IN REDSKIN LAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18438, 23 March 1922, Page 5

IN REDSKIN LAND

STIRRING STORIES ABOUT THE NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE. When Western Canada was a lone and nearly unknown land, peopled chiefly by wandering Red Men, and by white men who sold them bad whisky, there arrived some few score horsemen clad in scarlet and gold. They were the first contingent of famous North-West Mounted Police, now known, since 1920, when their activities were extended to the whole of the Dominion, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Their coming was mainly due to a frightful massacre of Indians, during a drunken orgy, by a gang of illicit whisky sellers from across the United States border. It was not an isolated occurrence either, and the Canadian Government made up its mind that these sort of horrors had to be stopped. So the nucelus of the Force was speedily recruited, and dispatched post haste into the wilderness. RED UNIFORMS UNIFORMS AS A WARNING. Arm-chair critics found fault with it—specially with the uniform. “It is theatrical,” they said. The answer w'as that theatricalism of that sort impressed the Indians. The reply was that they were meant to be conspicuous. A trooper stood for law and order, and the farther off he could be seen the better. His scarlet uniform was intended as a danger-signal to bad men, red or white, warning them to clear out, or cease their evil practices. If not, they knew what to expect. From the beginning the corps was not as other ccrps. Practically all the officers, and a large proportion of the troopers, were cadets of good English families, public school and university men. The pay—Mr R. G. Macbeth tells us in “Policing the Plains”—was small; the need for initiative, endurance, honesty and courage was great. The reward for enlisting was being regarded as worthy to enlist. No man was asked to stay in the N.-W M.P. if he wished to leave it. The force was the hardest to get into and the easiest to get out of in the world. OFFICERS CAME LAST.

The sort of spirit that animated them may be gauged from the orders issued by Col. Macleod when he reached his destination near the foothills of the Rockies. Winter was setting in and no shelter was available.

“First, stables for the horses,” he said, “then the men’s quarters are to be built, and after that the officers’.” This was no idle talk. By the time it was twenty degrees below zero he had got hi» men inside buildings with enough chimney to allow a fire to be kindled. But McLeod and his staff, including the doctor, were still living in tents in the open. The force quickly made its influence felt. The outlaw whisky-ped-dlers and horse thieves were driven back across the border whence they came, or rounded up and securely jailed. The peaceable Indian tribes were protected, the mischief-makers got short shrift. WAR AGAINST DESPERADOES. One of the N.-W.M.P. earliest exploits was when Inspector Walsh, with fifteen men, rode into a huge camp of disaffected Redskins, and arrested four of their principal chiefs, who were urging their followers to go upon the warpath and wipe out all the whites. But perhaps their hardest task came when the Yukon gold rush set in, as Macbeth puts it, many of the people coming up from across the United States border appeared to be the result of a general jail delivery. Amongst other desperadoes, one, "Soapy Sam,” attempted, at the head of a gang of ruffians to set up a reign of terror. Peaceable miners were robbed, and in some cases murdered. “Soapy” boasted that he would never be. taken alive. He wasn’t. He died with his boots on —a warning to others of this type.