TRAVEL AND COLONISATION.

Patea Mail, 18 March 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

TRAVEL AND COLONISATION.

A TEIP TO CANADA. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort at Qu’Appelle is situated on a neck of land between two lakes. Standing here in the evening and watching the sun set in a flood of gold over the upper lake as the pale moon rose over the lower one, my thoughts turned on the wonderful contrast between Ireland and North-west Canada. There, we see a little island with a teeming population of more than five millions, who are trying to exist on the insufficient produce of the over-burdened land. Here is an immense territory capable of supporting millions in plenty and comfort, and yet there is practically no agricultural population. There, the soil is generally poor, yet it is valued higher than life itself, and battles are even now raging for the possession of every acre of it. Here, the soil is of extraordinary fertility, and can be had for the asking, yet no one claims it. The contrast between the temper of the peoples who inhabit these two provinces is as great as between the provinces themselves. There, English law is detested ; here, from Atlantic

to Pacific, the name of Queen Victoria is revered. There, 40,000 troops hardly keep a turbulent population from committing detestable outrages. Here, a few silver medals with the Queen’s likeness and half a dozen scarlet coats presented occasionally to the chiefs, are sufficient to maintain her authority.

Such has been the case under the regime of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and I trust it may continue; but I have my doubts on the subject. Every Indian treaty is made in Her Majesty’s name. Now, if some shrewd, keen, business-like official manages to overreach, and flagrantly get the better of the savage, or, worse still, if the treaty when made be not kept in the spirit as well as the letter, then the magic of the name will be lost.

The poor Indians are simply’starving about Qu’Appelle — starving by wholesale. When the Irishman is hungry, he howls so that all the world can hear him ; the poor Indian starves in silence. On this morning (Aug. 21), as I am at breakfast in my tent, enjoying the unusual luxury of potatoes and onions, I become aware that a crowd of Indians are surrounding me. I wish I could feed them all, but everything I possess would not give half of them one square meal. Which shall it be ? As I am considering what I can afford to give, I perceive that the whole band have ranged themselves in a semi-circle in front of my tent, with a group of four old men in the foreground; oue. : of these, rising gravely, shakes hands with me. This settles the matter; the old party in the buffalo robe and badger headdress has placed me under an obligation, and if I do not feed him and his I shall not be behaving like a gentleman. When he had finished his breakfast he made me feel quite small by informing me that he was “ Cabbage ” —I cannot answer for the spelling “ Goodfire chief of the Crees. That the Crees were once a great nation, and that he was once a great man. That now the Crees were hungry, and their Goodfire chief was also hungry, and that surely their great mother was not aware that this was the case and so on, winding up his oration with the remark “ that he had a good heart, and that he believed I had also.” My reply was simple, but to the point, viz., a few biscuits and a little pork, tea, and tobacco. The little gift was divided by the chief among the head men, and silently the whole band vanished into space. How unlike a Land League meeting, or even an Irish debate in the House of Commons! perfect order, perfect decorum; a starving band of poor creatures, who hope against hope that their great mother will stretch out her hand to feed them. The “ Good-fire ” and his councillors spend their days now in gopher hunting. Fancy these four grave old men sitting round a gopher hole waiting for the kettle to boil, and then, while one of them pours a little water into the hole, another nobbles the retreating animal. It is a ridiculous sight, but also a melancholy one. A great come-down for these four old warriors, who have hunted the buffalo and fought the Sioux, to spend the winter of their lives in luring the toothsome gopher from his den. And all this time well-fed officials are concocting treaties in Queen Victoria’s name. A good lot of flour and pork is wanted much more than either officials or their treaties. Gophers will not come out in winter, and then these poor Indians will die. If they starve it will be a disgrace to England. Canada says, LeVthem farm, and gives one band a plough without an ox, another an ox without a plough. In the former case I myself saw a dozen young men tugging away at the plough, in the vain endeavour to cut the tough prairie sod. lu the latter case the ox was, of course, forthwith eaten. Wo doubt they must either farm or starve; but they cannot be expected to learn to farm all at once, any more than could a Britisher learn to trap beaver all at once. In my humble opinion a mistake is made in the farming education of the plain Indian. The natural steps are as follows: 1. The wild man who lives by hunting. 2. Game getting scarce he becomes a nomad, and herds tame or half-tame cattle. 3. Population increasing to such an extent that the

required amount of cattle cannot find pasture, he finally fences in a tract and becomes a regular farmer. These three steps are a matter of years, and not of days or months. The plain Indian would make an admirable cattle-tender; merely substitute tame animals for wild, and the life is almost the same.

In the process of civilising a savage it is necessary, besides teaching him some vices, to cure him of some virtues. The former is easy enough, the latter somewhat more difficult, The hospitality of the savage is quite fatal to his chances of success as a farmer. In this locality I met an intelligent Stony who has a good farm of land fenced in, but no crop whafc ever. On my asking the reason of this, he informed me that he likes farming to a certain extent; that last season he had an excellent crop, but after harvest his whole band came and camped with him till everything he had was devoured. This season, he said, he meant to loaf and let someone else do the farming. Sunday, 22nd. A change of diet to-day—sandhill crane, a most excellent bird, something like turkey; a very shy bird, and requires careful stalking with the rifle. In the spring, I am told, they meet on the plains and perform a dance much resembling the Indian war dance. Whether the cranes learnt from the Indians, or the Indians from the cranes, I do not know. I also saw to-day wild geese, bittern, snipe, ducks of many sorts, yellowlqgs, killdear plover, and sandpipers. In the evening numbers of chickens were running up and down the trail and “ tooting ” in the grass close to my tent, to my dog’s astonishment. The effect of this journey upon Toddy is singular ; he has become serious ; he would behave creditably at a prayer-meeting; his face has lengthened ; he never dreams of hunting his own tail or performing any of the little tricks of puppyhood. The business of his life is to follow, and betimes to set chickens and fetch ducks out of the water. His only relaxations are eating and sleep. Once upon a time, in his kennel, he built castles in the air of a life such as this ; now he has got it, and would gladly he back with the other dogs and the porridge and so on. Curious creatures dogs are !

23rd. Touchwood Hills. Here a fertile province as large as Manitoba, as large as Ireland, might be carved out of the prairie. It has only one drawback that I can discover, and that is want of a big river, want of water communication. The Pacific Railway is planned to pass through it, and railways are, after all, much better than water communications in a climate where the latter are only available for half the year. The Touchwood country lies near the border of the forest —in fact, where forest and prairie meet. In the map this is marked by a line. In nature the forest line is not sharply defined - the forest loses itself in the plain, the plain gradually becomes clothed with forest. On approaching from the treeless plain, first of all a few willow bushes are seen, then, perhaps a small clump of under-sized poplar. As we advance, more clumps appear, and the trees become larger. Further on we find ourselves moving through parks surrounded by trees ; the parks dwindle down to grassy glades ; and at last, in the course of three or four days’ travel from the treeless plain, we are swallowed up in the forest. The three essentials on a farm are land, wood, and water. In no part of the continent that I know of are these three more conveniently placed than here. The land is dry and rolling, and the soil a rich deep black mould resting on clay. Grasses and the wild pea vine grow luxuriantly ; also the wolf willow and the prairie rose. As for the latter, which is a certain indication of good land—one has often heard of a bed of roses —in one place I camped I could not find a spot to camp on free of rose bushes. The country is full of lakes, some large, some small, but all apparently good fresh water. On the borders of these lakes one generally finds heavy meadows; occasionally the banks are wooded. In every one hundred acres I should say, at a rough guess, there are ten acres of wood. During two or three days’ ride in this country, I could always have fancied myself in a large park, or rather in a country of parks lawns, lakes, clumps, woods, meadows, pastures, &c. Tn certain lights, fancy completed the picture, and put in hedgerows, yellow wheat fields, dark ploughed land —everything, in fact, but houses and cattle. The Touchwood is not even surveyed yet, but I believe it contains five or six millions of acres of excellent land in one block; and yet it is but a corner, although in my opinion a highly favoured corner, of the Canadian North-west. All the malcontents in Ireland might settle here, and grow fat and contented, and take lessons from the Indians in manners and conduct.

There are a few, a very few, squatters in the Touchwood. I passed a little house to-day with mower, horserake, plough, waggon, &c., surrounded by a fence. There was no lock on the door, and no sign of an inhabitant. That is the way men leave their houses in the North-west, when they have occasion to go away on business or pleasure. One precaution only is necessary, not bolts nor bars, but a few furrows turned up round the homestead to stay Are. Prairie fires

seem nothing to a man who has seen forests on fire.. A little thing stops them—generally the track is sufficient to do so.

Men settling in a place like this cannot perhaps make money fast, but they can make a comfortable living, and over and above their improvements, their land will be steadily increasing in value. I know no place in which a few years’ honest labour has more to show for itself than a prairie farm. First year, the tent; second year, the little log hut and the farm of twenty acres; and so on, till the tenth year we find the frame house, outbuildings, cottages, 100-acre wheat fields, and so on. The proprietor—■ who no doubt has had to work very hard—can now afford to ride about on his pony and “boss it.” All this I have seen in Minnesota and in other regions less favoured in every respect, except communications, than the Touchwood.