Ft. Walsh
The Cypress
Hills Massacre
Saskatchewan,
east of Medicine Hat, AB
July 30th, 2000
While 
staying in Canada's only inter-provincial park,
situated along the Saskatchewan, Alberta border we traveled to
the only historical site in the Park. Reconstructed Fort Walsh. A
sprawling complex of a handful of buildings. Here we were
introduced to the history of Canada's lawless west in the late
1800s. After browsing through their visitor's center museum which
set our minds for the events that followed, we paid a small
admittance fee and boarded a bus which took us down a winding
road to the recreation of old man Farwell's trading post. Here on
an open plane, stood a rustic trading post with several old
wooden support building, all surrounded by a makeshift wall. The
entrance was closed and as we stood around the gate, our
interpreter engaged in argumentative dialogue with a girl on the
inside who 
clearly had no desire to open up to just anyone.
Finally after assuring her that we were in fact wolfers (wolf
traders) prepared to exchange wolf pelts for the shabby goods
which were available, she relented and opened the gate. The visit
was short as the area was small. The young lady stood in the door
of the trading post and offered various thing for what we were
supposed to have. The conversation was interesting as some of the
visitors, my wife as always, took on roles of various fictional
characters playing out the trading scene. We then followed our
pretty young interpreter out onto the open plane to the rear of
the trading post. Through her, we heard in detail, the causative
incident that pushed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into
existence. Prior to the introduction of the RCMP, this area was
known as Whoop-up, because of the number of whiskey traders who
worked the Indian tribes, trading fire water for anything of
value. Farwell's
trading post was one in particular known for
watering down his whiskey and then adding color and some vile,
and often poisonous ingredients such as strychnine, in an effort
to put back the kick in the product he sold as "Montana Red
Eye", and "Rotgut". Then on a moonlit night, a
handful of drunken wolfers, thought a band 
of drunken Indians had stolen a horse. Although
this assumption was later found to be in error, it afforded the
confrontation necessary to light the spark of battle. Even
describing what next occurred as a battle is a misnomer. Traders
firing from points of concealment with Winchester repeating
rifles, indiscriminately shot down all living forms in their
sights. Men, women, children, it didn't seem to matter. Although
there were only a dozen or so traders and over 300 Indians armed
with smooth bore muskets, there was no match. The slaughter
continued until a young Nakota Indian named Wahintoknaka, put a
musket ball through the heart of Ed LeGrace, one of the traders.
That was enough for the gang. 
The bodies of 23 Indians lay strewn about with
many more destined to die in the woods and gullies where they
crawled or were dragged after being shot down in the melee. The
traders, believing that no Indian tribe would allow such a
treatment to go unchallenged, buried Le Grace under the floor of
Farwell's trading post, set it ablaze and skedaddled over the
border into Montana, where they continued to drink, trade and
brag about the Indians they had slaughtered on that fateful
night. Ten soon became twenty and then fifty, and within time an
eastern newspaper heard of the story and then it was all over New
England in black and white, as graphic a tale of the wild west as
had ever been printed. In turn, the Canadian government heard the
story which sat grievously in the minds of the legislators. It
was the incident needed to ignite the long time dormant idea of a
National Police Force. With outrage and indignation the call went
out for volunteers to serve the needs of law and order in the
Canadian North West. Before the first snows, 30 has
tily
trained officers dressed in the bright red tunic, now famous
throughout the world, rode west to create Fort Walsh at the
massacre site and to hunt down and arrest 7 of the suspected
killers as the first police action ever taken by the RCMP
(originally called the North West Mounted Police). Though none
were ever convicted, as all witnesses on both sides were drunk at
the time, it was nevertheless, the first time a white man had
ever been tried in Canada for a crime against an Indian. The
warning bell of doom had sounded on the whisky trade in Canada.
With their reputation well established, the Mounties rode forth
in every direction, and where found, eliminated the practice of
selling whiskey to Indians, which for a while brought a period of
stability to the region. As we rode back through the wilderness
that makes up Cypress Hills Park I reflected that we had yet
another piece of the Canadian historical puzzle in place.
*** THE END ***
