Northwest Territories

“ I have seen children playing out-of-doors when it was twenty-five degrees below zero. The summers are hot, and the long days of sunshine are just right for wheat growing.
After travelling fourteen or fifteen hours from Winnipeg, we are in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, on the main line of the Canadian Pacific, about midway between Winnipeg and the Rockies. I visited it first in 1905, when the province was less than a year old. Until that time all the land between Manitoba and British Columbia, from the United States to the Arctic Ocean, belonged to the Northwest Territories. ”

“ There are in the Northwest several Territories organized under public law with defined boundaries. They have been filled up with the elect of our citizens—the brave, the enterprising and intelligent young men from all the States. ”

“ That the colonization of the lands of the Saskatchewan, Assiniboine, and Red River Settlements, the development of the mineral wealth which abounds in the regions of the North-West, and the extension of commercial intercourse through the British possessions in America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are alike dependent upon the establishment of a stable government for maintenance of law and order in the North-West Territories. ”

“ If the measures suggested by me are adopted, viz., effective regulations with regard to the buffalo, the Indians taught to cultivate the soil, and the erratic Half-breeds encouraged to settle down, I believe that the solution of all social questions of any present importance in the North-West Territories will have been arrived at. ”

“ Westward the sun hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean. Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired voyageurs turned longingly westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest run on—on—on—endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. ”

“ If the Northwest be plain like a picture in your mind’s eye, you can recall how in the far North the Cascades and Rockies are intermingled, and how, as we come down through British Columbia to our own soil, they gradually separate, slope apart, so that by the time they reach the latitude of Portland, Oregon, a wide, flat domain lies between them. ”

“ This is the garden region of the Canadian Northwest for wheat-growing and cattle-grazing, and it stretches in almost 486 limitless expanse a fertile empire far northward to Edmonton and Prince Albert, with branch railways leading up there, the rich black soils testifying the wealth in the land. At Regina is the capital of the Northwest Territory, three hundred and fifty-seven miles west of Winnipeg, the headquarters of the Canadian "North West Mounted Police," a superb body of one thousand picked men who control the Indians and maintain order in the Northwest Territory. ”

“ And yet in important historical ideals—in the process of expansion, in the persistence of agricultural interests, in impulsiveness, in imperialistic ways of looking at the American destiny, in hero-worship, in the newness of its present social structure—the Old Northwest has much in common with the South and the Far West.
Behind her is the old pioneer past of simple democratic conditions, and freedom of opportunity for all men. Before her is a superb industrial development, the brilliancy of success as evinced in a vast population, aggregate wealth, and sectional power. ”

“ With vast tracts of unoccupied land in the milder climate of the United States still open to settlement and with Canadians themselves denying that the great Northwest could be cultivated, it is not strange that most immigrants passed Canada by. ”

“ We have a great Northwest, still in large degree a wilderness, to cover with farms and homes and the other appurtenances of civilization. We have yet large sections of our East to dot with the towns and the industries which this territory will bountifully support.
“It is only within a very few years that we have begun to take hold of this work with the zeal and determination that brings success. With this twentieth century there has been born in Canada a new spirit of enterprise. Even here in the University its effects have been strongly felt. ”

“ The great Northwest—that wonderful frontier that called to itself a world's hardiest spirits—is rapidly becoming a settled country; and before the light of civilizing influences, the blanket-Indian has trailed the buffalo over the divide that time has set between the pioneer and the crowd. ”

“ He hoped thus to build up a stronghold and seat of government that would brook no rivalry. The colonists came and settled at Fort Garry, at the forks of the Red River; but matters grew worse instead of better. Each company claimed to be in the right, and was resolved to drive the other out of existence. During the next few years the men of the Northwest Company and of the Hudson Bay Company came to blows more than once, and finally, in October of 1814, the Northwest Company were ordered to remove from the territory within six months—a mandate which they treated with contempt and derision. ”

“ Only the Northwest Fur Company ever held its own with the Hudson’s Bay, and the two combined when the Northwest established itself. The others, lone traders, partnerships, the Company fought and intimidated till they withdrew. Technically, it is a free country, has been since ’69, but north of the Saskatchewan the Company still holds forth in the ancient manner, making its own law, recognizing no higher authority than itself. It is a big country, the North, and the Canadian government has its hands full in the east and south. A white man takes his own risks north of latitude 54. ”

“ I have just learned, through a trusted Indian spy, that some Northwest men captured a traveler twenty miles up the river this morning. The prisoner is said to be a Hudson Bay Company courier, bound for Fort Garry with important dispatches from the north. He is held on a trumped-up charge of some sort, and before daylight to-morrow he is to be hurried round the fort and the settlement and conveyed down the river to the Northwest Company’s main post. His captors number seven, and to-night they are putting up at Lagarde’s store. ”

“ The transfer of the rich prairie lands of the great North-West from the care of Hudson Bay factors and trappers, the organisation of it into the Province of Manitoba, and the territories already in preparation for new provinces, under the government of their own legislatures, has necessarily brought to an end the condition of things so favourable to friendly relations between the White and Red races. ”

“ In going westward, the region we are traversing beyond the Pennsylvania boundary gradually changes 404 from coal and iron to a rich agricultural section. As we move away from the influence of the Allegheny ranges, the hills become gentler, and the rolling surface is more and more subdued, until it is smoothed out into an almost level prairie, heavily timbered where not yet cleared for cultivation. This was the Northwest Territory, first explored by the French, who were led by the Sieur de la Salle in his original discoveries in the seventeenth century. ”

“ The younger men in the Northwest Company were fired with ambition and assured of an adequate reward for their services. While for many years their older rivals had slumbered, content with the limits of their territory, the more enterprising Northwest Company, with infinite toil and danger, extended their posts throughout the interior and western parts of Canada, and opened up a new and hitherto undeveloped country. ”

“ The extremely fertile and virgin soil of the vast region occupied by Manitoba, the North-West Territories, and British Columbia—half the size of Europe, and lying between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean—has now been provided by British Canadian enterprise with a complete network of railways, bringing it, so soon as Atlantic communication by Nova Scotia and Newfoundland has been improved, to within fourteen days' steam of Liverpool.
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Capital and immigration are alone needed for their development. ”

“ The Northwest presents a series of very interesting race problems. The first one, chronologically at least, is the problem that the American Indian presents. It is not so long ago since the Indian was in possession of a very large portion of the region we are now considering. A number of tribes were gradually removed further West, or were assigned to districts in the Indian Territory. But most of them were concentrated in large reservations in Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. ”

“ That Lewis and Clark Centennial will be the most appropriate, which is the means of the largest, highest, and, therefore, most permanent good. It should be planned so that its central aim appeals to the deepest patriotism of the people of the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest is unique in its natural wonders. Their charm for the people of the East should be most effectively utilized. Our industries and commerce should receive from the fair, and congresses held in conjunction with it, the best impetus that science can give. ”

“ There was no man in the Western Territories to whom it was not familiar. There was no traveller who crossed the lonely waste but was glad of it, and would go twenty miles out of his way to rest a night on a corn-husk bed which Jen Galbraith’s hands had filled, to eat a meal that she had prepared, and to hear Peter Galbraith’s tales of early days on the plains, when buffalo were like clouds on the horizon, when Indians were many and hostile, and when men called the great western prairie a wedge of the American desert. ”

“ I remember, as you say, the way the settlements were springing up along the new railroad when we came back from British Columbia, and this time, coming out, I could see the little towns starting all along the Northern Pacific, back in Minnesota and west of there, but it does seem awfully rough that these Indians should all be driven from their own land and should have to be penned up on a little reservation. And I don’t see what in the world they’re going to do to live unless the Government feeds them. ”

“ The history of the northwest is the history of Indians hunting the buffalo and fur-bearing animals in a country for many years under the control of companies holding royal charters of exclusive {14} trade and jealously guarding their game preserves from the encroachments of settlement and attendant civilisation. ”

“ It is found along the international boundary, where it aids in protecting the revenue and preventing the entrance into Canada of undesirables. It is located on or in the vicinity of Indian Reserves to maintain good order, and to aid in enforcement of the laws pertaining to our Indian population. It occupies many lonely posts in the North-West Territories and Yukon Territory, and along the Arctic and Hudson's Bay Coasts. It is found in centres of population, and at points where industrial activities are vital to the welfare of the nation. ”

“ The establishment of homes in this beautiful region therefore meant sacrifices, hardships and ofttimes death, but there were some men, however, brave enough to meet the red man in his own familiar haunts and undertake the task of reclaiming the district for purposes of civilization. The rich mineral stores of the northwest were thus added to the wealth of the nation, its magnificent forests contributed to the lumber industry and its fertile valleys added to the opportunities of the farmer and stock raiser; and today the northwest is one of the most productive sections of the entire country. ”

“ Indeed, Northern Canada is the analogue of Eastern Canada in more likenesses than one.
That the country is great and possessed of almost unique resources is beyond doubt; but that it has serious drawbacks, particularly in its lack of railway connection with the outer world, is also true. And one thing must be borne in mind, namely, that, when the limited areas of prairie within its borders are taken up, the settler must face the forest with the axe. ”

“ The Northwest Provinces are the most densely-peopled countries of the world, yet between village and village you often see no trace of man, while jackals and wild blue-cows roam about as freely as though the country were an untrodden wilderness. ”

“ But to go back to the beginning of a journey from Portland to and through West Washington. The Northern Pacific (Branch) road skirts the Wallamet highlands and river for fifteen or twenty miles, the traveller getting glimpses of each, and of Sauvé Island, as he rushes past old homesteads whose sacredness the "steam eagles" of civilization have invaded, the iron track often cutting in twain blooming orchards, now laden with the promise of a rich harvest. There certainly never were such cherry-trees as grow in the Northwest ”

“ But in 1783, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. ”

“ The government of the North-west, as an 'annexe' to Canada, possesses advantages of contiguity and similarity of ideas on the part of Canadians and the probable settlers. Canada, it will be said, has a good and responsible Government, and why not now extend its machinery to the 1,300 miles between the height of land and the Rocky Mountains? ”