NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE
CANADIAN MOUNTIES IN LITERATURE & HISTORY
The North-West Mounted Police Force was created in 1873 to bring Law and Order to the North-West Territories.
At that time those Territories were in a state of chaos. No Law existed.
U.S. officials in Montana estimated that over 5000 "toughs" were running roughshod over an area greater in size than all of Europe. Those toughs consisted of groups of outlaws, whiskey traders, wolvers and buffalo hunters -- often at war with the Indian Nations of the Northwest, including the Blackfoot, Sioux, Cree, Blood and Assiniboine. The natives, whose numbers had been decimated by dreaded smallpox and fiery trade whiskey, were asking the few British representatives they could find to tell the Great Grandmother (Queen Victoria) to send back the red coated soldiers to protect them.
Those officials tried to explain that the British Soldiers who had patrolled that area (to protect the interests of the Hudson Bay Company) had been withdrawn because the Territories were now part of a new nation called the Dominion of Canada. It was up to the struggling, cash-poor Dominion to send soldiers.
Following the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873, when a number of Assiniboine men, women and children were killed by a group of drunken whites calling themselves the Spitzee Cavalry, Canadian Prime Minister John A MacDonald was forced to quickly organize a force of 275 men to ride west and establish the Queen's Law.
MacDonald named the small force the North-West Mounted Police and their story, in Literature and History, has made them legend...
The NWMP: The Official Record
On July 8, 1874, the small force of NWMP moved out of Dufferin, Manitoba, and headed west toward the junction of the Bow and Belly Rivers over 800 miles away, in what is today southern Alberta. Their objective was to locate Fort Whoop-up, notorious stronghold of the whiskey traders, and destroy the whiskey trade. For two months the cavalcade of ox carts, wagons, cattle, field pieces and agricultural equipment crawled steadily westward over endless mile of prairie grass, wooded coulee, rolling hill and flatland.
After travelling 14 days they reached the Roche Percee on the Souris River. Their supplies were depleted, horses were exhausted, and many men were sick. The NWMP Commisioner, George French, decided to split the group in two. The sickest horses and weakest men would travel the easier route along a 800 mile cart trail toward Edmonton, while the rest would take the shorter but more difficult 550 mile journey toward the foothills of the Rockies.
Assistant Commissioner James F. Macleod, commanding "B", "C" and "F" Troops and the remainder of "A", headed westward to the foothills. Macleod, with the assistance of Métis scout Jerry Potts, located Fort Whoop-up, but the whiskey traders had fled. The column finally halted on the banks of the Old Man River, where in October 1874, they began building the first police outpost in the far west. It was named Fort Macleod.
American Whiskey Traders from Fort Benton, Montana, had established a forttified trading post near what is now Lethbridge Alberta some years earlier. The post, called Fort Whoop-up, traded with the people of the First Nations for hides in exchange for guns and bad whisky. The fort was well armed and even had a cannon. However, when the traders heard the Mounties were coming, they abandoned the fort. Thus allowing the Mounties to take the fort without a shot fired.
In the months that followed, the whiskey trade was smashed and lawlessness sharply declined. By 1875, the police had erected additional posts at Fort Saskatchewan, Fort Calgary and Fort Walsh. Law and order was firmly established on Canada's western frontier.
The NWMP's main task between 1874-85 was to establish and maintain amicable relations with the native peoples of the Northwest Territories. One of the Canadian Government's main concerns during this period was to avoid the American experience of frontier wars. Fortunately, the Canadian situation was different from that below the border. Miners and settlers had still not arrived in the Canadian west in sufficient numbers to challenge the warlike tribes for their hunting lands.
By the time substantial settlement did get underway on the Canadian prairies, the Indians' way of life had already changed dramatically, with the rapid disappearance of the buffalo herds. In the Spring of 1876, hostilities between the American Sioux and the United States Army made Canadian authorities anxious to peacefully acquire title to most of the territory held by the Saskatchewan First Nations and the Blackfoot Confederacy. In the same year, Treaty No. 6 was concluded between the Canadian Government and the Cree and Assiniboine. The Crees and Assiniboine surrendered their title to 120,000 square miles of central Saskatchewan and Alberta by agreeing to this treaty. The presence of the NWMP in their scarlet tunics played an important calming role in the negotiations of Treaty No. 6.
In September 1877, at Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River, tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy met with the two Canadian commissioners appointed to treaty with them: the Honourable David Laird, Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories; and Commissioner J.F. Macleod of the North-West Mounted Police. The bond of trust which had developed between Commissioner Macleod and the two most prominent Indian Chiefs, Crowfoot and Red Crow, was the key to the successful signing of Treaty No. 7. In accepting the "Blackfoot Treaty," Crowfoot said: "The advice given me and my people has proven to be very good. If the police had not come to this country, where would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few of us would have been left today. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter."
On September 22, amid pomp and ceremony, the Chiefs of the Blackfoot Confederacy signed Treaty No. 7, surrendering their title to what is today Southern Alberta. At last, the way was clear for plains' settlement and the building of a transcontinental railway which Canadians hoped would bring a new and prosperous future to their young nation.
The Force would go on to fame. From battling rebels to guarding the gold fields of the Yukon, their legend would grow. The hunt for the Mad Trapper of Rat River, would reflect the adventure they would live; the lost Mounties patrol would reflect the tragedy they would undergo...
In Honour of Our Fallen
Many have put themselves in harm's way to protect our freedom. Can we honour them enough?
This painting was done to honour the Members who were slain on March 3, 2005, near Mayerthorpe, Alberta.
Constable Anthony Gordon
Constable Lionide Johnston
Constable Brock Myrol
Constable Peter Schiemann
"The trumpet shall sound and the dead will be raised immortal . . . and we shall all be changed."
THE MOVIES: Hollywood's Mounties
The American West and the Canadian North became romantic constructions in the hands of the media makers. The North-West Mounted Police were ready-made larger-than-life heroes and could be plopped right into the western story line with hardly a script change. If the program or movie was trying for Canadian realism, then the mission of peace, order and justice, would be achieved with conservative politeness.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their predecessors were portrayed, first in novels and magazines, and then in film, on the radio and television, and in advertising. Radio and television dramas about the Canadian Mounted Police had an interesting way of building on the truth to create a fantastical image using a mixture of events from Canadian and American history without regard to historical chronology or geography.
The early radio programs were serialized versions of long dramas with cliff-hanger breaks between segments to keep the listener returning. This format affected the type of drama. During the late 1940s, the serialized dramas gave way to a more popular complete-in-one-episode program and the dramas became more complicated, if not more thoughtful.
The radio programs were extremely popular, and that popularity carried directly over into television and other media like comic books and newspaper comic strips. During the 1950s, one half hour television program, called Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, was based directly on the radio program of the same name. There were a series of authorized Sergeant Preston comic books printed about the same time. The comics started with painted covers but after the television programs began, the covers used colour photos from the shows. A Sergeant Preston newspaper comic strip, based on the television show, ran between 1981 and 1984.
The first, but not the last, Mountie motion picture was Rider of the Plains, made in 1910 by the Edison Moving Picture Company. There are well over 200 Hollywood movies featuring the RCMP, or their predecessors, and many more that show Canadian Mounties in their distinctive red uniforms. For American movie audiences, that uniform was the best clue of a Canadian location. The courteous, brave and trustworthy police became clichéd national characteristics; all of Hollywood's Canadian heroes were members of the RCMP.
The popular Mountie movies were also grist for the television mill. The Sergeant Renfrew series of films were run as serials on television in 1953 with new introductions written for that media. Some new material was written for television, maybe as many as 13 new episodes, and some programs were a combination of new and old. In “Get Your Man”, James Newill, as Sergeant Renfrew, explains how his North-West Mounted Police father was killed by smugglers and the show uses an edited flashback from the movie Renfrew of the Royal Mounted. The ideas may have been thin but the action was fast.
Famous mythical Mounties appeared in many formats over the years. The main character in the movie King of the Mounted first appeared in a short story written by the famous American western writer, Zane Grey. Grey used the character to script a newspaper comic strip that his son, Romer Grey, expanded. The comic strip ran from 1935 to 1939. The movie, King the Royal Mounted, was made in 1940.
The movie Mountie was a common and favourite hero although he was often indistinguishable from the American cowboy. Just as Canadians made North Woods Melodramas, they also made Mountie films. Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police (1912) was one of the earliest and most popular Mountie films, and was made by Canadian film entrepreneur Ernest Shipman. Mounties and other elements of North Woods Drama also appear in Shipman's most celebrated film, Back to God's Country.
As B-westerns thrived in the 1930s, so did the Mountie films. So much so that Canadian industrial filmmaker Budge Crawley referred to Canadian feature films as "Northerns," since the Mountie films of the 1930s were almost identical to the American Western genre, substituting dusty sheriffs for clean cut RCMP officers. Further blurring the lines was the fact that heroic Mounties were often played by the same matinee stars associated with the Western genre, including Ken Maynard and Tom Mix.
In the middle of the 20th Century, the RCMP was always the good guy and the Mounties always got their man. In O’Mally of the Mounted, made in 1930, Sergeant O’Mally was a “veteran of a thousand trails and a man who never failed." The movie begins with a criminal’s lament when he realises that the RCMP are on his trail.
A main theme of early RCMP movies was that of duty and honour over love and friendship. This classic plot development was followed closely in all three very different versions of Rose Marie. In the 1936 version, Nelson Eddy is tasked with bringing his sweetheart’s brother to justice. Rose Marie is most famous for Nelson Eddy’s warbling rendition of "Indian Love Call."
The superhuman qualities of the movie Mountie were toned down after a former mounted police officer, Bruce Curruthers, was hired as the technical advisor for some big budget films. Curruthers was able to correct some of the common errors in Mountie flicks. However, for Wildcat Trooper, the studios disregarded Curruthers advice about the proper RCMP uniform.
In some cases, the RCMP movies were based on books and the authors were considered expert enough. The films Murder on the Yukon and Yukon Flight were both loosely based on Laurie York Erskine's book Renfrew Rides North; RCMP officer Kermit Maynard investigates rival fur traders in Murder on the Yukon; the owners of a flight service skim gold from their cargo in Yukon Flight.
In Renfrew of the Royal Mounted, there are few things right about the detachment of singing Mounties galloping their way to a community barbeque. This film was made without technical advice from the Mounties, although the RCMP initially liked how the Force was depicted in the film.
The singing Sergeant Renfrew (James Newill) was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the galloping, gun-toting Mountie shown in Wildcat Trooper. The hero, Kermit Maynard, usually acted in American westerns and in this movie the action remained Wild West. The actual sober, peaceful Canadian officer was just too tame for most American movie directors.
Bruce Curruthers was an adviser on the Shirley Temple classic Susannah of the Mounted, a movie based on Muriel Denison’s book, A Little Girl with the Mounties. The book was reasonably accurate and Curruthers did his best with the movie. The little pillbox hats are accurate for 1883, but the attack on the wagon train came straight out of American, not Canadian, history. After Curruthers left the set, the director added a scene where the Blackfoot chief burned the Mountie hero at the stake...
In the mid-1940s, Russel Hayden played a number of Mountie characters although he was more famous for playing Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick. Among the most popular movies were Susannah of the Mounties, starring Shirley Temple; Cecil B DeMille's North West Mounted Police, with Gary Cooper; Rose Marie with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Wild North, with Wendell Corey and Mrs Mike, with Evelyn Keyes and Dick Powell.
The Canadian Mountie continues to be a favourite character in the movies although, instead of moral drama or action-packed thrillers that become inadvertently funny, the modern movie Mountie more often stars in comedy that parodies the hard working and long-suffering Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
SAM STEELE OF THE MOUNTED: The Greatest Mountie of Them All
Sam Steele (1849-1919) was born in Medonte Township, Upper Canada. He was the son of Royal Navy Captain Elmes Steele and Anne Macdonald. As one writer put it, "Men of action had run through the Steele clan like water down Niagara Falls." Sam's predecessors had fought on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec in 1759, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and at Waterloo in 1815. Sam received his education at Purbrook, the family home, and later at a private school in Orillia. Following the death of his father, he lived for a time with his older brother, John.
In 1866, with the coming of the bloody Fenian raids into Canada from American bases, Steele joined the Militia. He later volunteered for the Red River Expedition of 1870, serving with several battalions. In 1871, Steele returned to Ontario, enrolling in the artillery school at Kingston. After taking a year-long course, he was assigned to Toronto in 1872, to reorganize that city's battery. He then returned to Kingston to act as an artillery instructor.
When Steele heard about the formation of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873, he immediately requested permission to join the Force. He was given the rank of Staff Constable, and sent west with a contingent in 1874. The big, burly Mountie helped rid the west of whisky traders. Among other activities, Steele was part of the team negotiating between Sitting Bull and General A H Terry of the United States Army, during the Lokota medicine man's exile in Canada, following the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
In 1880, Steele was promoted to Inspector and given his first independent command at Fort Qu’Appelle. Up to this point, his responsibilities had mainly been dealing with the First Nations. But with the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he was charged with negotiating settlement and construction disputes, and with policing the rail line. Steele also laid out the NWMP post at Regina.
When the railhead of the CPR reached Fort Calgary in 1883, he was sent there as commanding officer. The North-West Rebellion prompted Steele to return to Saskatchewan. Given a leave of absence from the NWMP, Steel joined the Alberta Field Force and, as a major, commanded a paramilitary unit which had been organized at Fort Calgary in April. Known as "Steele’s Scouts," the unit was composed of twenty members of the North-West Mounted Police, twenty American (mostly from Texas) cowboys from local ranches, and twenty-two members of the Alberta Mounted Rifles. They departed northward from Calgary on April 20, and pursued Cree chief Big Bear until his surrender in July.
The Scouts were disbanded in August. Sam Steele, returning to the NWMP, was promoted to Superintendent. Steele returned to patrolling construction camps adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway and was present at the driving of the last spike. He was then posted to Battleford where he spent most of his time training recruits.
In 1887, he led 75 Mounties to British Columbia to settle a dispute between that far western province and the Kootenai Indians. The policemen built a post, Fort Steele, and stayed about a year. In December 1888, Steele was given command of Fort Macleod.
In 1890, Steele married Marie Elizabeth Maye de Lotbinière Harwood of Vaudreuil, Quebec. They had two daughters and one son. The son, Harwood Elmes Robert Steele, would follow his father's footsteps into military service and would later write POLICING THE ARCTIC (1935) and a number of novels and short story collections based on Mounted Police cases.
By the mid-1890's, the Canadian West was becoming settled. Sam was starting to consider retirement from the Force and seeking new adventures.
But the discovery of gold in the Klondike changed that. The Dominion of Canada needed someone to control the thousands of miners, mostly American, who flooded the Yukon. They also needed someone to hold the territory for the Dominion. The man for the job was Sam Steele.
Steele arrived in the American port of Skagway, Alaska in February 1898. Skagway was a wide-open town, dominated by a suave killer named Soapy Smith. Smith controlled the saloons and dance halls, where gamblers and prostitutes parted miners from their gold. Steele was determined to keep Smith and his type of corruption out of Canadian territory.
He scaled the passes of the St. Elias Mountain that terrible winter. With parties of Mounted Policemen, he set up border posts flying the Union Jack. The Mounties collected custom duties, confiscated handguns, and arrested men who mistreated their pack animals. It was clear that Steele was in charge. Soapy Smith's desperadoes were met at the border by Winchester rifles and Canadian law.
In the spring, Steele moved down to Lake Bennett, a tent city of more than 10,000 people. Here, prospectors saw two sides of Steele. He was known to lend his own money to men down on their luck, and to write personal letters to the families of those who died in the territory. But he could also be tough. One American caught with marked cards protested that he had rights as a U.S. citizen. Steele confiscated all of his goods and had a Mountie escort him on the 100 mile climb to the border.
Once the ice cleared, Steele and the other stampeders of Lake Bennett rode the wild Yukon River down to Dawson, with many hazards and fatalities on the way. Dawson was a chaotic boomtown of saloons, gambling dens, dance halls and a population of 14,000, including a number of veterans from Soapy Smith's gang. With a force of only 13 men, Steele cleaned up the town. He knew that he could not prevent the gambling and other vices, but he made sure that the games were honest, and he dealt swiftly with those who disturbed the public order. He also formed a board of health that stemmed a raging typhoid epidemic.
Unfortunately, it was political corruption that ended Steele's career as a Mountie.
With the arrival of steamboats down the Yukon River after spring thaw, came Eastern government clerks and business opportunists -- many of them looking for quick money through graft and corruption -- "business as usual" for the civilized Easterners. Politicians in Ottawa wanted their friends to get a share of the Yukon gold. But Sam Steele stood in their way. Steadfast in his oath to "Maintain the Right," Sam refused to bend and turn a blind eye to the corruption. His reply to his critics was simple: "The Law applies to all."
In September 1899, the crooked government Minister in charge of the Mounted Police relieved Steele of his command. When word of his firing reached the citizenry of Dawson City, there was an uproar.
When Steele tried to leave Dawson quietly, the prospectors, gamblers, ragtime piano-players, and dancehall girls of Dawson poured down to the wharf to give Steele "such an ovation and send-off as no man has ever received from the Klondike gold-seekers," in the words of a local newspaper. They cheered Sam Steele until his steamboat was out of sight.
In 1900, he was offered command of Lord Strathcona's Horse, a British Army regiment to serve in South Africa during the Boer War. The regiment was occupied with scouting for the advancing troops, winning high praise for its efforts. Although the unit returned to Canada in January of 1901, Steele himself went back to South Africa in June as a divisional commander in the South African Constabulary, a mounted police unit. Steele went home to Canada in 1907, after a short stay in England. He eventually assumed command of Military Division No. 10 in Winnipeg, where he spent his time in regrouping Lord Strathcona's Horse, and in starting his autobiography.
Steele requested active military duty with the outbreak of the First World War. He was initially rejected for command on the grounds of age. However, a compromise was reached which allowed him to act as commander of the 2nd Canadian Division until the unit was sent to France, where he would be replaced. After accompanying the Division to England, Steele was offered an administrative post as commanding officer of the South-East District.
Matters were complicated, however, when Canadian Minister of Defence Samuel Hughes insisted that Steele also be made commander of all Canadian troops in Europe -- a slight problem, as there were two brigadier-generals who each believed the Canadian command was theirs. The issue was not resolved until 1916, when the new Minister of Overseas Military Forces of Canada, Sir G. H. Perley, removed Steele from his Canadian command after Steele refused to return to Canada as a recruiter. He kept his British command until his retirement on July 15, 1918. While in Britain, Steele was knighted, on January 1, 1918. Unfortunately, Sir Samuel Steele died of influenza just after his 70th birthday and was later buried in Winnipeg.
Sam Steele wrote an autobiography: FORTY YEARS IN CANADA: Reminiscences of the great North-West, with some account of his service in South Africa. FORTY YEARS is a detailed account of his life and experiences. But readers who want a more intimate look at the character of the man and his heroic accomplishments should read the biographical novels written by Sam's son, Harwood Steele: SPIRIT-OF-IRON and THE MARCHING CALL.
BE SURE TO BOOKMARK THIS SITE IN "FAVORITES"
Just Click Here to Bookmark this Page -- It's Free!
LIKE THIS SITE? VOTE FOR US...
Vote for Us: Free Paid Website Directory
Canada at OyMap.net - a world directory
