ck to Irvine a few
hours later to go to Carlton, which he did, arriving there before
Middleton, and sending out scouting parties in search of Big Bear's band
that, as we shall see in a later page, had been scattered by Strange's
column. It was not long before one of these Police scouting parties had
captured Big Bear with some others and landed them in the jail at Prince
Albert. And it is rather interesting to recall that it was big Tom
Hourie, a Police interpreter, accompanied by two Police scouts,
Armstrong and Diehl, who captured Riel and took him into Middleton's
tent at Batoche. It is also interesting at this point to reproduce an
overlooked extract from a letter written by the Earl of Minto, who, as
Lord Melgund, was chief of General Middleton's staff, and who,
therefore, wrote out of personal knowledge of the situation. After
speaking of our three main columns, this fine soldier, who was wounded
on duty, says:

"Besides these three columns there was another force in the
field--the North-West Mounted Police detachment, under Colonel
Irvine, the value of which has always seemed to me underrated. The
fact of Colonel's Irvine's force being at Prince Albert afforded a
safe refuge to many outlying settlers, and, if it had not been
there, the task General Middleton had to solve would have been
quite a different one. Hampered, as Colonel Irvine was, by the
civilian population of the settlement and by a difficult country,
the possibility of successful junction with Middleton must always
have been doubtful, whilst the moral effect of the force at Prince
Albert was certain."

I have gone ahead of the history in mentioning the capture of Big Bear,
the pursuit of whom is the record of General Strange's column which, as
already noted, mobilized at Calgary. In addition to the 65th Rifles of
Montreal, the Winnipeg Light Infantry, with whom I served, and some
irregular scouts under Major Hattin and Osborne, we had two Mounted
Police detachments, one from the mountains under Inspector Sam B.
Steele, and the other from Fort MacLeod under Inspector A. Bowen Perry,
the present able Commissioner of the Force. Both these officers, coming
at that time under the command of General Strange in the Militia, were
given the Militia rank of Major. Steele enlisted a number of men, mostly
ex-Mounted Policemen, as scouts, his whole corps, thus augmented, being
generally called Steele's scou