The brass button
Milk River area played role in NWMP history
To write about history can sometimes be inspired by the smallest of things. This story could begin with chapter one titled “The Brass Button.”
Every so often my grandmother would share pictures or a story or two of her earliest times when she and her sister worked as housekeepers at the Writing-on-Stone Royal Northwest Mounted Police outpost. During one of these grandmother moments, I picked out a brass NWMP button found in an old container of buttons. Grandma could read my excitement and replied, “Oh, I have lots more.” Out came the badges, buttons, hats, pants and a red Santa suit.
Times were tough on the early farmers after the First World War, with only the occasional bumper crop providing enough incentive to carry on. People learned to make do and their creativity makes even the most expert recyclers look like amateurs today. The red serge was creatively dismantled stitch by stitch, buttons and badges put away with the rest of this Royal North West Mounted Police uniform of over 100 years ago. A talented friend in Calgary was able to restore the uniform back to its original glory. From a small brass button, the story begins.
Chapter two and beyond are jaw-dropping stories of heroism in the early history of the law enforcement organization. My grandchildren encouraged taking the uniform to their school fair. The excitement in the eyes of the little people in elementary school and the curiosity of children in middle school created the notion of that potential passion to understand by senior students as they head out into the wilderness of today’s society.
In Scarlet Norfolk jackets, white cork helmets, mounted on handsome colour-coordinated horses among the six divisions plus the support wagons and cattle for fresh meat, the “astonishing cavalcade” of 300 “greenhorn” recruits started the 800-mile “Great March West” on July 8, 1874.
Two hundred miles out of Fort Dufferin in southern Manitoba, the regiments rested and split up as Commissioner French sent “A” Division, along with the weakest men and animals, 900 miles northwest to Edmonton. After incredible hardships, poor scouting and missing the first objective of the notorious whiskey traders at Fort WhoopUp by 75 miles, the stories of the Milk River soon began.
As French headed south toward the Sweetgrass Hills, he found a land of milk and honey with plentiful game, good water and grass for the animals providing a much-needed rest.
French led a small division on what later became a Canadian tradition of shopping in the States. He rode 80 miles south to Fort Benton, purchasing muchneeded horses and supplies, and acquired the services of Jerry Potts, a well-known scout.
Returning to Milk River country, Potts led the regiment to Fort Whoop-Up and on to the establishment of Fort Macleod.
The Milk River area attracted both cattlemen and sheep ranchers along with whiskey traders and various indigenous tribes seeking food and shelter as they traditionally had for thousands of years.
The task of “maintien le droit” — uphold the right — was enormous as peace had to be maintained among warring tribes, and what became a major smuggling operation involving thousands of cattle and the border issues led to the need for NWMP outposts in the remote Milk River area.
Pendent d’Oreille, Writing-on-Stone and the Milk River Ridge detachments were built in the late 1880s. Little is left of the Pendent d’Oreille story other than records dealing with smuggling, branding and quarantines.
A replica of the Writing-on-Stone detachment helps tell the story to visitors to the provincial park and future World Heritage Site.
On the Milk River Ridge, in view of the infamous Fort Benton-Fort Whoop-Up Trail, is the third remote outpost. Stories of the first responders to tribal uprising, cattle and horse rustling, smuggling activities, fighting prairie grass fires, delivering the mail and news to residents along the Milk and acting as customs agents into the early 1900s, the Milk River Ridge detachment was decommissioned in 1907. We still have a piece of that history as Art Lund’s father-in-law, “Spud” Murphy, a member of the NWMP, served as a veterinarian for the force. A local rancher, World War Two veteran Jay Snow, maintained stewardship of the detachment’s location. Following the common practice of recycling old buildings, the original barracks was moved east to the Miller farm and repurposed as a granary, where it stands today.
The Milk River Historical Society places a high value on preserving what little evidence remains of those early responsibilities to maintain law and order in the Milk River country so that the young people of the future will be able to spend a moment inside the real deal of history where law and order became established on the Canadian Prairies. More than a brass button, the potential inspiration of the Milk River Ridge outpost story is to uphold the right of our history.
Dale Leffingwell is a member of the Milk River Historical Society.