Ever heard of John Palliser, William Francis Butler, John Macoun, Garnet Wolseley, George and John French, Lief Crozier, or Frederick Middleton? All were leading figures in the colonisation of the Prairie North-West. All of them were from Ireland.
Some context. Canada confederated in 1867 following an earlier phase in the 1840s of responsible government that held the British appointed executive accountable to locally elected assemblies. Canada as a Dominion consisted initially of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Manitoba became the fifth Province in 1870, British Columbia the sixth in 1871, and PEI the seventh in 1873.
The one and half million square miles to the north and west of Canada was Rupert’s Land, granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company by Charles II in 1670. The rest was the North-Western Territory, ‘added’ in 1821. The Indigenous inhabitants who had called it home since time immemorial were not consulted about the HBC’s charter or its claims to civil authority over their ancestral lands. (There is evidence of human settlement in Bluefish Caves, fifty miles from Old Crow in Yukon dating to 24,000 BCE: the first human presence in Ireland is 8,000 years ago.)
By the 1860s and the development of railways, British officials in the Colonial Office in London blanched at the cost of opening of this land to settlement. Yet they feared too that the United States might shift their manifest destiny northward after reaching the Pacific. Britain was keen that the newly confederated Canada establish its claim to the North-West before the Americans got any ideas. Enter John Palliser proposing an expedition to the North-West.
John Palliser grew up in an Anglo-Irish family settled in Ireland for many centuries. By the 1840s, Palliser’s devotion to big-game hunting had taken him deep into the interior of northern North America. His proposal to return came at an opportune time for the Colonial Office. With persistent support from fellow-Irishman at the Colonial Office John Ball, the Colonial office agreed to sponsor a scientific expedition to the Northwest. With an eye to projecting sovereignty and learning about the region, the Colonial Office offered support of £5,000 (over £400,000 today).
We cannot tell when Palliser himself reframed the expedition in his mind from hunting to exploration, but his leadership of the expedition over three seasons was marked by indefatigable good humour, no matter the hardship, and egalitarian charm to all he met. This kept his team together despite the truculence of one member. Significantly and singularly, it meant that the expedition avoided any violence in what was widely regarded as the hostile territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika). Lewis and Clark’s violent encounter with members of the Confederacy in 1806 had not been forgotten. The lack of violence around Palliser’s travels through the region was all the more noteworthy because both Palliser’s party and the Indigenous knew that the expedition portended settlement, colonisation, and profound changes ahead.
Indeed, the “scientific” purpose of the Palliser Expedition was to investigate the potential of the land for transport infrastructure, agricultural and mining development, with the intention of settling a whole new European population there. This was science as colonisation. Even Palliser’s recommendations were not ultimately heeded by this impulse to colonise. He recommended against trying agriculture in a triangle of semi-arid steppe that later bore his name, the Palliser Triangle. Yet indeed homesteads were established in Palliser’s Triangle and the region was subject to punishing periodic droughts.
Palliser’s report was prodigious, full of data. It would remain a standard reference point for many years. Writes Irene Spry: “After Prince Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory had become western Canada, the Expedition’s successors made much use of its Report. Outstanding among them were the geological survey teams, the North-West Mounted Police, and the negotiators of the Indian treaties. Among them, too, was Sandford Fleming, Engineer-in-Chief of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who was ‘very desirous’ of making Palliser’s acquaintance and did contrive to meet him. He always took a copy of Palliser’s Report with him when going over the ground the Expedition had covered, finding it of great use.” [Palliser Papers, pp cxxxii-cxxxiii]
Palliser is remembered today in many place names in Alberta. However, like so many of the Anglo-Irish in British North America, both his direct contribution and his Irish identity has been largely forgotten. Comeragh House was burned down at the end of the Troubles in 1923, along with his personal papers. Thanks to the efforts of The Champlain Society, devoted to the preservation of the stories, rigorously tested against the highest academic standards, of those who helped create Canada, Palliser’s papers were compiled and published in 1968, superbly edited by Irene Spry. Her introduction is marvellous. She captures so much detail and personality, without losing sight of the geopolitical context and the consequences of the Expedition. Spry’s account of the Expedition is a classic: The Palliser Expedition, The Dramatic Story of Western Canadian Exploration 1857-1860 (1963). Palliser is buried at the Comeragh Church of Ireland cemetery, near Lemybrien, Waterford.
The American Civil War had consumed not just vast numbers of people, property, and materiel, but any capacity for foreign affairs beyond the demands the war. (The transatlantic cable between NL and Ireland was delayed until 1866). After 1865, Reconstruction was a priority and would remain so for years.
Almost immediately after Canadian Confederation, London set about organising the transfer of Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory to the Dominion of Canada through a sale agreement for £300,000 in 1869. A sale was prosaic but profound; who could challenge a transaction with money changing hands?
Another key advocate for Canada’s westward expansion getting Prime Minster John A. Macdonald’s attention was John Macoun from County Down, hired as the Geological Survey’s first naturalist and an obsessive collector of flora and fauna. Macoun, at the time a 51 year old botanist, would lead the development of the first natural-history collections for the Museum of Nature and become the founder of Canadian natural history. Through his popular talks in Ottawa he promoted the productive capacity of the North-West, while underplaying the rigors of its winters.
Before the Dominion of Canada could establish its control over the North-West, the Métis of the Red River Settlement mounted an armed resistance and asserted their rights to their land, culture, and livelihood. Under the leadership of Louis Riel (his surname possibly from Reilly or O’Reilly some generations previously), the Red River Métis established a provisional government in late 1869 and negotiated the establishment of Manitoba as the fifth province to enter the Confederation the following year. The Manitoba Act however did not contain an amnesty for the members of the Provisional Government.
To assert its authority in the region, Canada organised a military expedition under the command of Garnet Wolseley. Wolseley was born in Dublin in 1833 and his family seat was in Carlow. However, his father died when he was young, leaving his widow to raise seven children. Under financial pressure, she educated Garnet in Dublin rather than England (as was the custom) and he joined the British Army to start a career, without having to purchase the commission thanks to his father’s service. Wolseley made his way up the ranks through energy, bravery, and leadership. A decorated soldier who saw active service in colonial wars in Burma, India (rebellion), and China (Opium War), and losing sight in one eye in the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, Wolseley travelled to and investigated the American Civil War from the Confederate side. He was active countering the Fenian raids into Canada as Deputy Quartermaster (at 34, the youngest ever in that role).
Macdonald therefore picked a brave and experienced officer, “the most capable British soldier of the period” says the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), to lead the Red River Expedition against Riel and his provisional government. The Expedition had a two-fold purpose: end the Red River Resistance and project sovereignty over the region to forestall any American intentions.
Wolseley wanted to know more about the territory before committing his troops. He picked another Irishman as an intelligence officer to go in advance of the main force and report back. William F. Butler was born in 1838 in Tipperary and as a young boy witnessed the terrible effect of the Great Famine. As the DCB notes: “William Francis Butler was born into an impoverished family of Tipperary gentry with a tradition of service to the British crown. As a child, he observed the ravages of the Great Famine and seems to have been left with a permanent sympathy for the underdog. Although his education was interrupted because his father spent all his money aiding famine victims, Butler developed a passion for history and biography that occupied his leisure until his death.”
An experienced soldier, Butler had no experience of the rigors of the Northwest but he was tough and learned quickly from Indigenous guides and trappers. He convinced Riel of his peaceful intentions and was free to travel. Butler covered over four thousand miles on foot, horseback and dogsled, from Lake Superior to the Rockies, north to Edmonton and Lake Athabasca, along the Saskatchewan River, and back to Winnipeg. A talented writer, like Wolseley himself, Butler’s report was published as The Great Lone Land. It became a best seller and instant classic of Western Canadian History. Thanks to the great McGahern’s Antiquarian Books here in Ottawa, I got a copy. It is a great adventure story, with beautifully descriptive passages and vivid characters he meets along the way. Butler, from a Catholic family that survived centuries of turmoil in Ireland, demonstrates a huge empathy with the Indigenous communities whose lifestyle and even existence faced extinction in the face of the white settlement to come.
One of Butler’s tasks was to make recommendations to ensure the rule of law before an influx of white settlers in an area that had been roiled by tensions between Indigenous people, commercial hunters and trappers, stoked often by sales of whiskey (one of the forts, near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta, was actually named Whoop-Up). A Catholic and life-long advocate for Home Rule for Ireland, Butler was keen to bring order with the least amount of corruption. His recommendations led to the establishment of the Northwest Mounted Police, modelled on the Royal Irish Mounted Constabulary.
Like Palliser before him, Butler was acutely aware that he was participating in work that would bring an end to an Indigenous way of life in areas whose very lack of European settlement was what he found most alluring about it. The Cree, he wrote, had yet to suffer injustice at the hands of the white man because their land was theirs, their hunting grounds undisturbed. But their days were numbered, he lamented, “and already the echo of the approaching wave of Western immigration is sounding through the solitudes of the Cree country”. He continued in an eloquent summary of colonialism’s progress:
“It is the same story from the Atlantic to the Pacific. First the white man was the welcome guest, the honoured visitor: then the greedy hunter, the death-dealing vender of fire-water and poison: then the settler and exterminator – everywhere it has been the same story.” [The Great Lone Land, p 242.]
(Interestingly, Butler rose to become Commander of British Forces in South Africa in 1898 but resigned, sympathetic to Boer demands for home rule and unwilling to take the offensive against them. Failure in the war fanned Butler’s fame. He died in Bansha Castle, Tipperary, in 1910. Bansha Castle is a wonderful guest house today.)
Briefed by Butler and very well prepared, Wolseley led the Expedition from Toronto in May 1870. Expectations, notably in the US, were high that it would end in abject failure. They had not reckoned on Wolseley. According to the DCB, Wolseley “moved a force consisting of nearly 400 British troops, over 700 Canadian militia, and a large party of civilian voyageurs and workmen from their port of embarkation at Collingwood, Ont., to the Red River between 3 May and 24 August, without losing a man. Altogether the expedition made 47 portages and ran 51 miles of rapids.”
Wolseley’s expedition completed its mission, though Riel and his followers had abandoned Fort Garry and Riel himself fled south to the US. This was itself a good outcome, considerably easing tensions. The Anglo-Irish Governor John Young (Lord Lisgar) had warned Macdonald against execution were Riel intercepted. Years later, Riel’s execution after the 1885 North-West Resistance was a travesty of justice. It embittered the Métis and French Canadians against the federal government and exacerbated tensions along ethnic, linguistic, and confessional lines across Canada.
One of the most arduous military marches in Canadian history, hacking out new roads in places, Wolseley proved it was possible to reach the North-West without a major detour into US territory. (US refusal to allow Wolseley pass on their side of the rapids on the St Mary River led to the construction of the Salte Ste Marie Canal.) If Palliser had avoided provoking confrontation through inter-personal skills, Wolseley did so through the size of his force and the overweening power of the British Empire he represented. The expedition’s projection of Canadian authority was an unmistakable signal to the US about who ruled north of the 49th parallel.
Informed by Butler’s report, Macdonald instructed that the policing of the Northwest should be modelled on the Royal Irish Mounted Constabulary. The man he picked to lead it had briefly served in the Royal Irish Constabulary, George Arthur French from Roscommon.
The extended French family was deeply rooted in Galway for centuries, with a base created in Roscommon through a grant of five thousand acres. French found himself impecunious like successive Anglo-Irish generations who did not inherit land. They had to fend for themselves, often finding employment in the service of the British Empire. George French’s professional career personified this. French enlisted in the Royal Artillery, a branch of the armed services open to those who could not pay for commissions in, for example, the cavalry. Before he did so, he briefly joined the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), which was to prove consequential for him. In 1862, two years after being commissioned as a lieutenant, French arrived in Kingston as an inspector of artillery for the Canadian militia. Canadian Confederation in 1867 was followed by plans for the withdrawal of British forces in 1870. French was in a key role overseeing the transfer to Canadian militia of forts and artillery. The militia would need artillery batteries and at his urging the Department of Militia and Defence instructed him in 1871 to establish and run artillery schools at Kingston and Quebec. In the 1870s then, French was one of the many Irish, Anglo-Irish, and Irish Canadians making Canadian nationhood a reality.
The foundational event in the establishment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was its famous March West in 1874. Its purpose was to bring ‘order’ by establishing a presence in key locations and project Canadian authority over the region. Macdonald chose French to become the first Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police, the RCMP’s forerunner. Aged 32, he served from October 1873 to July 1876. The Government in Ottawa refused London’s request to send him back to the British Army because he was “urgently required.” The March West made the arduous journey of 2000 km and established bases at Fort Macleod, Swan River, Bow River, Fort Walsh and Fort Saskatchewan.
Enforcing strict standards of probity in the new force, a strict disciplinarian and very assertive with the authorities in Ottawa, there were tensions between French and the Government. Yet a review of what he and the NWMP police had achieved was deemed very successful and French demanded that Ottawa thank his force for their accomplishments. After fifteen years’ service in Canada, French returned to his British military career and rose to the rank of major-general in 1902, retiring two year later. It was a measure of the dramatic changes in Canada that French travelled across Canada in his seventies by train on the eve of WWI.
Among French’s 16 officers during the March West was his dashing and fearless brother John. An expert horseman, he cut quite a figure with his jet black hair and beard. John built a career in the NWMP (as would two of his sons), retiring in 1883 with the rank of Inspector, to take up farming and become a local politician. With the outbreak of Riel’s North-West Resistance in 1885, John raised a militia of 34 men, known admiringly as French’s Scouts. John was killed at the Battle of Batoche, shot through the chest reputedly by Métis combatant Alexander Ross who also died in the battle.
By 1885, another member of the famous March West, Lief Crozier from Newry, had been promoted to Inspector in the NWMP. (The only surviving red tunic from the March West was worn by Crozier and is currently on display at the Canadian Museum of History.) Crozier was prone to bouts of irrational behaviour that at times convinced his soldiers he was insane. He explained this as “prairie madness” and the episodes did little to thwart his career. Crozier warned Ottawa that Louis Riel’s return the previous year would cause trouble but Ottawa did nothing. Outnumbered by Métis at the battle of Duck Lake, nine volunteers and three NWMP officers were killed but Crozier escaped thanks to the intervention of Riel. He was promoted to Assistant Commissioner and resigned in 1886, disgusted that he was not chosen to take command of the force. He opened a general store in Oklahoma and became a popular figure regaling his customers with stories of his adventures.
The North-West Field Force sent to suppress the Second Resistance was led by Major-General Frederick Middleton, born in Belfast in 1825. “Middleton was 59 and his days of active soldiering should have been over, but under a Blimpish exterior he hid remarkable courage and endurance, considerable common sense, and more practical experience of frontier warfare than most British officers of his seniority.” [DCB] By 15 May, the Métis stronghold of Batoche had fallen and Riel was in custody.
Pompous, bad tempered, and fearless, Middleton was a canny soldier but failed miserably at winning friends and influencing people. He left a trail of outrage when he left Canada, accused of stealing a Métis’ furs and being dishonourable to his fellow officers. The DCB concludes: “In 1896 he was appointed keeper of the crown jewels, a fitting rebuke to those who had harried him from Canada as a thief. To the end, he remained fit and active, walking daily and skating when he could. He died suddenly in his quarters at the Tower of London.”
Of course I write all of this from my privileged position and white, European, Irish perspective. The view from the Indigenous side is profoundly different. I can only guess at it principle features, knowing nothing of the trauma and damage inflicted on generations of Indigenous families and communities. The fate of their homeland was decided across the ocean by kings, merchants, and strokes of a pen. The Indigenous assisted and rescued trappers and travellers (explorers only to us Europeans!). This hospitality facilitated the mapping and observations that led to colonisation. Treaties entered into with great solemnity and trust were vitiated, by London but in the main by Ottawa. Confederation and colonial legislation led to the expropriation of their land and the near destruction of their freedom, languages, ways of life, and culture. The formation of the NWMP and later RCMP became the cutting edge of imperialism, enforcers of the pass system on reserves, and the detention of their children in the Indigenous Residential School system.
A balanced and accurate account must record Indigenous agency. Indigenous communities had over millennia developed their societies and cultures in some of the most challenging environments on earth. As keepers of knowledge and in their relationship to the land, they lived far more sustainably than the European socio-economic model that colonised their homeland. They responded to the European presence as guides, allies, trappers, and traders. As the 19th century progressed, Indigenous people faced almost impossible odds with concerted attempts to annihilate their culture and identity. The Residential School System was established on the basis of a report by Nicholas Flood Davin from Limerick.
The Irish involved in the colonisation of the Prairie North-West shared characteristics. They were Irish, deeply rooted in Ireland. Anglo-Irish by birth, heritage, upbringing, and lifestyle, they made choices based on necessities and the opportunities available to them. Most of those opportunities were available through service or business in the British Empire. Whatever they thought about the demands for Irish Home Rule, or indeed the impact of the Empire on the Indigenous peoples forcibly brought within its ambit, they were loyal servants of the Empire. They doubtless shared its self-declared values as well as the biases of the age when it came to notions of what constituted ‘civilisation’. Some of those opportunities, notably those in Canada, called for an adventurous spirit, courage, good horsemanship, and a hardy constitution.
The Irish of the North-West were not alone as émigrés from a colonised Ireland engaged in colonisation on behalf of the British Empire. Over 30% of the British Army throughout the 19th century were from Ireland. They were many generations of Irish similarly engaged in British North America, whether willingly like the Anglo-Irish leaders of the late 18th century (the Carletons, Parr, Bulkeley, Patterson, Hamilton et al), or unwillingly like the Famine refugees. People made choices in circumstances scarcely conceivable to us today.
We in Ireland have notions about constitutes our history, derived in part from our struggle against the very Empire that many Irish served. Our perspective in the 20th century was derived too from an official narrative that was largely shaped by the republican seam in our history which took root after the French Revolution and was canonised by the Easter Rising in 1916. It is as satisfying as it is simplistic. Yet the Irish in history are all the more fascinating when looked at in their myriad roles from in and not just against the British Empire.
The Irish in Canada remind us that our history is more complicated than official narratives and approved perspectives allow. Exploring these complications allows us to embrace all of the seams of Irish history – Catholic, Protestant, nationalist, unionists, loyalist, republican, imperial Irish, and the many identifies that formed and changed over the generations.
Eamonn McKee
Ottawa
3 August 203
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