HIGH RIVER, Alta. – Fifty years ago a group of pioneers and their descendants realized they needed to record their achievements before some of their richest memories were lost.
The result was one of Western Canada’s first regional history books in which people living in southern Alberta turned a collection of personal stories, pictures, poetry and diaries into a 500 page book called Leaves from the Medicine Tree.
The book was named after a well-known forked cottonwood tree in the area that was called the medicine tree because local Indians believed it had healing powers. It was first seen in the 1870s and blew down in 1958.
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Many of the original contributors are gone now but demand for the book never diminished. The High River Pioneers and Oldtimers Association decided a reprint was in order and the book was redone this year.
The history covers the people and events before and at the turn of the 20th century in the area from Claresholm to the suburbs of modern day Calgary.
The first edition was published in 1960 after five years of gathering personal histories, documents, photographs and drawings.
High River, with its population of 10,000, has become a haven for retirees and newcomers who like the short commute to Calgary. Most do not know the rich history of this farming and ranching country.
“Newcomers like the historical angle. This is an agricultural town that retains its vitality,” says resident Anne Vincent, whose maiden name was Jackson.
One of the association’s ambitions is to teach local history in schools so youngsters can appreciate the kind of stock they came from.
“We feel a sense of urgency to preserve the heritage,” she added.
Nearly every district and municipality has local history books but this edition was among the first and contained more than family histories.
There are anecdotes and chapters devoted to the history of the cowboy, the North West Mounted Police, whiskey forts, farming practices and brand history. Also, many memories were recorded first hand because a large group of the original pioneers were still alive.
This region was home to some of Alberta’s most famous personalities.
The big four, A.E. Cross, Pat Burns, George Lane and Archie McLean, who funded the Calgary Stampede, lived here, as did John Ware, the African American cowboy, artist Charlie Russell and Henry Longbaugh, the Sundance Kid.
Settlers came mostly from Eastern Canada, Great Britain, Ireland and the United States.
Fur traders and explorers wandered through in the 18th century but no one started to put down roots until the 1870s.
This area was opened up by whiskey bootleggers, fur traders and ranchers looking for cheap government leases where pastureland could be had for a penny an acre in the 1870s and 1880s.
“There wasn’t much civilization in the 1880s,” said Hank Pallister, a retired brand inspector.
The NWMP had already built barracks to bring law and order to the area, including stopping horse thievery and the whiskey trade with Indians.
According to the book, the whiskey was made of alcohol, water, red pepper, Jamaican ginger, molasses, chewing tobacco and bluestone. Burned sugar or red ink might be added for extra colour.
High River, which became a village in 1903, started as a resting place for travellers and supply and mail wagons making the trip from Fort Macleod to Calgary. The road became known as the Macleod Trail, which is now Highway 2 and a major Calgary thoroughfare. Back then, the trip took a week but today is covered in about two hours by car.
There were no roads or fences and few people.
“People had to have a lot of ambition and endurance to stay,” said Norm Hartwick, who retired back to High River after a career in the oil patch.
“Sometimes I think about the women who left the cities,” he said.
They lived in tents, cabins and shacks with sod covered roofs. There was no health care and few schools, churches or other women.
Ranches could easily have more than 10,000 head of cattle on more than 100,000 acres. The Bar U Ranch, which was declared a national historic site in the mid-1990s, had 40,000 head.
However, the large ranches were eventually split up as homesteaders moved in and fenced the land. As well, hard times hit. The winter of 1906-07 was so fierce that 75 percent of the range cattle died.
It was a different time and place, as recorded by ranch hand J.L. Douglas who wrote in his diary about daily work, struggles and entertainment.
“We had a most amusing evening as they have a very droll (man) employed on the place who kept us in roars of laughter all the time with songs and recitations,” he wrote.
A local woman, Mrs. Walter Skeine, but using the pen name Moira O’Neill, wrote an article for a woman’s magazine called A lady’s life on a ranche.
She explained that life was hard but the people were kind and hospitable. Coming from Victorian England, she had been used to luxury, including servants, and went to great lengths to explain how simple and folksy her life had become.
“The scrupulous housewife must look to receive some pretty severe shocks at the outset. She may chance to find, as I have done, her best salad bowl set down in the fowl house with refreshment for the hens, or a white tablecloth flapping on a barbed wire fence to dry. Breakfast may be late one morning because the (servant) has taken a knife to one of the boys and the boy is holding him down on a chair in the kitchen. But this sort of thing only happens during the first week or month. After you have attained a strength of mind to disregard such trifles, they cease to occur.”
Ten-year-old Julia Short wrote about events of her life in 1884, describing a life where the silver lining of a hailstorm was homemade ice cream that she enjoyed because she hadn’t tasted ice cream in six years.
She talked about all-night country dances and neighbours giving them eggs.
The book also includes a chronology of significant events.
- The first farmer in the area was John Glenn, who came in 1879 and broke 41Ú2 acres at Fish Creek, now part of a southeastern Calgary suburb and provincial park. He seeded oats and barley and broadcast the seed by hand before harvesting it with a scythe. Glenn diverted water from Fish Creek in 1882 to irrigate his farm, producing a good crop of cabbage.
- The first thresher came through the same year. It was a turntable powered by four horses.
- The last wild buffalo was seen in 1884.
- In 1896, drought was so severe that rye grain seeded on summerfallow did not sprout until the following year.
- Homesteaders arrived in 1903.
- The first grain elevator was built in 1906 and the last High River elevator burned down in 2003.
