
and seeing to our comfort. At that friendly table I got an insight into
Mr. Haultain's real make-up which has affected my judgment of him to
this day.
To get back to Saskatchewan, on another occasion Mr. Chester Dixon,
who has since joined the great majority, and I drove from Maple Creek
to Fort Walsh or what was once Fort Walsh, for not a vestige of the
original historic police post where Sitting Bull surrendered was now
visible. The site was overgrown with grass, but there were depressions
showing where the old cellars had been. But one relic was pathetic.
Away up on the slope of the hill was the little fenced-in graveyard where
the bones of the dead police boys rested, including a nephew of Sir John
A.Macdonald's and the unfortunate lad Grayburn, who was killed by
the Indians while riding herd with the police horses. The site formed
part of Wood and Anderson's ranch. We found Mr. Wood alone in the
house, and he immediately started in to prepare a meal for us. Mark
this! We were the fifth callers he had cooked for since noon, of course
absolutely free of charge. Could human generosity and human patience
go much further" However, Mr. Dixon and I ate the good things pro-
vided without compunction, and went on our way, certainly not without
gratitude, but without any sense that anything out of the common had
occurred.
Hitherto I have dealt with hospitality from the point of view of the
recipient, but the giver of that hospitality did not go altogether un-
rewarded, even if no cash passed. Whether your host was a bachelor
or benedict, or your hostess had to bear children, milk cows, bake bread,
feed hens, make and mend clothes, wash and iron, they were generally
speaking eager for a chat and to get some news from "outside." Sup-
pose the settlement gossip exhausted, a whole week not a cat had kit-
tened, a sow littered, or a new calf been produced, nobody's cattle had
strayed into somebody else's crop, nobody had broken down on the trail
with a load of poles, nobody had been to "town" and brought back jewels
of conversation; in fact there had been nothing to relieve the daily round
and common task. Then as the day is closing a traveller appears almost
from nowhere bringing novelty and news and companionship, to make a
break in the sameness of things, and nine times out of ten to leave be-
hind him a pleasant recollection, and something to talk and think about
for a day at any rate, and may be a rememberance that will be recalled for
years.
A woman once told me that she sometimes had to think of some-
thing to think about. Fancy what it means to have to say to oneself,
"What on earth is there I can think about next"" Imagine the paucity
of incident it indicates, the monotony of the daily round, the solitari-
ness of soul. Another woman said, "Oh, I wish something would hap-
pen." Sometimes, however, visitors were a little embarrassing. There
is an element of vagabondage or worse which penetrates into almost
every phase of life at some time or other.
One Sunday night in the late fall I got home about ten o'clock and
found my wife and children quite alarmed. A man had turned up and
demanded quarters for the night, and was now in the stable. My wife
was not short on courage, and had refused to let the truculent individual
stay in the house. Let it be said to my credit that I had walked quite a
few miles having been to church on foot. In the stable was a big feed
box seven foot long. Stretched out on that box, and nearly as long as
the box was one of the toughest looking specimens I ever saw. I turned
the stable lantern on him and asked him if he was all right. He stared
back at me with little deep-sunk blinking eyes, and said nothing. He
was a man of sixty with an evil face, and as intimated, of great stature,
and I did not wonder that my better-half had refused to have him under
the same roof as her innocent babes. The stable was warm; the man
had his own blankets, and he wouldn't speak. I told him to come in, in
the morning and get his breakfast and left. Next morning he had dis-
appeared. I found afterwards he got his breakfast at a neighbor's two
miles on but they could make nothing of the evil-looking silent man.
There is another kind of vagabond although that is hardly the right
name for him. It was a week before Christmas in that wonderfully open
winter of 1889-90. There was no snow on the ground when John Day ap-
appeared. I came in from the bush and one of the children came run-
ning to the stable to tell me wide-eyed and breathlessly, that there was
a mad man in the house. In the kitchen by the stove, a man of forty or so
rose, pulled off a fur cap, revealing a thicket of black hair, standing
straight up on his head. He said rapidly, "I'm no murderer, I'm no mur-
derer; all I want is shelter, I've got my own grub," and he indicated, not
a "turkey" of the usual kind, but a seaman's bag. I remember I said
to him quietly, as if tomorrow would do just as well, "I don't care if you
are a murderer or not; two can play at that game, sit down." You see,
gentle reader, as St. Cyr, sometime M. P. for Provencher, said to me
in explanation of how he was able to knock his opponent Riviere, a big
man, down on the platform and "keek" him. "I was a young then." This
man turned out to be a most interesting character and he gave us one
of the most entertaining evenings I ever spent. At supper he produced a
piece of bannock which he said he had cooked himself in an empty shack
at three o'clock that morning, and absolutely refused to eat anything else
although he drank tea.
But next morning, now being sure of his welcome, you should have
seen the breakfast he ate. He was a sailor who had deserted his ship at
Vancouver and was tramping across the continent in midwinter to his
home in New Brunswick. He was a versatile individual, perfectly harm-
less, honest and reputable, and on leaving he gave me some seeds, which
he had picked up in the West Indies. One was a big brown bean with
the capital letter C, naturally marked on it as black as the ace of spades.
I planted these seeds next spring, but I was a little premature and the
frost killed them all. He talked incessantly, about his boyhood, when he
was apprenticed to a "watch tinker," of his sailing experiences, the
American war, and a score of other things. "Got a fiddle," he said, "if
you have I'll play you something." Then "any watches want fixing, I'll
fix 'em." A watch was produced which had stopped a long time before.
He examined it, I could start that in a minute if I had a tool. It's only
over-wound; half the watches go wrong from over-winding. This proved
to be the case when the watch was taken eventually to a "watch tinker."
It was a key-winder of course in those days. The stem winder had yet to
become general. A wonderful man was the sailor tramp, and hospitality
was never more handsomely rewarded than that which we gave to JohnDay.
Another "paying guest" I remember in those early days, was an old
half-breed, who talked good English. His conversation was wonderfully
interesting. One thing I remember was this. He said, "If you see one
timber-wolf, all right; if you see two, perhaps all right; if you
see threebetter look out." Another one I remember was a Moose Mountain In-
dian. He was in his best clothes and get up and walked boldly in with-
out knocking and sat down. Looking at the wife he said interrogatively
"squaw." He was a very much-at-home Indian, and I thought all the bet-
ter of him for it. If one has the virtue of hospitality in excess he can
always work it off comfortably when there are Indians around. Like
little children they are always ready to eat.
Talking of knocking I have no recollection of an Indian knocking at
the door. The Indian never learned to announce his presence in that
way. To rap with his knuckles on a door made of buffalo hide or canvas
would not produce much reverberatory effect, so knocking was not in
fashion in the tepee, the wigwam or the lodge. In the early days most
of them just walked into the settlers' houses. The Indian himself is one
of the most hospitable men in the world. When he asks for food he is
only asking you to do for him what he would do for you if he had it and
you needed it. He shares his last bite with his hungry fellow tribesmen.
Why should not the white man do the same with him" He has no sense
of being a mendicant and a cadger. In speaking of the hospitality of
the plains that of the Indian deserves a place of honor.
But there is no general condition without its exceptions which prove
the rule. To give a couple of examples. In 1886 I was on the trail a
good way from home; I was good and hungry, and here was a log house
a little piece from the trail. Leaving my team standing I struck for the
house, and here at a long table was a whole bunch of people eating, I
asked for a drink of water. The woman brought me a drink, and most
kindly asked me if I would have some more. I declined and went away
hungrier than I came. I knew those people well afterwards and they
were most hospitable folk. It really wasn't their fault but mine. If I
was in need of a meal I should have taken my team into the yard instead
of leaving it on the trail. On that same trip I found a place with no one
at home. There were hens at home, however, and eggs lying round in
the barn are not hard to find. Another instance in which hospitality
was not conspicuously in evidence.
In August, 1897, Charles Nodding of Whitewood district went into
the Beaver Hills on the unsurveyed lands and I went along. His wife
and thirteen-year-old boy were of the party. The intention was to put
up hay and return in a month and we took provisions for that period.
We prairie-schoonered it. Our destination was sixty or seventy miles
north of Wolseley. About mid-way we struck the remains of an old Fort
Qu'Appelle half-breed settlement. There was no one there but an old
half-breed who was blind. I think his wife was blind too, but their
youngest son, a youth of about fifty, looked after them. The old breed
warned Nodding not to build in the place he indicated. When a wet sea-
son comes, he said, you won't be able to get in or out, but Nodding
thought the old man had some occult reason for throwing a scare into
him, and went on. I may say the old half-breed proved to be right.
When it began to rain in earnest he was drowned out. We struck the
timbered bush about Horse Lake and found a Frenchman who had farmed
for sixteen years in Algeria in North Africa, ranching on the lake side.
I blazed the way in for several miles and Nodding picked on a spot for
the ranch and pitched our tent. What Nodding, who was an English-
man of a type, didn't know was considerable, and our experiences in
there ahead of everybody on the unsurveyed lands was interesting.
Nodding conceived the bright idea of putting up log buildings. This
meant that we immediately began on the problem of how to make four
weeks' provisions last seven, semi-starvation in fact. As far as we knew
the nearest stores were at Fort Qu'Appelle and Yorkton. For three
weeks I never had one meal at which I had enough to eat. Then one
Sunday morning Nodding announced that we would all go down to the
Frenchman's on the lake; we went. The Frenchman's hospitality was not
enthusiastic; his own supplies were short, and coming straight from
North Africa, and settling where he did a long way from everywhere
he had not become imbued with the spirit of the country. We did not
get a meal, and all the supplies he could spare us was a lump of very
fat pickled pork and a bushel of swede turnips. One the way home I
looked forward with joy to filling up on this pork, but we had the usual
skinny supper. As I lay on my cow-skins at night I looked eagerly for-
ward to breakfast. The same skinny breakfast; but oh at noon, what
a feed! all the pork and turnips I could eat; and gentle reader, if you
have never felt the bliss of full abdominal distension after three weeks'
fiacidity you have a treat in store. The pork was salty; all afternoon I
would go to the water bucket and take a big drink. After every drink
the felicity of distension increased. For once in my life I was perfectly
happy. We pulled out for our long trek home on the first of October in
a foot of snow. The first camp meal we had coming up after crossing
the Qu'Appelle at Ellisboro, consisted of cold lamb and salad, etc., and
tea out of cups and silver spoons, the whole on a snowy cloth spread
daintily upon the grass. The last meal coming back on the trail was a
piece of bread and not much of that and we all four squatted on the snow
under the lee of a haystack on the open prairie with no house in sight.
This was one of the occasions when the proverbial hospitality of the
west was not in evidence.
A little incident may be recorded although not particularly appro-
priate to hospitality. I was awake one broad moonlight night in camp
when I heard the crack of a rifle in those remote woods. Next day an
Indian appeared carrying a solitary duck. Nodding made signs to him
and said "shunia" and "quack, quack." The Indian never blinked; said
nothing, but after the Englishman had done "quack, quacking" and pro-
duced a quarter the Indian handed over the duck, still without a word.
Then Nodding wanted to know if the Indian's gun was "good gun."
"Oh, yes," said the Indian as languidly and easily as if he were in Pall
Mall, "Oh, yes, it's a pretty good gun; I shot a deer with it last night."
You see he had been a Touchwood Indian school boy. In the Indian
schools they have not only to learn English, but talk it exclusively and
Nodding could have spared himself a good deal of "quacking" if he had
only known.
Perhaps I have said enough to show that the hospitality of the early
days was a very varied thing. In fact it was with exceptions of course
all embracing. The tenderfoot was often astonished at first at the open
door and the open heart, but as a rule it did not take him long to catch
the pleasing contagion, and in short time his roof and his table were at
the command of the neighbor or the traveller with the same freedom as
the old-timer. A very fine thing is the hospitality of a new country, and
from what I hear, in the remoter districts of Saskatchewan, the same
spirit prevails today that was current thirty, thirty-five or forty years
ago.
Another instance occurs to me, and I have pleasure in recording it,
as it puts a very fine man on the map. This was an Englishman named
Ernest Cole, one. of Broadview's early homesteaders, a man, at the time
I speak of, about thirty years of age. He came of a stock of British
Army doctors and was intended to follow his father's footsteps. He was
near enough to be a neighbor of mine. He had a little frame bachelor's
shack on his place built by himself, for without any training he was a
mechanic. He was a stocky, good looking fellow with a determined face.
He had his peculiarities, one of which was that he got two hundred dollars
from England to buy a yoke of oxen. The money disappeared and there
were no oxen in the byre. He went west in 1886 and worked on the
C. P. R., returning at the end of the fall to put in his residence on the
homestead. He had twenty-five dollars to keep him from November to
May. He bought a fore-quarter of beef at four cents a pound, potatoes,
tea, sugar, a tub of farmers' butter and some soap, that was about all.
Fuel was handy. He amused himself by making a miniature stationary
steam engine. One Sunday he set it going for me, and it worked finely.
To me it was a very marvellous thing, that engine. When I saw him
again he had destroyed the engine because it did not please him and was
making another. One Sunday I and my eldest boy, and Sam Honeybun
Field and his son, were Ernest's guests to dinner. We were in trouble
about the cutlery; pocket knives, and a compass for a fork still left us
one knife short. Cole cut off a piece of rusty hoop-iron (he had tools),
polished it on the grindstone, cut it into the shape of a knife, cut a piece
of wood for the handle, shaved it, bored a hole in it with a nail piecer,
stuck it on the knife, gave the knife a final grinding on the stone, and
there in ten minutes was a serviceable and not bad looking knife. I had
the honor of using the knife, and brought it away with me and kept it
for many years. Well, Ernest Cole's beef, potatoes and tea formed the
basis of a very fine piece of homesteader's hospitality. It remains to be
said that not even a born mechanic could stretch twenty-five dollars over
five months, and I had the pleasure, and it was a pleasure, of entertain-
ing him for a short while at the tail end of the season, before he could
get sent west again by the C. P. R.
Bibliography follows:
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