The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-12-16
How . Handful Of Mounted Police Keen
. Host Of Redskins In Awe.

The special correspondent of the Lon
don Times, who made the Northwest
tour with Lord Lorne, praises up the
mounted police, of whom Che savs) it
would be difficult to speak too highly.
Lord Lorne, always very keen in mill
tary matters since the days when he
himself worked con Gna0re in a volun-
teer artillery corps, and for an amateur.
therefore. an unusually good judge,
pronounced them s. as fine troop as
he ever saw" They are ludicrously
undetermined for the ground they have
to cover, and the number of Indians
and white men, often more unmanagea-
BILE than Indians, whom they are ex-
pected to keepin order. They are 800,
and the Indians may be counted by tens
of thousands. Yet, if crime be COM
mitted out on the prairie, q handful of
mounted police seize the criminal.
chief it may be, surrounded by his tribe,
and carry him off to the nearest fort as
coolly as policeman would take up
pickpocket in Cheapside. Not long ago
some Cree chiefs. considering them
selves aggrieved by the Government,
seized upon some Government cattle
passing through their territory. killing
and eating three. Colonel Rerschimer
and six of his men happened to come to
the place almost the same day. They
at once summoned the chiefs to surren-
der. The chiefs refused. armed them
selves and their immediate followers.
and. as the police approached. fired a
volley over, but pretty near, their heads
to intimidate them. Had the fire been
returned the police, far outnumbered.
would probably have been slain to a
man; but, calmly relying on the majesty
of the law, they walked under the bull
lets right into the Indian camp, hand
cuffed three chiefs and carried them off.
amid loud protestations and threats,
but no actual violence. A still more
striking case occurred quite recently
among the Blackfeet. One of the
Mounted Police was murdered, shot in
the back-by a young Blackfoot Indian.
whose father had, or thought he had,
grievance against the Government,
and on his death-bed bequeathed the
legacy of vengeance to his son. The
murderer at first escaped over the Amer
lean frontier, but coming back was
taken by small body of police from
the very midst of his tribe, to whom he
appealed in vain, though they knew
enough of English customs to knowthat
he was being carried to death. He is
now in Fort Macleod, to which we are
on our way, and though his execution
is certainty, and the Blackfeet, many
of them armed with Winchesters, are
quite numerous and powerful enough to
avenge-as they might have rescued
him, indeed. powerful enough to raise
war. not the slightest apprehension is
felt of their making anv serious diff
Guilty, or the Governor General, need
scarcely say, would not be allowed to
90 among them, except under the
strongest protests from those response
BILE for his safety. The Indians know
well that nothing more than strict JUS
tice has been or will be done. What
is perhaps still more curious than their
submitting to the control of the police
rather than resist it by force is that
they voluntarily make use of it them
selves. If an Indian nowadays has his
horse stolen. instead of going at once
on the war-path, and trying to recover
it himself, together with the thief's
scalp, he appeals to the police, and ex-
poets them to recover it, which they
usually do.