Chapter 19

THE PRAIRIES AGAIN

I

In cold weather and through a snowfall that had powdered the slopes and foothills of the Rocky Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 2nd, reached the prairies again. Now he was travelling well to the south of his former journey on a line that ran just above the American border.

In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the next two days at a series of small towns whose very names--McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Regina--had in them a savour of the old, brave days when the Red Man was still a power, and settlers chose their names off-hand from local things.

McLeod, on the Old Man River, just escapes the foothills. It is prairies, a few streets, a movie "joint," an hotel and a golf course. In McLeod we saw the dawn of the Mackinaw, or anyhow first saw the virtues of that strange coat which seems to have been adapted from the original of the Biblical Joseph by a Highland tailor. It is a thick, frieze garment, cut in Norfolk style. The colour is heroic red, or blue or mauve or cinnamon, over which black lines are laid in a plaid tracery.

We realized its value as a warmth-giver while we stood amid a crowd of them as the Prince received addresses. Among the crowd was a band of Blood Indians of the Blackfeet Tribe, whose complexions in the cold looked blue under their habitual brown-red. They had come to lay their homage before him and to present an Indian robe. The Prince shook hands and chatted with the chiefs as well as their squaws, and with the missionary who had spent his life among these Red Men, and had succeeded in mastering the four or five sounds that make up the Indian language.

We talked to an old chief upon whose breast were the large silver medals that Queen Victoria and King George had had specially struck for their Indian subjects. These have become signs of chieftainship, and are taken over by the new chief when he is elected by the tribesmen. With this chief was his son, a fine, quiet fellow in the costume of the present generation of Indians, the cowboy suit. He had served all through the war in a Canadian regiment.

At Lethbridge, the next town, there was a real and full Indian ceremonial. Before a line of tepees, or Indian lodges, the Prince was received by the Chiefs of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfeet Nation, and elected one of them with the name of Mekastro, that is Red Crow.

This name is a redoubtable one in the annals of the Blackfeet. It has been held by their most famous chieftains and has been handed down from generation to generation. It was a Chief Red Crow who signed the Wolseley Treaty in '77. Upon his election the Prince was presented with an historic headdress of feathers and horns, a beautiful thing that had been worn by the great fighting leaders of the race.

There were gathered about the Prince in front of these tall, painted tepees many chiefs of strange, odd-sounding names. One of these immobile and aquiline men was Chief Shot on Both Sides, another Chief Weasel Fat, another Chief One Spot, another Chief Many White Horses. They had a dignity and an unyielding calm, and if some of them wore befeathered bowler hats, instead of the sunray feathered headdress, it did not detract from their high austerity. Chief One Spot--"he whose voice can be heard three miles"--was a splendid and upright old warrior of eighty; he had not only been present at the historic treaty of '77, but had been one of the signatories.

The Prince chatted with these chiefs, while the Lethbridge people, who had shown extraordinary heartiness since the public welcome in the chief square of the town, crowded close around. While he was talking, the Prince asked if he could be shown the interior of one of the wigwams, and his brother, Chief Weasel Fat, took him to his own, over the door of which was painted rudely the emblem of the bald-headed eagle.

The wigwam is a fine airy home. Its canvas walls are supported by tall, leaning poles bound at the top. There is no need of a centre pole, and a wood fire burning on a circular hearth sent up a coil of smoke through the opening at the top of the poles.

The floor was strewn with bright soft rugs, on which squaws in vivid red robes were sitting, listening to all that was said with impassive faces. The walls were decorated with strips of warm cloth upon which had been sewn Indian figures and animals. The wide floor space also held a rattanwork bed, musical instruments and the like; certainly it was a more comfortable and commodious place than its bell-tent shape would suggest.

Leaving the exhibition grounds, on which the encampment stood, the Prince passed under an arch made of Indian clothes of white antelope skin, beads and feathers, and after reviewing the war veterans, went to the town ball that had been arranged in his honour.

Lethbridge is a mixture of the plain and the pit. It is a great grain centre, and there is no mistaking its prairie air, yet superimposed upon this is the atmosphere of, say, a Lancashire or Yorkshire mining town. Coal and other mines touch with a sense of dark industrial bustle the easy air of the plain town. It is a Labour town, and a force in Labour politics. That, of course, made not the slightest difference to its welcome; indeed, perhaps it tinged that greeting with a touch of independent heartiness that made it notable.

As a town it impresses with its vividity at once. That, indeed, is the quality of most Canadian cities. They capture one with their air of modernity and vivacity at first impact. True, one sometimes finds that the town that seemed great and bustling dwindles after a few fine streets into suburbs of dirt roadways, but one has been impressed. It may be very good window dressing, though, on the other hand, it is probably good planning which concentrates all the activity and interests of the town in the decisively main avenues.

II

Friday, October 3rd, saw the Prince visiting a string of three towns.

Medicine Hat was the first of these, an attractive, park-like place full of "pep." Medicine Hat's claim to fame beyond its name lies in the fact that, having discovered that it was sitting upon a vast subterranean reservoir of natural gas, it promptly harnessed it to its own use. Now, that elemental thing is in the control of humanity, and heats the town, and tamely drives the wheels of industry.

The outstanding ceremony was the way little boys suddenly took fright on a roof. In the middle of the town, beside the street, is a tall, thin standpipe, and this standpipe was to demonstrate a "shoot off" of the gas. Scores of small boys climbed on to the roofs of neighbouring sheds to see the fun. First there was a meek, submissive flame burning at the top of the pipe, and looking weak in the fine sunlight. Then, abruptly, the flame shot up a hundred feet, and there was a loud roaring. Not only was the roaring a terrifying thing, but the force of that rush of gas made the ground, the roof and the little boys tremble. Little boys came off that roof in record time, and with such a clatter that the effort of the standpipe almost lost its place as a star turn. This tremendous pressure is not habitual; it is, I believe, obtained by bursting a charge in one of the gas wells.

The Prince also saw the uses to which the gas was put in a big pottery