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St. Mary and Belly rivers, a favourite winter camp of the Bloods. Their primary purpose was to trade rotgut whiskey for robes and hides. The success of their venture owed much to Healy's personal relationship with the Bloods — he lived with a succession of Blood women — and their willingness to trade almost everything they owned for whiskey. After grossing $50,000 for their winter activities, Healy and Hamilton abandoned the fort but it was accidentally destroyed by fire when the bull trains were being loaded.
Stories of Healy and Hamilton's success spread like wildfire. Within two or three years at least 41 posts dotted the southwestern prairies. Most of the newcomers were blind to the beauty of the land, indifferent to the delicate balance of life, and contemptuous of the Indian's dignity. They saw the prairie people and its animals as items of exploitation and easy profit. Greedily, they encouraged the wanton killing of fur-bearing animals and, hiding in their strong forts, cheated and debauched the natives by trading them poisonous, adulterated whiskey. Of all these posts, the rebuilt Fort Hamilton, more popularly known as Fort Whoop-Up, was the most notorious. A soUd, rectangular log structure, guarded by two bristling cannons, it protected the white plunderers from their alcohol crazed victims.
The chaotic violence, sown by the American traders, became the setting for the last great, intertribal Indian battle to be fought in North America. At dawn on 25 October 1870, a large Cree war party attacked a band of Bloods in camp on the banks of the Belly River, now within the city limits of Lethbridge. The Crees expected the Bloods to be gravely weakened by smallpox but unknown to them a large band of Peigans was camped on the other side of the river. These Peigans had fled their traditional Montana hunting grounds after United States Army troops under Major Eugene Baker massacred 173 of them in camp on the Marias River the previous January. Upon hearing of the Cree attack, the Peigans quickly crossed the river and routed the invaders, killing several hundred of them in the process. At a critical time in their history, the prairie people failed to bury their traditional hostilities. They fought and killed each other, while a common foe took over their land.
The lawlessness which reigned on the plains in the early 1870s sparked an uproar in central Canada. The Dominion government had to respond and in 1874 sent the hastily-assembled North-West
Old Buck
The first recruits for the hastUy-organized "Mounted PoUce Force for the North-West Territories" signed on in eastern Canada in the autumn of 1873 and were sent west to Fort Garry. Lieutenant Colonel W. Osborne Smith, commander of the militia at Fort Garry, arranged accommodation for the men and erected stables for 50 horses, with harness rooms and storage space for hay and oats. Also, he purchased 33 horses for use by the recruits; among them was a seven-year-old gelding named "Buck."
On the great march westward in 1874, Buck was assigned to "the boy", 15-year-old trumpeter Frederick A. Bagley. On 21 September 1874, with the Force at the West Butte of the Sweetgrass Hills, Bagley was stiU mounted on Buck, as he had been since leaving Dufferin on 13 June.
Both Bagley and Buck accompanied Colonel James F. Macleod to the gates of Fort Whoop-Up on 9 October 1874 and to the site of the future Fort Macleod on 13 October.
Buck, by now referred to as "Old Buck" or "The Bagley Pony", is next heard of on 1 December 1894 when Superintendent R. Burton Deane, Commanding "K" Division, Lethbridge, reported: "The historic old horse 'Buck', which came into the country with the first expedition in 1874, and was then aged, is still to the fore. He has thus completed upwards of 28 winters, and nobody knows how many more."
"Old Buck" Uved until 1898 m "K" Division's stables and paddocks, now Lethbridge's Civic Centre, untU humanely put to death at age 32 on order of Superintendent Deane.
Mounted PoUce to the southwestern prairies to blot out the whiskey trade. The police quickly stamped out the most flagrant abuses but never fully eradicated the smugglers. Nor could they stop the reckless butchery of wild life. Greedy Metis and white commercial hunters continued to kUl the animals and within less than a decade virtuaUy destroyed the buffalo, pronghorn, elk and deer. The prairie people lost their basic food supply. Destitute and hungry, they turned to the white government for relief. The once proud native of the plains was reduced to a servile refugee, totally dependent upon the good wiU of the Canadian government.
Although the government was reluctant to spend much money to aid the natives, it had to act. Recognizing the value of the soU
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Object Description
| Title | Lethbridge : A Centennial History |
| Local Subject(s) |
Lethbridge (Alta.) -- History Lethbridge Historical Society -- Monographs |
| Description | A publication authored by Alex Johnston and Andy A. den Otter on the centennial history of Lethbridge, Alberta. |
| Creator | Johnston, Alex ; den Otter, Andy A. |
| Publisher | City of Lethbridge and The Whoop-up Country Chapter, Historical Society of Alberta |
| Date.Original | 1985-06-20 |
| Type | text |
| Source | Lethbridge Historical Society |
| Language | eng |
| Relation | University of Lethbridge Library Digital Collections |
| Rights | Copyright - Lethbridge Historical Society |
| Resource Type | monograph |
| Date.Digital | 2009-06-01 |
| Date.Last.Modified | 2009-06-01 |