records of the Police as the most trying period of their
history in the Northwest up to that date. The booming upon the eastern
and southern boundaries of Western Canada of the incoming tide of
humanity, hungry for land, awakened ominous echoes in the little
primitive settlements of half-breed people and throughout the
reservations of the wild Indian tribes as well. Everywhere, without
warning and without explanation, the surveyors' flags and posts made
appearance. Wild rumours ran through the land, till every fluttering
flag became the symbol of dispossession and every gleaming post
an emblem of tyrannous disregard of a people's rights. The ancient
aboriginal inhabitants of the western plains and woods, too, had their
grievances and their fears. With phenomenal rapidity the buffalo had
vanished from the plains once black with their hundreds of thousands.
With the buffalo vanished the Indians' chief source of support, their
food, their clothing, their shelter, their chief article of barter.
Bereft of these and deprived at the same time of the supreme joy of
existence, the chase, bitten with cold, starved with hunger, fearful
of the future, they offered fertile soil for the seeds of rebellion. A
government more than usually obsessed with stupidity, as all governments
become at times, remained indifferent to appeals, deaf to remonstrances,
blind to danger signals, till through the remote and isolated
settlements of the vast west and among the tribes of Indians,
hunger-bitten and fearful for their future, a spirit of unrest, of fear,
of impatience of all authority, spread like a secret plague from Prince
Albert to the Crow's Nest and from the Cypress Hills to Edmonton.
A violent recrudescence of whiskey-smuggling, horse-stealing, and
cattle-rustling made the work of administering the law throughout
this vast territory one of exceeding difficulty and one calling for
promptitude, wisdom, patience, and courage, of no ordinary quality.
Added to all this, the steady advance of the railroad into the new
country, with its huge construction camps, in whose wake followed
the lawless hordes of whiskey smugglers, tinhorn gamblers, thugs, and
harlots, very materially added to the dangers and difficulties of the
situation for the Police.

For the first month after enlistment Cameron was kept in close touch
with the Fort and spent his hours under the polishing hands of the drill
sergeant. From five in the morning till ten at night the