Happy 150th Anniversary to the Canadian Prairies and the Great Northland
---------- 1870-2020 150 Years of life in Confederation ---------------
It was 150 years ago that Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the mainland regions of the Territories (NWT, Yukon and Nunavut) became part of Canada.
On July 15, 1870, the transfer of Rupert's land from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada went into effect.
While Eastern Canada celebrated its Sesquicentennial anniversary of Confederation three years ago, for the region once enclosed in the Old North-West, the 150th Anniversary will happen on July 15, 2020.
Alberta was a very different place in 1870.
Technology-wise there were no automobiles, no railway trains, no radio or television, no telephones or even telegraph service, no paved roads, no houses had running water or electricity.
There was no local government, nor no police. (Appalled by U.S. whiskey traders causing moral and social decay among Prairie residents, the Dominion government formed the North West Mounted Police in 1874).
Fort Edmonton was the largest population centre, and even it had less than a thousand residents. Its population was multi-racial - whites, First Natons, Metis and combinations of all these - and polyglot. Even by 1880, it was reported that Edmonton was one-third Gaelic, one-third French, one-third Cree.
And these language speakers were not necessarily devided by racial lines. There was a story that when Malcom McKinlay came west in the early 1880s, he encountered a Cree woman who spoke Gaelic. He asked how this came about, and she told him that she had married a Scotsman and he was too stupid to learn Cree so she had learned Gaelic.
There is also the story of a person who observed that there were Metis of mixed French and Native ancestry and Metis of mixed Scots and Native ancestry. He asked a Native woman why there were no "English Half-breeds." She answered that Native women had to draw the line somewhere!
There was a settlement that perhaps equalled Edmonton in size in the mid-1870s. Tail Creek was for several years a great buffalo hunting and trading settlement. This collection of log cabins was on the Red Deer River, between Buffalo Lake and Quill Lake, due south of present-day Duhamel.
The famous Mounted policeman Sam Steele visited the settlement. He reported the existence of 400 log cabins lining both sides of a dusty (or muddy) street. That many houses would have held an estimated 2000 people, making it the largest settlement on the Canadian Prairies.
A Mounties' post was established there to keep out the whiskey traders. Mountie Jean D'Artigue was stationed there in the winter of 1876. When the time of the seasonal buffalo hunt came around, hundreds arrived, some settling into their old cabins, others quickly constructing new log cabins.
D'Artigue reported "The surroundings of the Mountie post were soon occupied by 3 or 4 hundred persons, and night was made hideous by the deafening cries and pow-wows of the Indians and the no less discordant screeches of the violins of the half-breeds who vied with the Indians in turning our hitherto peaceful valley into a very bedlam."
There were rough times, and there were tough times - winter storms, warfare on the open prairies, dangerous animals - mighty bison, fearsome cougars and wolves, even horses could cause grievous injury. But the earliest residents of the region, as D'Artigue found, were not ones to be kept down. When times were good, they were actively happy, finding joy where they could.
That was what life was like back when Alberta became part of the Dominion of Canada in 1870.
A couple historical notes:
1883 description of old trails including Tail Creek etc. (EB, Feb. 17, 1883)
1950 investigation made into the remains of the old Tail Creek village. it was found that a fire had swept the Tail Creek area in 1898, burning any evidence of the old log houses.
The investigator found a cemetery containing about 40 graves, apparently having originally a small log hut over each. He also reported that the last of the log dwellings had been moved into the town of Stettler as a memorial of the area's early inhabitants.
Sources:
EB, June 7, 1884;
Jean D'Artigue Six Years in the North -West;
"The Edmonton Hunt" by F.C. Jamieson, Jan. 23, 1951 ("Buffalo Hunts" info file, PAA);
Saturday News (Edmonton), May 19, 1906.
Thanks for reading.
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