Policing the Plains | Page 7

soon became
apparent to men who were upon the ground. Mr. Lawrence Clark, a
noted Hudson's Bay officer, whom I remember in his later years,
handsome, eager, alert and well-informed, said that both traders and
Indians were learning the dangerous lesson that the Queen's orders
could be disregarded with impunity.
And it is now pretty well known that our good Queen and her advisers
who had been shocked by the Riel outbreak in 1869 were concerned for
the good government of the vast domain that had been recently handed
over by the Imperial Government to Canada. It was not the British way
to allow things to get out of hand, nor to permit wards of the nation,
like the Indians, to become the victims of the lawless in trade and in
morality. Hence the Governor-General of Canada received for himself
and his responsible advisers more than one dispatch from the
Headquarters of the Empire admonishing that steps should be taken to
preserve peace in the vast new domain and to give all who would
immigrate thither the proper British safeguards as to life and liberty and
the pursuit of their lawful avocations. And, of course, the Canadian
authorities, chagrined over the Riel outbreak and having some
knowledge of the immense responsibilities they had assumed by taking
over the North-West, were anxious to prevent anything that would

make the new country unattractive to the people who were desirous of
coming with their families to settle within its borders.
As a result of all this, Governor Archibald, of Manitoba, within a few
weeks after his arrival in Fort Garry, took steps to secure a report on
conditions on "The Saskatchewan," outside the Province where he was
the representative of the Crown. The fact that he did this so soon after
assuming office and when matters in his own Province required special
attention, indicates strongly the pressure that had been brought to bear
upon the Canadian authorities by headquarters. And when a man was
required for the special mission out over the far North-West he was
there on the spot in the person of Lieutenant W. F. Butler of the 69th
Regiment, afterwards famous as Sir William Butler, of South Africa.
On account of his splendid powers of endurance, his great faculty for
observation and his remarkable literary genius, he was a man with
unique qualifications for the task--the difficult and delicate task--to
which Governor Archibald called him. A person has to be sadly
destitute in the religious sense to believe that Butler was on hand by
accident. It is exceedingly interesting to find that another man, who
afterwards became noted in South Africa, namely the bluff and valiant
fighter, Redvers Buller, was in the Red River expedition with Wolseley
and had been mentioned in connection with the mission to the
North-West hinterland. Years afterwards in the Boer War time this
same Redvers Buller, then commanding the British forces on the veld,
said to Colonel Sam B. Steele, of Strathcona's Horse, who also had
served under Wolseley: "I know Lord Strathcona very well: when I was
at Fort Garry on the Red River Expedition he spoke to me about going
out over the plains to investigate conditions, but I was recalled to my
regiment and Governor Archibald sent Butler out instead, a good thing
too; for he wrote a very good book on his journey which I could not
have done." And this big-hearted, manly, generous reference by Buller
properly indicated that he not only recognized his own limitations, but
was glad to pay tribute to the literary genius who wrote that Classic The
Great Lone Land and the noble biography of General Gordon of
Khartoum.
But Butler had more than literary gifts. He had, as already stated, great

powers of observation and that remarkable faculty for forecasting,
which was exemplified, then, on Canadian prairies as it was later on the
South African veld.
In the book The Great Lone Land, to which allusion has been made,
Butler tells us with manly frankness that in 1869 he had come to a
standstill in his career as a soldier, because he had neither the means
nor influence to secure any promotion in such a piping time of peace.
And so, when news of the Riel Rebellion in the far West drifted to
London, Butler cabled to Canada for an opportunity to serve in the Red
River Expedition. He immediately followed his cablegram, but on his
arrival found himself too late for a place. However he was given a
special mission to go from Toronto to Fort Garry by way of the United
States in order to find out how the people of that country along the
boundary looked at matters on the Red River. Butler went on to Fort
Garry, passed through the rebel zone, met