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The Cattle Kingdom

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Between the Red River and teh Rocky Mountians, and from teh 49th parellel north to the Artic, lies a region of relatively short, hot summers and uncertain rainfall. For centuries this was a region apparently unsuited to agriculture. The story of it's conquest by one of the greatest wheat economies the world has yet known is an epic chapter in the history of civilization. Between the Red and the Rockies
Copyright 1952 University of Toronto Press
300 pages,

John McDougall, the prairie missionary, and his brother David, who made his living by trading and his reputation by telling tall tales, may have been the first ranchland cattle men. The McDougalls were at Morley a year before the Mounted Police built Fort Macleod. They took twelve head of cattle with them from Fort Edmonton and then added fifty horses; next year they drove another small herd of cattle up from Montana. The arrival of the North West Mounted Police was the next step. The police brought in some cattle themselves. More important, they provided an accessible market. And perhaps most important of all, several of their members retired to found important ranches.

At their post on Old Man River, the police had some oxen for freighting and some cows for milk, but they were not ready to produce all the meat, butter, and vegetables which they required. The market thus created attracted enterprising people who squatted close to police headquarters. The I.G. Baker Co., a mercantile firm operating a store at Fort Benton and trading posts in various parts of the Indian country, brought a herd of cattle from Montana to slaughter for police beef. In 1874, on Rev. John McDougall's advice, a party of inter-mountain cattle drovers, moving a herd of 400 head, herded them for the winter along the Bow River and in the spring drove them north towards Fort Edmonton. And in the following year, Henry Olson and Joseph McFarlane brought milking cattle to a farm close to Fort Macleod and sold butter to the police and Indian agents at 75 cents a pound.

Still none had tried turning cattle loose on the broad prairies. First, given freedom, they might decide to fraternize with the buffalo and drift away with migrating herds. Secondly, the Indians had not heard about free enterprise and refused to understand the meaning of private ownership; a hungry Indian could see no reason for making a technical distinction between buffalo meat and cow meat and would shoot one animal down as readily as another.

Sergeant Whitney of the North West Mounted Police first tried the great experiment. He did so in 1876, the same year in which the first seed wheat was shipped from the new West. John B. Smith of Sun River, Montana, drove a bull and fourteen cows, with some calves, to Macleod and sold the total of twenty-five head to Whitney. Whitney didn't have the feed necessary to winter the cattle and turned them loose in the fall. Onlookers said, "You'll never see hide or hair on them again." But in the spring, when two riders went out to see if some trace could be found, 10, a miracle! After two days, they were back with the cattle. The entire herd had survived the hazards presented by Indians, buffalo, an unfenced range, storms, and lack of shelter. This "roundup" was actually the first cattle gathering on the prairies and marked the birth of an industry.

Nothing is more contagious than a good idea, especially if it leads to profit. The I.G. Baker Company began branding the cattle brought in for meat and allowing them to run at large until required for slaughter. Then Fred Kanouse, who had come into Alberta in 1871 as a very free trader, seeking an occupation which would be more acceptable to police ilicit whiskey trading and more profitable than panning gold in worked-over gravel, repeated the Whitney experiment. Just after the Blackfoot Treaty was signed Kanouse brought twenty-one cows and a bull from Montana and turned them out to wander as they chose between the Missouri River and the Peace. Every animal was accounted for next spring and every cow had a calf.

Tom Lynch and George Emerson became drovers. Emerson had been panning gold on the Saskatchewan and driving freight oxen for the Hudson's Bay Company. He and Lynch were more interested in selling than in breeding cattle. They began driving herds from Montana in 1876 and ultimately supplied foundation herds for several of the well-known ranchers among them Ed Maunsell and his brother George.

Sub-constable Edward H. Maunsell (Reg. No. 380) was another of a good many Mounted Policemen who gravitated to ranching as soon as they qualified for discharge. Police work had brought them in touch with pioneer cattlemen and afforded them a good opportunity to study locations. In the spring of 1877, about thirty men left the force and located in the Macleod and Pincher Creek districts, on land grants obtained by scrip given for three years of service and good conduct. Ed Maunsell became the owner of the largest individual ranch holdings in the Macleod district.

The first bona fide roundup in which a number of owners participated was in 1879. Sixteen men took part, among them a number of active and retired police. Inspector Albert Shurtliff was there, also Inspector William Winder, Sergeant W. F. Parker, Constable Robert Patterson, ex-Constable John Miller, and ex-Constable Maunsell. The police force was becoming a training ground for ranchers; soon others, like Colonel James Walker and ex-Sergeant David Cochrane (Reg. No. 22), turned to cattle and met with success.

When that first roundup was completed, it was concluded that hungry Indians had taken more cattle than the Canadian winter. Something had to be done to give relief to the natives and protection to the cattlemen. Pressure was exerted upon the Dominion Government and later in that year a herd numbering close to 1,000 head was driven from Montana and placed in the Porcupine Hills west of Macleod. The cattle were entrusted to herders employed by Colonel Macleod and the idea was to furnish beef as required to the Indians of Treaty No.7. The herd was not well managed, but there was ample evidence that with good direction cattle would thrive in that section.

Frank Oliver of Edmonton was one of the prophets who could see big herds coming to stock the ranges. He wanted to stock the prairie grassland with herds from the British Columbia ranges. Cattle on the inter-mountain grass were numerous and almost valueless but he believed they were actually better cattle than those coming from Montana. In 1880, Oliver was advocating a government-made cattle trail from Kamloops to Bow River. The idea was as progressive as Frank Oliver himself, but nothing came of it and the cattle to seed the Chinook pastures continued to come from Montana, mostly from the Sun River country.

In 1881 the trickle of cattle from the south broke into a torrent. It heralded the appearance of the big ranching outfits and the cattle barons. The Canadian Pacific Railway had advanced as far west as Brandon; 'Winnipeg was at the peak of a real estate boom; the buffalo had disappeared; grass was abundant; and open range permitted unrestricted use of state property.

Although individual operators had no legal claim to the areas they were grazing, the "law of the range" decreed that the first ranchers on the land had prior claim. The Land Act of 1881 provided for 21-year leases on up to 100,000 acres per lease at one cent per acre. According to the regulations, lessees were required to stock the ranches with one head of cattle per ten acres within three years. The folly of this was soon recognized, however, and the regulations were changed to require one head per twenty acres. The biggest inducement was that lessees might import cattle from the United States duty free.

"An Ordinance Respecting the Marking of Stock" was passed at the second session of the Council of the North-West Territories, meeting at Battleford on August 2, 1878. It represented the first move to institute brand recording on the prairies. By it the Lieutenant-Governor was given power to declare "stock districts," in which the office of the local stipendiary magistrate would become the Brand Recording Office, and the clerk in that office would act as Brand Recorder. It was to be the responsibility of the recorder, after consultation with an applicant cattleman, to designate the character or mark to be used and the position it would occupy on the animal's body. And always he must take care to avoid duplication.

Once recorded, no person except the registered owner could use the brand. No private property was so zealously guarded and where theft or misuse of a brand was established, there was never much sympathy for a light penalty. The Law of Moses stipulated that the cattle thief must "pay double unto his neighbour" for the cattle wrongfully acquired; but in the North West Territories they took a dimmer view of such crimes and considered that the person caught branding cattle other than his own should pay three times the value of the animals. And woe beside him if he were taken a second time misbranding or rustling.

"Stock District Number One," embracing the south part of the present Alberta and with its Record Office at Fort Macleod, was proclaimed by Lieutenant-Governor David Laird on November 21, 1878. The country was still without big herds, but small operators were displaying growing interest in the grass about Fort Macleod and that centre was showing the first indication of becoming the capital of the Canadian cattle kingdom.


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