The Great Lone Land by W. F. Butler

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The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much
given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice; and
it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to
do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out
so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their not being able
to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the
advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming
race. Obstacles of any kind are their peculiar detestation-if it is a
tree, cut it down; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a
half-breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said
they act up to their convictions.

'Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled
wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the
North-west from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown
to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but,
unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in
peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000
persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed
away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than
that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain
half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events
had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would
dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western
region, the Company would dis appear, and all the institutions of New
World progress would shed-prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to
the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the
new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community,
resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got
their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns,
and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several
anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling
the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily
informing Mr. Governor M'Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his
presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its
inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had
worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and
directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis
Riel--a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of
parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of
political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has
followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the
assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds-it has
occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the
mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who
surrendered for 300,000 pounds their territorial rights? was it the
Imperial Government who accepted that surrender? or was it the Dominion
Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial
authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business
belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. Any ordinary
matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few
hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen
despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the
whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and
carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing
would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to
Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would
have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country
relative to` the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of
their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might
be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead
ignorance upon any matter pertaining to the people it governs, or expects
to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such
matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea
put forward by the Dominion Government of Canada, and yet the Dominion
Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving
at a-correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they had
only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that
warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling
amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, "they are only eaters of
pemmican," so cutting to the Metis, was then first originated by a
distinguished Canadian politician.

And now let us see what the "eaters of pemmican" proceeded to do after
their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitted they
behaved in a very indifferent manner, going steadily from bad to worse,
and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft
repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of
December, 1869, Mr. M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at
Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor
of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the
other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the
high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest,
-disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to
assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were
to be found." Now, of the first proclamation it will be only necessary to
remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind,
imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the
reader that the title of "Conservator of the Peace" was singularly
inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers
as was the holder of this commission, who was to "assault, fire upon,
and break into houses, and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse
people," and generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila,
Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of
ancient or modern times. The officer holding this destructive commission
thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French
adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other
rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty
miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but
unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, not finding within its walls the
same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry
senior.

The Indians, ever ready to have a hand in any fighting which may be
"knocking around," came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and
pow-wow; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place.
Some hundreds of English and Scotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off
to companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing
pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course.
But, in truth, the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in
this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney
and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen,
these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had
been only fighting the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had
hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of
Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers
began to melt away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had
disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became
apparent in the increasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his
followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the
Scotch and English half-breeds against him served only to add strength to
his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much
increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their manifest
functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of
religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened
by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel
determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This
was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement
already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the
people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the
certain advance of the English force upon Fort Garry, had taken up a
position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from
the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents previous to
making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more
than a match for his antagonists; marching quickly out of his stronghold,
he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a
gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to
surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such
occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were
ordered, and marching out-with or without side-arms and military honours
history does not relate-were forthwith conducted into close confinement
within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession
not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many
valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr.
Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine
himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are
sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man's
property is only to confiscate it, and to take his life is merely to
execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and
requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable
share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having
particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent
Jamaica rum. The proverb which has reference to a mendicant suddenly
Placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the case
of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily
from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a
very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial
debauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1870, disregarding
some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless
cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott.
This act, committed in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name:
the red name of murder-a name which instantly and for ever drew between
Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable
gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and
which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is
needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising
which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless
and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoners death a foregone
conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which
characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting
subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to
illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves. On the
night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had
been dug within the walls of the fort. Two clergymen had asked permission
to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had
been denied. On the anniversary of the murder, namely, the 4th March,
1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd
gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the
purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to
an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was
empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the
final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one
thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his
immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed
they had committed, for had they believed that the taking of this man's
life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or
political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes
committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held
its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless
lie. The murderer and the law both take life--it is only the murderer who
hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great Fusion-Wisconsin--The
Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I start for Lake
Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The End of the Track.

ALAS! I have to go a long way back to the city of Toronto, where I had
just completed the purchase of a full costume of a Western borderer. On
the 10th of June I crossed the Detroit River from Western Canada to the
State of Michigan, and travelling by the central railway of that state
reached the great city of Chicago on the following day. All Americans,
but particularly all Western Americans, are very proud of this big city,
which is not yet as old as many of its inhabitants, and they are justly
proud of it. It is by very much the largest and the richest of the new
cities of the New World. Maps made fifty years ago will be searched in
vain for Chicago. Chicago was then a swamp where the skunks, after whom
it is called, held undisputed revels. To-day Chicago numbers about
300,000 souls, and it is about "the livest city in our great Republic;
sir."

Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York. A traveller leaving
the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday
at eight o'clock in the evening in Chicago-one thousand miles in
thirty-four hours. In the meantime he will have eaten three meals and
slept soundly "on board" his palace-car, if he is so minded. For many
hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have
noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and
settlements interspersed between; and then, when these tracts of swamp
and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he
comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full-grown, bustling city, with tall
chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great: drays
of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall-masted
ships and whole fleets of steamers lying packed against the crowded
quays. He has begun to dream himself in the West, and lo! there rises up
a great city. "But is not this the West?" will ask the new-comer from the
Atlantic states. "Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New
York, by water 1500 miles to Quebec; surely this must be the West?" No;
for in this New World the West is ever on the move. Twenty years ago
Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City,
and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.

This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new
scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An
American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on many
social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very
shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of
ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact
that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub
every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will
find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your
peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you the details of
every item connected with his business--altogether a very jolly every-day
companion when met on even basis. If you happen to be a military man, he
will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition: of rank
by virtue of his volunteer services in the 44th: Illinois, or 55th
Missourian. At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a
safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with "I
say, General," and on no account ever to get below the rank of field
officer when addressing anybody holding a socially smaller position than
that of bar-keeper. Indeed major-generals were as plentiful in the United
States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in
the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign. It was at
Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was established by a youngster on
the score that he really could not spit out of his own window without
hitting a brevet major outside; and it was in a Western city that the man
threw his stick at a dog across the road, "missed that dawg, sir, but hit
five major-generals on t'other side, and 'twasn't a good day for
major-generals either, sir." Not less necessary than knowledge of social
position is knowledge of the political institutions and characters of the
West. Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is
simply to argue yourself utterly unknown. My first experience of Chicago
fully impressed me with this fact. I had made the acquaintance of an
American gentleman "on board" the train, and as we approached the city
along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the
buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.

"There, sir," he finally said, "there is our new monument to Stephen B.
Douglas."

I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in
course of erection into a pedestal. I confess to having been entirely
ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to
this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my informant's
voice was sufficient to warn me that everybody knew Stephen B. Douglas,
and that ignorance of his career might prove hurtful to the feelings of
my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or
look the drawback under which I laboured. There was with me, however, a
travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to
mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours
should be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint across the
Atlantic. Looking partly at the monument, partly at our American
informant, and partly at me, he hastily ejaculated, "Who the devil was
Stephen B. Douglas?"

Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggravating form. I hastily
attempted a rescue. "Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?" I exclaimed,
in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise. "Is it possible you don't know
who Stephen B. Douglas was?"

Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my
fellow-traveller was not to be done. "All deuced fine," he went on, "I'll
bet you a fiver you don't know who he was either!"

I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he
persisted in his reckless offers of "laying fivers," and our united
ignorance stood fatally revealed.

Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level
prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as
fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under
a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles
from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The
Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its
western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich
burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on
its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the
Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, unwaters the
south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse
the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant
fact--5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state!
More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage
of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion
Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have
striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day,
thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of
the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own
produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely
inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago
since William Cobbett laboured long and earnestly to prove that English
emigrants who pushed on into the "wilderness of the Illinois went
straight to misery and ruin."

Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north
along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in
the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of
Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100
miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being, also some 100
miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by
water to New York and the Atlantic, Milwaukie caries off no small share
of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling
prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing
states of the American Union. Scandinavia, Germany, and Ireland have made
this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one
hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish
Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is
one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern
Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie
between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Mississippi. No one
stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill
the sheds at the depot, the sight is too common to cause interest now,
and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the
promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd
of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food
while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the
most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can
devise--such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like
boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or
Christian--clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray
of mid-Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since
New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and
seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion; altogether a homely people,
but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits
under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast
human machine Which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth
into the same image and likeness of the inevitable Yankee--grinds him too
into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it
without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language
or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the
various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American
people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so
gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going
on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of
dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race
the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the
noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling
of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human
family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the
human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve
it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success.
Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die
out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his
love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt,
Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those
traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be
that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old
distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from
it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--

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