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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 16
by William Naftel EmpireThe First Cattle Drive By early summer 1881 some stock was already on the range, a number of thoroughbred stallions and mares brought out by Cochrane and McEachran. These were quartered at a ranch on the southern edge of what was to be the lease at the point where it met the Elbow River (probably that shown on Fig. 13 as "Ranch bought from King") which was under the supervision of E. A. Baynes the senator's son-in-law; a Mr. Baxter, and six former Mounted Police.1 Shortly after this the first lot of the imported breeding stock arrived; six purebred Shorthorns and one Hereford, all bred at Hillhurst.2 By autumn about 50 purebreds had reached Big Hill, travelling via rail and steamer to Fort Benton and on foot to Calgary. They were principally Herefords with some Aberdeen Angus and Durham Shorthorns, all under two years old and averaging in cost $140.86. The Angus, it was observed, stood the long journey best, followed by the Herefords.3 While these represented but a part of the 300 or so purebred stock planned to be imported, they were only a fraction of the total stock, which was to be brought in from the United States. The range cattle had no particular breeding, but they were a step up from the wiry longhorns common before the arrival of the railway in the central states made long exhausting drives unnecessary. The process of bringing this basic stock of range cattle up to an acceptable standard through breeding them to the purebred bulls accounted for a lengthy delay before the ranch was expected to make a significant return on the capital investment. Walker was in charge of buying the cattle, a job he began early in the summer of 1881. This was no easy task as the good market for beef which made ranching such an attractive proposition did not differentiate between beef cattle and breeding stock, hence prices were high. The Chicago Times noted:
In addition to high prices, McEachran reported heavy losses of stock in the districts where the company had planned to purchase breeding cattle, with a consequent effect on prices.5 Accordingly the investment in cattle would have to be higher than had been planned initially.
The first purchase, 500 head from Walla Walla, Washington, was supervised by Mose McDougall. The drive hack was a long and costly one for McDougall was drowned in the Hell Gate River near Missoula, Montana. Other purchases followed; Walker on one occasion bought 3,000 head when he met some ranchers while waiting for a stage in Dillon, Montana.6 Most of the cattle were purchased in Montana and the main herd, numbering six or seven thousand, cost $16 a head delivered at the boundary. The cattle were purchased from six different outfits—I. G. Baker and Company, Harrison and Company, Pollard and Baker, and the firms of McKenzie, Strong, and Price.7 They were well chosen and within their limits they were big, fine animals, well finished, well developed and carrying weight easily. The cattle were to be delivered to the international boundary by the vendors and from there I. G. Baker and Company undertook to deliver them to Big Hill at $2.50 a head. The trek, which was to become a byword in the Northwest for hard driving, was supervised by Howell Harris as far as the border where Frank Strong, foreman for Baker's, took over. To speed the proceedings up, Strong divided the herd in two, the steers in the first batch and the cows and calves to follow. The pace was wicked, the steers averaging 15 to 18 miles per day, the cows and calves close to 14. The cowboys "tin-canned" and "slickered" them (kept them moving by rattling tin cans and waving slickers) from morning to night without a break and kept them so closely herded at dark that they had scarcely a chance to graze, although in any case they were usually so tired that they preferred resting to eating. This sort of pace taxed the steers to the limit; its effect on the cows and calves was cruel. A number of wagons trailed along in the van to pick up straggling calves, but they were scarcely sufficient to save all those that fell behind. Too young, weak and hungry to keep up with the grown stock, they dropped out, were piled in the wagons when there was room, or left to die. Some calves were traded off by the cowboys for a pound of butter, a drink of milk or tea, or to whiskey traders who, to their considerable profit, accepted calves as legal tender.8 Such a massive drive could not fail to attract notice even in conditions of sparse settlement. Lachlan Kennedy, a Dominion land surveyor, met 2,800 head near Fort Calgary on 2 September and a few weeks later passed another herd of 1,800 further south at the Willow Creek ford.9 The governor general, the Marquis of Lorne, also encountered the herds during his tour of the Northwest. That part which had already arrived in Calgary when his Excellency passed through was drawn up for vice-regal inspection by Baynes and one of the foremen, Mr. Barter. An exhibition of roping was put on by the cowboys, who were "all armed to the teeth," and who impressed the party with their skill.10 The governor general passed three separate herds and though one must bear in mind the almost complete inexperience of the expedition's chronicler, the Reverend James McGregor, a Scots Presbyterian clergyman, plus the fact that he may have been reflecting a discreet official point of view, it is recorded that the members of the vice-regal party were impressed by the small death toll. This, of course, is a direct contradiction of the version that has been passed down to posterity. They travelled along the route taken by the drive for some 300 miles, passing most of it in the process, and only occasionally at distant intervals saw a carcase. Calves only a month old, claimed Mr. McGregor, made their daily journey as well as their mothers.11 With the cattle at last on hand, the first thing to do was to brand them. They could not be loosed on the range without brands and they had to be turned onto the range to graze and gain strength before winter. Time was short and there were thousands of cattle. The solution adopted by the ranch management was to put on a "hair brand," one that was simply scraped in the hair with a knife or with acid, and leave the permanent branding until the spring round-up. This step was to lead to considerable problems. (Later Walker devised a contrivance for branding full grown cattle, a "squeezing gate," that was an excellent idea but did not, unfortunately, always work satisfactorily.12)
In the meantime, there was much additional work. Sheds had to be erected for the thoroughbred stock, both cattle and horses, and hay was put up at different points to feed them.13 The stock from Washington and Montana, being native, was expected to fend for itself on the open range. To date, $124,780.01 had been spent on cattle of which 6,799 head, including 58 thoroughbred bulls, were on the ranch.14 At this point, with nearly 7,000 head of exhausted stock and only enough winter food for the thoroughbreds, winter closed in early and hard. The months of unending cold and snow that followed gave the lie to all the glittering expectations. There was no sign of those mild open winters during which cattle fattened on the protein-rich grass cured on the stalk in the fresh mountain air. The miserable starved animals, far from their accustomed ranges, had no idea where the springs and grazing areas were even if they could have reached them under the snow. Drifting ahead of the winds, they gathered for shelter in the snow-filled coulees and there they died by the hundreds of cold and starvation. To be fair to the country the winter was probably not more severe than could have been expected. Had the cattle been fit and accustomed to the range, they probably would have borne out the expectations of the investors as to the wintering capabilities of the Northwest cattle country. Such, however, was not the case and losses were heavy, close to a thousand head according to Walker.15 The Empire Grows In Montreal, the senator and his colleagues were no doubt shaken, but were evidently undeterred by the set-back. Nonetheless, they were all good businessmen and the company began to take steps to hedge its bets. The shareholders independently applied for certain choice grazing leases bordering the Cochrane leases with the evident intent of circumventing regulations and increasing the area available to the Cochrane ranch. In February 1882 Charles Carroll Colby applied to the Department of the Interior for a grazing lease for a tract of land between the Belly and Waterton rivers. On the seventeenth of that month the senator's son-in-law, Baynes, applied for a lease of Townships 25 and 26 in Range 2, and half of Township 26 in Range 3, west of Calgary. On the twenty-first, E. T. Brooks applied for a lease in the vicinity of Colby's, south of Fort MacLeod.16 In addition, on 17 February Cochrane wrote the minister in connection with his "understanding with the goverment that I should have on behalf of the Cochrane Ranche Coy, the first claim of the lands required by that Coy, for grazing purposes,"17 and submitted a formal application for the required lands at Big Hill. Another application of which original request has not survived was from A. W. Ogilvie for a lease on the eastern border of the Cochrane ranch. Under the authority of PC 722 of 11 April 1882, the requested grazing leases were authorized and the accompanying map (see Fig. 10) indicates just how well the senator marshalled the "Old Boy Network" of Parliament Hill, the Eastern Townships and the Montreal financial community. To the west of Calgary the Cochrane Ranche Company received Ranch 42, consisting of 100,000 acres in that part north of the Elbow River of Townships 24 and 25 in Range 3, Townships 25 and 26 in Range 4, and the eastern halves of Townships 25 and 26. Just to the east, Ogilvie received Ranch 43, consisting of 34,000 acres comprising that part north of the Elbow River of Township 23, Township 24 and the southern half of Township 25, all in Range 2. On the northeast borders of the Cochrane ranch lease, Ranch 44 — 55,000 acres made up of the northern halves of Township 25 and Township 26 in Range 2, and Township 26 in Range 3 — was leased to Major Baynes. These three leases made up a neat block of 189,000 acres of choice grazing land along the Bow River west of Calgary. In the southern part of the province, under the name of the Eastern Townships Ranche Company, Brooks was granted Ranch 34, consisting of 33,000 acres between the Belly and Waterton rivers in Townships 5 and 6, Range 26, and Township 5, Range 27, all west of the fourth meridian. Continuing on from the southern border of this lease. Colby, in the name of the Rocky Mountain Cattle Company, received 73,500 acres, Range 25, described as the land between the Belly River and the Waterton River and its north fork, and the northern limit of Township One and extending westward to the western limit of Range 29 W.4. These two leases made up a neat package bounded almost entirely by natural frontiers of rivers or mountains and totalling 106,500 acres.18 Colby was as determined as Cochrane to get precisely what he wanted. The bother of straightening out the borders of leases he found to be a nuisance and once matters had been arranged between himself, Ogilvie, Brooks and William Mitchell19 (later senator) of Drummondville, Quebec, he requested of the Department of the Interior:
If further evidence is needed of the close relationship between these two ranching companies it need only be noted that the rent for the Eastern Townships Ranche Company was paid in February 1883 not by Brooks, the lessee, but by Colby.21 Influence While this is not the place to discuss the subject in detail, it is evident from the references made thus far, and even more so from a detailed perusual of the relevant files, that influence, particularly political influence, played an open and acknowledged part in the granting of the grazing leases. Forty-six leases were authorized in March 1882 and of those awarded to individuals, a number were Conservative members of Parliament — A. T. H. Williams (killed on the steamer Northwest during the Rebellion), D. O. Boudreau, Thomas Temple, O. Ford Jones, and Alexander Shaw — as well as those connected with the Cochrane project. Some, such as Lieutenant Colonel Francis W. DeWinton, the governor general's secretary, had other connections; those of no particular influence themselves found that mountains became molehills with the aid of a friendly MP. In this last situation was Strange whose difficulties dissolved when he obtained help from W. T. Benson, MP, himself a cattle breeder, and Alexander Gunn, MP, who though the Liberal who had personally defeated Macdonald in Kingston in 1878, must have been privately a friend of the prime minister.22 How much political influence could be found among the directors of the various leases granted to corporate entities makes for interesting speculation if the Cochrane Ranche Company is any guide. Certainly the Allans of Montreal who formed the North-West Cattle Company carried much political weight and so did Captain John Stewart of the Stewart Ranche Company. It cannot be doubted that Macdonald considered the granting of leases of tens of thousands of acres of land as a useful way of paying off political debts or creating new political obligations. The entire procedure was quite open and it must be assumed that such opportunities as this were considered as part of the perquisites of political life. By the spring of 1882 Cochrane had acquired control, either himself or though friends, of two of the finest ranching areas in the Northwest. Most of the Bow River country between the government reserve around Calgary and the Indian reserve at Morley was in his hands. Though experience was to indicate that the area had its drawbacks, public opinion considered it to be the prime grazing area of the whole Northwest and for the senator to acquire virtually the entire block is an indication of the influence he was able to bring to bear. The southern block, controlled by Colby and Brooks, though isolated, was obviously a choice area even then and was to become one of the finest ranching locations in the country. The First Round-Up The Cochrane Ranche Company again ran into trouble during the spring round-up in 1882 for the hair brands so hastily applied the previous fall had virtually disappeared when the cattle shed their winter coats. To ensure that the company suffered no greater loss than that already endured, McEachran issued specific instructions to Walker to round up every unbranded head on the range and put the Cochrane "C" on it. Assistance was obtained from those settlers already in the vicinity, many of whom were glad to help if only for the chance to socialize. Help they did until they discovered to their dismay that when Walker received an order he carried it out to the letter, in this case even if it meant branding stock which, though identifiably belonging to someone else, was nonetheless considered to be unbranded. The settlers quit in a body and scattered across the range to the many hidden coulees and ravines where in self-defense they began to appropriate calves and unbranded cows and steers, most of which were probably Cochrane stock. A respectable number of animals changed owners in this way. The settlers, who declared that they would have been faced with ruin had they let the big ranch proceed unchecked, acquired new stock while the Cochrane ranch lost a number of cattle and acquired a harvest of ill-will among the small holders that was a long time dying.23 Once the losses, about a thousand head, were known, it was possible once again to set out on a buying trip both to continue building up the herd and to replace the dead stock. Early in the spring, Walker went down again to Montana and arranged for the purchase of four or five thousand head from the large ranching outfit of Poindexter and Orr. He was on the point of closing the deal when a wire from McEachran informed him that arrangements had been completed to have I. G. Baker and Company handle the purchase of stock. That company had decided to go into the ranching business and it would be, it was considered, more profitable if the cattle for the two firms were purchased together. On arrival at Fort Benton on his return, Walker received a second wire which to his dismay informed him that the deal with Baker's was off. Hastening back to Poindexter and Orr's, a 300-mile journey, he was informed that in the intervening weeks the price had risen. If he wished to buy the same herd he would have to pay $25,000 more. That was enough for Walker. He paid the price, but sent in his resignation to take effect as soon as a replacement could be found, a process that was to last five months.
At that, the deal was not too bad for the contract, signed 16 May 1882, called for the purchase of the herd at $25 per head. Although this was more than the $16 paid the previous year, it was the best they were to do for some time for later in the summer they were paying T. C. Bates and F. M. Good $45 per head, and Baker's $40 per head.24 Walker himself did well after he left the company. Obviously he had little faith in the management of its affairs, for he withdrew his investment as well as his services. A good businessman, he took out his equity not in cash but in the form of a sawmill which he had persuaded the company to build earlier. This proved a wise move, for Calgary was already expanding rapidly and with the arrival of the railway the town was to boom. Those who were in on the ground floor did well indeed. The Second Drive There still remained the task of transferring some thousands of Poindexter and Orr cattle north to their new range on the Bow River. The ensuing drive and its sequel proved to be a repeat of the previous year. The herds were driven hard and reached Fish Creek just outside Calgary in September only to be faced with a bitter snowstorm. Bad drifting buried the trail and formed great banks blocking the weakened animals. Poindexter offered to leave his cowboys for a month if Walker, whose replacement had not yet arrived, would let the cattle stay where they were for that time to recoup their strength, but Walker refused. He had been ordered to get the cattle to the range as soon as possible and insisted on Poindexter delivering them to Big Hill as the contract specified. Accordingly, using some strong local steers to break trail, the herd was driven to Big Hill where Poindexter is reputed to have said "Here they are, I have carried out my contract and delivered at the Big Hill. Count'em now because half of them will be dead tomorrow!"25 The Second Winter This was the welcome that greeted the new treasurer of the ranch, Francis (Frank) White, who with an experienced cattleman from Virginia, W. D. Kerfoot, was to take over from Walker. White was a capable accountant who had worked with eastern railways, but he had no ranching experience and was described at this initial stage in his new career as "apparently a fish out of water."26 Although he caught on quickly, White was to learn the business the hard way. Kerfoot, a member of a good Virginian family, had drifted west and was hired by James Cochrane in August at Fort Benton "to take charge of the cattle or other stock."27 Apparently what the directors had in mind was White as a business manager who would make sure that economy was the prime concern with Kerfoot, the practical cattleman, answerable to him. The ranch was, it is clear, a business proposition, not a hobby. White arrived on the ranch on 17 September, the night one of the first frosts of the season hit, and Kerfoot arrived at about the same time. On 30 September it began to snow on the range, probably the same storm that met the new cattle at Fish Creek. The next few weeks brought miserable weather steady snow for over a week, then a combination of snow, sleet and rain. By 8 October the trail to Calgary was blocked, though two days later Browning and James Cochrane were able to get through on their way east.28 The new herd, numbering 4,290 head, appeared on 19 October by which time the snow had stopped and been succeeded by bitter cold. Unwilling to get caught again in the spring, White began to brand the new stock on the twenty-fourth, but by the twenty-ninth it had begun to snow again. By 1 November it was apparent that the Cochrane Ranche Company was in for another bad winter.
The rest of the winter was another set-back for the Cochrane herds. For some reason, inexplicable in that both Browning and James Cochrane were at the ranch until October and had seen the condition of the ranges with their own eyes, the order was given to keep the cattle within the bounds of the Cochrane lease.30 All through the winter the village of Calgary was treated to the sight of long strings of bawling cattle walking downstream along the tops of the river banks heading instinctively toward the still open grazing country to the south and east. Always they were driven back to the frozen range. White spent a good deal of the winter travelling around the grazing country trying to buy feed and although he succeeded to a surprising extent, even writing letters to Ottawa to pry local government supplies loose, it was not enough. Spring was late that year and when the snow finally disappeared in June the herds had been decimated. The extent of the disaster had been apparent long before this. Early in May Cochrane had observed that
A month later the news was even worse,
Allowance must be made for the fact that Cochrane was still trying to talk the government into selling him five per cent of the lease and had an interest in crying poverty,33 but even given overstatement, the directors had evidently had enough. They had probably begun to realize this as soon as the bills for extra feed began to come in from White and had no intention of waiting to see if another winter would be as bad. On his way down to Fort Benton in April 1883 to purchase enough cattle to permit the company to fulfill its contracts, White met the post heading north for MacLeod and Calgary. Among the letters was one from Browning advising him of the company's decision to change the base of its cattle operations to the area between the Waterton and Belly rivers, south of Fort MacLeod.34 Failure Of the thousands of cattle imported from the United States, it has been said that by the spring of 1883 something in the vicinity of 4,000 remained.35 This is probably exaggerated, but so devastated were the herds that in order to preserve what was left as well as honour the government contracts, it had been necessary for White to purchase extra stock at Fort Benton. For this they would have to pay; one quotation for 250 steers worked out to $65 a piece, $20 more than the price considered extravagant the previous year.36 There was no choice, however; from the herds around the ranch site only 90 steers and 20 barren cows could be found to fill the Indian department commitments.37 At the beginning of May the plans were drawn up for the last round-up, at which time Kerfoot accepted the position of manager at Big Hill — for $2,500 a year and a house — while White moved down to manage the southern range. White, however, continued to act as treasurer until a new man, A. F. Cross, was appointed in the spring of 1884. At the round-up the cattle were divided into two herds; the first moved out on 7 July, the second shortly afterward.38 One day in July 1885, while doing the laundry beside Fish Creek, two girls of an English family recently settled in the area became conscious of an approaching deep rumble and in a few minutes a great herd of cattle appeared coming over and down the bank of the other side of the stream. The girls fled as the cattle forded the creek and passed on. When the dust settled, clothes, washboards, everything but a battered tub had disappeared.39 And so disappeared the great herds of cattle from the Cochrane ranch. The degree to which the failure of the Cochrane ranch affected the Bow River district is witnessed by the fact that it was not until after the turn of the century that the cattle population in the area exceeded that of late 1882.40 A number of factors should be considered in assessing responsibility for the ranch's failure. At this time the winters were harder than usual, but it was unfortunate for Cochrane's reputation that other cattle owners in the area suffered no more than the usual losses attendant upon any industry dependent on the vagaries of nature.41 It is only fair to note here that the suggestion has been made that the small ranchers who were the other occupants of the area were located in more rugged country and that the deep ravines of this area, the Wildcat Hills, provided excellent shelter while the hilltops were blown bare enough to allow cattle to graze.42 One can fault Walker for too rigid adherence to his orders when his extensive western experience must have warned him that there would be difficulties. A little flexibility on his part might have worked wonders. And one must attribute part of the problem to the troubles inevitable in any pioneer operation. The process of sorting out facts from the hyperbole of the publicity about the northwestern grazing lands was bound to be painful. Nevertheless, Cochrane must be blamed for the failure of the ranch on the Bow River. His unbounded determination, self-confidence and optimism would finally make the Cochrane ranch an outstanding success on its new southern range, both from the point of view of the investor and of the cattle breeder, but led him to minimize the very real difficulties any pioneer operation must face. His interest arose out of the enthusiastic observations of surveyors and explorers which, however sincere, were not based on a solid foundation of long experience in the area. He had preferred their opinion to the opinions of old-timers such as "Kootenai" Brown, a long-time resident of the foothills. Brown had met the senator out on the range during an early scouting trip the latter was making to locate suitable grazing land. Enthusiastically Cochrane told Brown, "We're going to bring in several thousand head of cattle here. They ought to live where buffalo lived and we should not need to feed them hay in a mild climate like this where you have so little snow." Brown warned him that this was not neccessarily true; that buffalo, like sheep, ate grass right to the roots and then, having eaten a range down, moved on, travelling thousands of miles in a season. Buffalo, he went on, stood into a storm whereas cattle would drift with the wind regardless of where it might lead. Finally, he advised cutting hay for the winter, but to no avail for Cochrane only laughed.43 The prevailing simplistic belief was that once one had brought in the necessary cattle, land and climate had combined to such a favourable extent that one need do no more than guide the fat beeves toward the waiting railway cars at marketing time. If in fact the Cochrane outfit really believed, as its spokesman informed the Marquis of Lorne, that the entire vast herd would require so little supervision as to need only 20 hands, then disaster was inevitable.44 A major error, and one made not only by Cochrane, was the acceptance of the free-ranging system within the limits of the lease. As the name implies, the cattle were allowed to wander where they wished within the boundaries of the lease and naturally gravitated toward the best ranges. Consequently these were eaten down in short order, leaving only second-rate grasses for the difficult winter months. One can fault Cochrane for trying to direct too closely a new enterprise in an unfamiliar environment from half a continent away as well as for the type of direction. At times too much dependence was placed on eastern techniques — cattle at Hillhurst did not wander freely over the entire countryside in winter so they were not allowed to cross the lease boundaries at Big Hill and had to feed on the second-rate grasses left after unmanaged summer grazing. At other times not enough dependence was placed on eastern techniques — although the grass did cure on the stalk and Chinooks often kept the snow cover to a minimum, hay was also required. In short, it would seem that all the attractive aspects of the Northwest, no matter how they differed from conditions in the East, were accepted with an open mind, but the possible drawbacks, particularly those which involved spending money, were not acknowledged. Most contemporary opinion blamed Cochrane. Macdonald averred that "his loss of cattle is mainly attributable to his want of management caused by his parsimony, more so than by the coldness of the climate."45 The Honourable D. L. Macpherson said that
While both Macpherson and Macdonald might be forgiven if they were reluctant to admit that in the Northwest they might after all have drawn a bad hand, their opinions were supported by others less likely to be biased. One of these, Moreton Frewen, observed later that "it was their fault rather than their misfortune — The wonder was handling their herd the way [they] did, that they did not lose the whole."47 Alexander Burgess, deputy minister of the Interior, was rather more tactful, but worried about the effect of so many carcases of Cochrane's cattle on the sensitive eye of the land hunter.48 It is to the senator's credit that once the hard lessons were learned on the Bow River, new methods were applied on the southern range. All ranchers had realized that it was simply not enough to turn the cattle loose on the ranges and expect them to go forth and multiply. This was made abundantly clear by the disastrous winter of 1886-87 wherein it became apparent that heavy stock losses were not the sole province of the Cochrane ranch. In the latter part of the 1880s it became increasingly common to put up at least enough hay to feed all the calves over the winter, to erect shelters at strategic points and to yard the cows about to calve. These steps had an impressive effect on the rate of increase and the industry began to approximate the predictions made for it at the beginning of the decade.
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