REBELLION IN SASKATCHEWAN.

Kumara Times, Issue 2686, 1 May 1885, Page 2

REBELLION IN SASKATCHEWAN.

An ex-sergeant of the north-west mounted police, who spent five years in the comparatively unknown country where the rising in Manitoba, fomented by Riel, the half-breed, has taken place, has communicated the following information respecting the state of society there, to the Melbourne Argus :

Fort Saskatchewan, where the rebellion is reported to have culminated, is a small mounted-police post, a few miles down the north Saskatchewan River, from Fort Edmonton-honse, a large Hudson Bay Company trading post, situated in about 53deg, north latitude, and about 112 deg. west longtitude, and about 900 miles west from the Red River of the north, where the last rebellion took place. The garrison at Port Saskatchewan has never been over 25 men, which for ten years has always been found sufficient. These police posts are scattered about the immense north-west territories at various places. The force consists of only about 350 men of all ranks, who have to look after the whole territory from the borders of the Province of Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains, and from the boundary of the United States to the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes—a territory as large as the whole of the United Kingdom and France combined; and iu this immense district there are fully 10,000 Indians (amongst whom horsestealing and other crimes are a virtue), and many ha if-breeds, whe are a slippery lot, beloved neitli'M- l, v (V,.. ;I veiM«e white man nor tbe na.ives. The halfbreeds are the desceadauta of the Cana-

dian-French voyageurs, trappers, &c,, brought up to the country in the old palmy days of the Hudson Bay Company, but who now find their occupation gone. They are too idle to work, and live by hunting—least when they have plenty, and, like the Indians, are often very hungry and distressed, especially in the winter; and winter in that country, often being 30deg. and 40deg. below zero. Formerly there were millions of buffalo in the north-west. As long as the buffalo lasted the Indians and half-breeds were in clover; but now they have disappeared they have nothing to fall back on, except to steal and kill the white settlers’ cattle. Being too lazy to work, they have no doubt been reduced to great straits, and so have tried their hand, at forming, so to speak, a government of plunder; but their reign must necessarily be a short one, as the Canadian Pacific Railway can bring men from Canada within a little over 100 miles from them in a few days and the mounted police force can be concentrated at Fort Saskatchewan, or anywhere else, in two or three weeks. Saskatchewan is a country rich in coal and iron, with a healthy climate, and comprising almost boundless plains suited to the cultivation of grain, and has prairies abounding in game.