Calgary Cavalcade

Calgary Cavalcade
from fort to fortune
Copyright 1975 Western Producer Book Service
200 pages,
ISBN 0-919306-50-0.

Battle-Scarred Kanouse Lived There

Such a natural campsite in the angle made by the two rivers could not escape the eyes of explorers and traders-and it didn't. The decayed remains of a log structure invited speculation.

Brisebois, knowing something of fur trade history, gleefully concluded that the rotten logs were those of Fort La Jonquière, the exact location of which had been long in doubt. It was a pretty theory and many people since Brisebois' time have been ready to accept it - that Calgary stands on the spot where French traders built their most westerly post on May 29, 1751. Wherever Fort La Jonquière may have been built at that time, the Frenchmen were carrying out instructions "to establish a fort three hundred leagues" above the one then located where the Manitoba town of The Pas stands today.

Disappointingly, the weight of evidence is very much against the theory that the French were the first to choose the Calgary site. If they left their base now marked by the Manitoba town after the river was free of ice in the spring, they could not have paddled as far as the mouth of the Elbow River by the 29th of May. The late Professor Arthur Morton, highest authority on Western Canadian history, believed the post in question was only 200 yards west of la Corne's fort, north of the present town of Kinistino in Saskatchewan. That would be sufficient to permit the boast that Fort La Jonquière was the most westerly of posts, and still leave the distinction of being the first white man to see the Canadian Rockies to Anthony Henday, who trekked across the West in 1754. And so one is obliged to conclude that the log ruins seen by Inspector Brisebois were those of something built by a trader from Fort Benton and not as ancient as the police officer chose to believe.

Probably the first white man to see the confluence of those mountain streams and to camp nearby was David Thompson, whose name deserves letters of gold upon the pages of Western history. He was the young Welshman with a flair for mathematics-the 14-year-old who went with the Hudson's Bay Company and, after thirteen years of trading and exploring, offered his services to the rival North West Company and proved to be the greatest surveyor and maker of maps in his time. Moreover, he stands out as one of the sterling characters in the early West - reliable, generous, and opposed to the use of liquor in the Indian trade. That he died in poverty in Montreal after pawning his overcoat to buy food for his half-breed wife and himself, testifies to the shameful inadequacy of his rewards.

It was thirty-three years after Hudson's Bay Company Servant Anthony Henday saw the grandeur of the Rockies that young David Thompson rode south from Manchester House on the North Saskatchewan River to behold the spot from which the City of the Foothills would one day arise. On a meadow not far away-perhaps in the Springbank district-he met Peigan Indians and spent the ensuing winter with them.

Thompson came again in November, 1800, this time with Duncan McGillivray and others of the North West Company, and continued southward to the Highwood River. But if Thompson had visions of a great city, he failed to record them.

Fifty-eight years after Thompson's second journey to the Bow River, the Calgary area was visited by another celebrated explorer, Captain John Palliser, whose name is perpetuated in the Palliser Triangle on the plains and the Palliser Hotel in Calgary. His instructions from the Imperial Government were to make an assessment of the buffalo country west of Red River, a part of the continent known as Rupert's Land, and report upon soil, trees, climate, Indians, and the possibility of settlement.

After arriving at Fort Garry in July, 1857, Palliser and his staff of scientists zigzagged their way westward, digging holes in the sod to examine the soil and making pertinent observations about vegetation. The first season's operations terminated at Fort Carlton and the second season's at Fort Edmonton. On September 14, 1858, Palliser was at Bow River, immediately below the mouth of the Elbow and no doubt looking down upon the picture presented by two clear rivers weaving their way from a backdrop of grassy hills and snowcapped mountains.

According to his journal, he "Found a good crossing, then returned to breakfast on a very short allowance of fish . . . Saw buffalo to the east, struck off our course to follow them; ran them and killed three; two of them very good."

The Palliser party's third summer was devoted to exploring "the remainder of as yet unknown country," including the Cypress Hills which served to inspire the travelers. Palliser's colleague Dr. James Hector, returning from the Hills, passed on the south side of the Bow-Elbow confluence and followed the latter stream westward. "The country," he recorded on August 15, 1859, "is exceedingly beautiful, having a rich black soil supporting good pasture . . . It is no exaggeration to say that bands of small deer are as plentiful in this part of the country as in a deer park."

But in a sense, Thompson and Palliser and their associates were transient, uneasy about Blackfoot behavior and unlikely to pause long for the sake of scenery or to search for visions like that of a city which would someday encompass the rivers' junction. And so, as far as records show, the first white man to distinguish the Calgary site with anything more permanent than a teepee residence was the nimble-fingered trader, Fred Kanouse. His stay was not particularly long either, but his log quarters and his blazing fight against enemies who would have driven him out qualify a claim to the honor of being the first resident on Calgary soil.

Unfortunately, the exact location of the Kanouse building - a combination of house and trading post beside the Elbow - has been lost.

From his home in the Eastern States Kanouse went west and worked with the American Fur Company, established by John Jacob Astor. The frontier atmosphere in and about Fort Benton suited him like a dark alley suits a cat, and he soon demonstrated that he could accommodate himself to all the vagaries of Montana life. He could be well behaved or he could be devastatingly rough, as occasion demanded.

Taking time out from more legitimate employment at Fort Benton, Kanouse ventured north to indulge in a sideline of illicit trading with Canadian Indians. With backing from the proprietors of infamous Fort Whoop-Up, Kanouse went overland to the Elbow River, selected a location possessing natural advantages for defense in case of Indian attack, and built a log trading post. It was early in 1871, three years before the Mounted Police came to the prairies, four years before they built Fort Calgary. Although the exact location of the structure is now unknown, there is reason to believe it was about three miles back from the mouth of the river and thus within the present city limits.

But as Fred Kanouse was to discover, it was no place for a person seeking rest or holiday. Before he was in his new residence many days, trouble broke like a storm out of the mountains and the present Elbow Park district echoed from the gunfire of running battle.

Kanouse had taken four white men and a squaw to his post and one of the men quarreled with and beat up a Blood Indian. The bruised native rallied his fellow tribesmen to annihilate the traders. As the Indians approached, Kanouse and two of his friends went to meet them, hoping to pacify the warriors. The natives, however, were in an ugly mood and an Indian bullet dropped one of the white men. Kanouse replied with a shot that killed the Indian leader. Then, naturally, the Blood gunfire was directed at the valiant Fred and a bullet penetrated his shoulder. But he and his surviving companion managed to get back to the post and barricade the door. Now, with three men and one squaw on the inside, preparations were made quickly to resist the major attack which was sure to follow. The squaw loaded the guns and the men fired them, and for three days they kept it up, killing a few Indians and keeping the horde back.

The Blood retired to prepare another attack and Kanouse seized the opportunity to send a message for help to his friends at Spitzie on the Highwood River. The reinforcements came up promptly and the Indians decided against a continuation of the attack. This marked the end of the "Battle of Elbow Park" and may have explained the presence of human bones seen by the police.

The gunshot wound in the Kanouse shoulder healed; and though his relations with the Indians remained more or less strained, the man was back for the next trading season, still on leave of absence from what Alberta historian Hugh Dempsey has shown was the post of deputy sheriff and then sheriff for Chouteau County, Montana.

While it lasted, the trade at the Elbow post was profitable. In after years the weather-beaten old man told "how he did it" when he was the only permanent or semi-permanent resident within the present bounds of Calgary: "A head wife would come to the post with a party of Indians and dicker for what flour and blankets she wanted, and when she was through, she would hand something to her man and he would buy whiskey. We came to trade and in order to compete, we had to have whiskey." (Calgary Herald, August 6, 1912)

But ill luck seemed to follow Kanouse. On his return to Fort Benton in 1872, he was involved, it seems, in some shooting on the trail and he lost his sheriffs badge. And before the next trading season was in progress, one of Kanouse's helpers, flourishing a gun and demonstrating something that had happened in the battle with the Blood Indians, accidentally pulled the trigger, ignited a supply of gunpowder and blew out one wall of the Elbow River building. Kanouse quit that post and went to build on the Oldman River.

But the coming of the police to build Fort Macleod changed many things - changed Calgary's first resident. Being versatile, however, he had no difficulty in finding another occupation. While the buffalo were still numerous, he drove cattle from Montana and turned them loose at Fort Macleod; he took part in the earliest roundups; he occupied the oldest building at Fort Macleod and sometimes worried the police about the beverages he was selling; he operated a hotel at Pincher Creek, and when plans were being made for the huge stampede in 1912, the Calgary management brought the old trader and fighter back to build and man a replica of an early trading post.

He had some difficulty in believing that the Calgary he saw in 1912 was the same place at which he had built forty-one years before when he was the only resident. He wished he had kept the property on which he squatted.

But except for Brisebois showing commendable French sentiment, the Mounted Police on their arrival were not greatly concerned about who had occupied the site in other years. Their immediate interest was in a stout stockade fence and a roof under which to camp. Without delay a rider was directed to Fort Macleod, instructing the I. G. Baker Company to send its men to build the fort according to a prearranged undertaking. Even during their short time in the country, the police learned that anybody needing human assistance should not overlook that mercantile company with headquarters at Fort Benton and a trading store at Fort Macleod.

Responsibility for the next step in the creation of a city rested with the Baker Company.