Southern Alberta's Whiskey Trade

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east bank of the St. Mary's to eat their tinned fruit. Soon they heard a racket. McDougall goes on to say:  "Around the woods came a troop of horsemen, a wilder, swearing, whooping lot seldom could be seen. They were after us for some reason, that was plain, and they were evidently wild with whiskey. Right into the river they plunged, and never let up until they had storrounded our party.
"It had come to pass that almost immediately after we left Fort Whoop-up a party had come in from the northeast. These had been fighting with the Indians, and one man was brought in all 'shot up.'  Then the rumor had gone out that a doctor had just passed through; so this party ga.J;hered up to come after the doctor. We had a time explaining to them the difference between medicine and divinity. Dr. Taylor and farther had their hands full with this crowd, some of whom were most unreasonable."
Fort Whoop-up was the first fort to be constructed and was the most elaborate of the various posts throughout the south coimtry.  The Standoff post was the second in importance. Fort Kipp, a collection of log huts that made up three sides of an open square, seems to have been about the next most important. Most of the others were siit^ily crude log cabins.
I would like to conclude with a few comments on Fort Whoop-up, originally called Fort Hamilton.
Fort Hamilton was built at the junction of the St. Mary's and Belly (now Oldman) Rivers in December 186? by Alfred B. Hamilton and John J. Healy, who operated a trading post oh the Sun River in Montana. The post these men constructed was a crude one about sixty feet square, containing six rooms. Their success in trading exceeded all expectations, with buffalo robes and furs netting them about $50,000 for the winter's work. In the spring of 1870, when the robes were being packed for shipment to Benton, a larrp overturned and the fort was partially destroyed by fire.
Because furs and robes were most valuable in winter when they were prime, it was customary to abandon trading posts during the summer. Hamilton and Healy were preparing to leave their fort and to return in the fall, but after the fire they decided to construct a larger post. They hired an ex-Hudson's Bay Company carpenter, William Shanks Gladstone, who took about iiO Cree half-breeds with him to build the new fort. The location chosen was about 700 feet northwest of the partially burned Fort Hamilton. The new fort was ready for business by late fall of I870 although Gladstone continued to work on its construction for a couple of years.
This was the post that became the headquarters for American activities in southern Alberta. Free traders came there to hMj  supplies or to sell their robes, wolfers worked out of the fort poisoning prairie wolves and coyotes, prospectors used the fort as a base from which to work the foothills region, and there was an outpost of the Healy and Hamilton enterprises in the Calgary area.
The main post, like the first one, was called Fort Hamilton but soon became known as Fort Whoop-up. There are various accounts as to how it got the name. The most reliable seems to be that Charles Choquette, a freighter, coined the expression through a limited knowledge of English. Apparently a group of freighters were heading for the fort, they were tired, the hour was late, and one said, "Let's whoop up and get to the fort." This struck Choquette as an interesting phrase and