Chinook Country [antikvár]

/Ti 'I Introduction by Grant MacEwan Alberta South is a land of bewitching contrasts. Nature created it that way and a generation of newcomers added substantially to it. The result of the new intervention was not all good and not all bad, but it was spectacular. Who saw it more clearly than my wise old friend, the Old Man of the Stoney Tribe who was born beside the Bow River and died beside the Bow 96 years later, while Canada was marking the centennial of Confederation? His life embraced the Old and the New; he had been permitted to see and know the best and worst of two worlds. In the lowly circumstances of boyhood he saw no vehicle more serviceable and luxurious than a travois—consisting simply of two slender lodgepole pine sticks dragging behind a dog or horse. Then, amazingly, he lived to view the bigger world from a high-speed jet plane, actually encircling it. As a man from the teepees in the Land of the Unusual, he was adding to the contrasts by declaring for the principles of understanding and brotherhood and facing bigger total audiences than any other ambassador who ever went from Canada. Still he could remember when the territory encompassed by this book was buffalo country, when missionary John McDougall could stand on Spy Hill—now within the bounds of a great city— and see what he believed to be half a million 'wild bison critters'. The social order then was presided over by five buffalo-hunting tribes of native people: Blackfoot, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee, and his own, the Stoney. Their reputation was for ferocity, and they were the last of the Prairie tribesmen to enter into a treaty with the Government of Canada. They were primitive people, but their stewardship over thousands of years and millions of acres was good. The native herds and flocks were undiminished; the scenery remained unspoiled as the Great Spirit had fashioned it; the soil and grass and forests suffered no depletion; the coal and oil and gas were not ravaged; stream water retained its sparkling clearness and the atmosphere over the Bow was unblotched by gaseous smogs. Nature was in a state of enduring harmony. But it did not take the members of the new race long to change things. As a witness, the Old Man from the teepees was saddened at the scars left by the new human tenants. With a mild rebuke, he said he was thankful that the Rocky Mountains, the blue sky, the eroded Badlands, the Prairie vistas, and the returning moisture that sent vegetation into spirals of new growth each spring were beyond the greedy and destructive grasp of white men. He made no pretense of knowing history, but having known the stalwart leaders of two races who brought personality to the Southwest, he knew more of southern Alberta history than he realized. He could tell about the great Indians: Red Crow, Yellow Horn, Bullhead, Bearspaw, and Crowfoot, who was hailed as Chief of Chiefs. He knew the qualities of muscle, mind, and courage they possessed, entitling them to be remembered as great Albertans. He recalled, too, the white man's 'Chiefs' who helped to make the area distinctive: the pioneer statesman, Frederick Haultain, who was the perennial Premier of the North West Territories before 1905; Dr Michael Clark, who sat for Red Deer in the House of Commons and was regarded as the best orator in Canada at a time when oratory was in fashion; and R.B. Bennett, with whom the Indians