Chapter VI: Law and Order in Canada

In the older parts of the country, with the exception of the larger cities, crime is rare, justice is well administered, the ordinary forms of English law being followed; but the country has suffered in this respect from the fact that there have been criminals among the many emigrants arriving in recent years. One naturally expects that there will be lawlessness in the opening up of new countries, but certain wise laws have saved Canada from this evil. Many of the towns have passed laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic liquors; it is illegal to sell liquor to Indians, as the Indian is dangerous when he gets "fire-water"; liquor may not be sold in any railway construction camp, or mining town, and the enforcement of this law has prevented much crime. The enforcement of the law is the duty of "licence inspectors," and they meet many queer adventures in the search for "blind pigs," as the places are called where liquor is illegally sold. At one place whisky was brought in, concealed in cans of coal-oil; at another, a shipment of Bibles on examination was found to be made of tin, and filled with the desired spirit. Another class of inspectors are the "game wardens," whose duty it is to see that the laws with regard to close seasons in fishing and hunting are observed. They travel about throughout the northland, and when they find evidence of law-breaking they seize nets, guns, game, fish, or furs, and see that large fines are imposed.

But Canadian reputation for law and justice owes more to that famous organization of guardians of the peace, the North-West Mounted Police, than to any other cause. This body of men was organized in 1873 for the preservation of order in the great North-West, which was then populated by Indian tribes and half-breeds, with very few white men. At present the force consists of 750 men, posted at ten different divisions, officered by a commissioner and assistant-commissioner, and in each division a superintendent and two inspectors. The full-dress uniform of the corps is a scarlet tunic with yellow facings, blue cloth breeches with yellow stripes, white helmet, and cavalry boots and overcoat. On service, fur coats and moccasins are worn in winter, and khaki with cowboy hats in summer. Each constable looks after his own horse--a cayuse or broncho about the size of a polo pony, worth about £12, with his regimental number branded on him, and good to lope all day and pick up his living, hobbled near his master's camp. The armament of the force consists of a carbine (.45--.75 Winchester) and a .44 Enfield revolver.

This is the force that guards the territory stretching from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, and from the forty-ninth parallel, the United States boundary, to the Arctic Ocean--half a continent; and so well have they done what seems an impossibility, that a man may walk from one end to the other unarmed and alone, and with greater security than he could in London from Piccadilly to the Bank. The influence of the corps depends on the fact that they are absolutely fair, and that, whatever the cost or difficulty, they never give up till they have landed their man.

When Piapot--restless, quarrelsome, drink-loving Piapot--and his swarthy, hawk-faced following of Crees and Saultaux, hundreds of them, spread the circles of their many smoke-tanned tepees near the construction line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, beyond Swift Current, there was inaugurated the preliminary of a massacre, an Indian War, the driving out of the railway hands, or whatever other fanciful form of entertainment the fertile brain of Piapot might devise.

The Evil One might have looked down with satisfaction upon the assembly; there were navvies of wonderful and elastic moral construction; bad Indians with insane alcoholic aspirations; subservient squaws; and the keystone of the whole arch of iniquity--whisky. The railway management sent a remonstrance to the Powers. The Lieutenant-Governor issued an order; and two policemen--two plain, red-coated, blue-trousered policemen--rode forth carrying Her Majesty's commands. Not a brigade, nor a regiment, nor a troop, not even a company. Even the officer bearing the written order was but a sergeant. That was the force that was to move this turbulent tribe from the good hunting-grounds they had struck to a secluded place many miles away. It was like turning a king off his throne. Piapot refused to move, and treated the bearer of the Paleface Mother's message as only a blackguard Indian can treat a man who is forced to listen to his insults without retaliating.

The sergeant calmly gave him fifteen minutes in which to commence striking camp. The result was fifteen minutes of abuse--nothing more. The young bucks rode their ponies at the police horses, and jostled the sergeant and his companion. They screamed defiance at him, and fired their guns under his charger's nose and close to his head, as they circled about in their pony spirit-war-dance. When the fifteen minutes were up, the sergeant threw his picket-line to the constable, dismounted, walked over to Chief Piapot's grotesquely painted tepee, and calmly knocked the key-pole out. The walls of the palace collapsed; the smoke-grimed roof swirled down like a drunken balloon about the ears of Piapot's harem. All the warriors rushed for their guns, but the sergeant continued methodically knocking key-poles out, and Piapot saw that the game was up. He had either got to kill the sergeant--stick his knife into the heart of the whole British nation by the murder of this unruffled soldier--or give in and move away. He chose the latter course, for Piapot had brains.

Again, after the killing of Custer, Sitting Bull became a more or less orderly tenant of Her Majesty the Queen. With 900 lodges he camped at Wood Mountain, just over the border from Montana. An arrow's flight from his tepees was the North-West Mounted Police post. One morning the police discovered six dead Saultaux Indians. They had been killed and scalped in the most approved Sioux fashion. Each tribe had a trademark of its own in the way of taking scalps; some are broad, some are long, some round, some elliptical, some more or less square. These six Indians had been scalped according to the Sioux design. Also a seventh Saultaux, a mere lad and still alive, had seen the thing done. The police buried the six dead warriors, and took the live one with them to the police post. Sitting Bull's reputation was not founded on his modesty, and with characteristic audacity he came, accompanied by four minor chiefs and a herd of "hoodlum" warriors, and made a demand for the seventh Saultaux--the boy.

There were twenty policemen backing Sergeant McDonald; with the chief there were at least 500 warriors, so what followed was really an affair of prestige more than of force. When Sitting Bull arrived at the little picket-gate of the post, he threw his squat figure from his pony, and in his usual generous, impetuous manner, rushed forward and thrust the muzzle of his gun into Sergeant McDonald's stomach, as though he would blow the whole British nation into smithereens with one pull of his finger. McDonald was of the sort that takes things coolly; he was typical of the force. He quietly pushed the gun to one side, and told the five chiefs to step inside, as he was receiving that afternoon. When they passed through the little gate he invited them to stack their arms in the yard and come inside the shack and pow-wow. They demurred, but the sergeant was firm; finally the arms were stacked and the chiefs went inside to discuss matters with the police.

Outside the little stockade it was play-day in Bedlam. The young bucks rode, and whooped, and fired their guns; they disturbed the harmony of the afternoon tea, as the sergeant explained to Sitting Bull. "Send your men away," he told him.

The Sioux chief demurred again.

"Send them away," repeated the sergeant, "if you have any authority over them."

At a sign Sitting Bull and the chiefs made towards the door, but there were interruptions--red-coated objections. And the rifles of the chiefs were stacked in the yard outside. Sitting Bull, like Piapot, had brains; likewise was he a good general. He nodded approvingly at this _coup d'état_, and told one of the chiefs to go out and send the boys away.

When the young bucks had withdrawn to their camp, the sergeant persuaded Sitting Bull and the others to remain a little longer, chiefly by force of the red-coated arguments he brought to bear upon them.

"Tarry here, brothers," he said, "until I send Constable Collins and two others of my men to arrest the murderers of the dead Indians. The Saultaux are subjects of the Queen, and we cannot allow them to be killed for the fun of the thing. Also the boy told us who the murderers are."

Then Constable Collins--big Jack Collins, wild Irishman, and all the rest of it--went over to the Sioux camp, accompanied by two fellow-policemen, and arrested three of the slayers of the dead Indians. It was like going through the Inquisition for the fun of the thing. The Indians jostled and shoved them, reviled them, and fired their pistols and guns about their ears, whirled their knives and tomahawks dangerously close, and indulged in every other species of torment their vengeful minds could devise. But big Jack and his comrades hung on to their prisoners, and steadily worked their way along to the post.

Not a sign of annoyance had escaped either of the constables up to the time a big Indian stepped up directly in front of Jack Collins and spat in his face. Whirra, whirroo! A big mutton-leg fist shot through the prairie air, and the Sioux brave, with broken nose, lay like a crushed moccasin at Jack's feet.

"Take that, you black baste!" he hissed, between his clenched teeth. "An' ye've made me disobey orders, ye foul fiend!"

Then he marched his prisoners into the post, and reported himself for misconduct for striking an Indian. The three prisoners were sent to Regina, and tried for murder. I do not know whether Jack was punished for his handiwork or not, though it is quite likely that he was strongly censured at least.

In 1896 a party of several hundred Crees, who had gone on a raid into Montana, were returned by the United States authorities, under guard of a cavalry regiment, and the Mounted Police were notified to meet them and take charge at the boundary. What was the amazement of the American officers to be met by a sergeant and two constables; but such was the influence of their uniform that the Indians meekly marched ahead of them back to their reserve. In 1907 a single constable followed an escaped convict and noted desperado for over 2,000 miles of the pathless northern wilderness, and brought him back to stand trial. These are but samples of what the North-West Mounted Police have been doing for over thirty years for the fair name of Canada.

When the Strathcona Horse were organized for South African service, 300 members of the corps were mounted policemen; the gallant commander was the commissioner, Lieutenant-Colonel Steele, and the whole Empire is familiar with their record there. Many of the members are "remittance men," the younger sons and often the prodigals of well-known English families, and not infrequently of noble birth. In recent years there has been added to their duties the care of the Yukon, and the maintenance of order in this great gold camp far up at the Arctic Circle has fully sustained their reputation.