Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted PoliceMacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
History
Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted Police
MacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
Northwest, Canadian -- History; Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Communication was difficult, but the news of these events of
frightfulness percolated through to Ottawa and the order went out in
September, 1873, that officers already appointed should proceed to
recruit in the Eastern Provinces and rush some part of the force to the
far West, so as to be on the ground by the next spring. The principal
recruiting officer seems to have been Inspector James Morrow Walsh, who
became one of the noted men of the Force in later years. It is a
somewhat remarkable coincidence and a decided testimony to the
directness with which the Mounted Police when organized struck at the
very heart of the lawlessness in the West, that Fort Walsh, called after
this recruiting Inspector, was built as a Police post not many months
later practically on "The Massacre Ground" in the Cypress Hills country.
That Fort was a direct and visible challenge to every outlaw, white or
red, who expected to have his own way in British territory.
We shall meet Walsh from time to time in this story and his name simply
occurs here as one of the earliest recruiting officers. I knew him at
different stages in his career, but most particularly when he had
retired from the Force and entered the coal business in Winnipeg. Later
on he was the Civil Governor of the Yukon Territory. Clean-cut in
figure, athletic, wiry and always faultlessly dressed, Walsh was a
good-looking type and bore in his carriage the unmistakable stamp of his
cavalry training. In Winnipeg he was popularly known as the man who had
tamed Sitting Bull, the redoubtable Sioux of Custer Massacre fame, but
others of the Police also had a hand, as we shall see, in that
extraordinary experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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