Tidbits of Alberta

[Red Bullets]

In January of 1884 a young FN man was hunting near Stony plain. He found two grizzlies. He killed one and one killed him.

* with today's stopping of the grizzly hunt in 20 years the grizzlies should be back in the area Stony Plain area.

[Red Bullets]

In January of 1884 pigeon lake whitefish were getting scarce. The price went to $3.50 per hundred fish.

[Red Bullets]

Again in 1884.....

A person was concerned that the water mill at the sturgeon river was causing destruction to the spawning fish. The spawning fish going upstream would be picked up by the turbine wheel in great numbers and cut to pieces. Great amounts of cut up dead fish could be seen downstream of the mill for a long distance. Not sure where there would have been a water mill. The mill most likely was used for powering a sawmill or grain milling stone.

[Red Bullets]

Marie-Anne Lagemodiére. Born Maskinongé, Quebec August 2, 1780. Died December 14, 1875.

Marie-Anne traveled with her fur trading husband and in 1806 was one of the 1st white women to visit such outposts as Red River and Fort Edmonton. Her daughter, Reine, was the first legitimate white child to be born in the Canadian west, now Alberta, in 1807. Marie-Anne was also the grandmother of Louis Riel.

Descendants of this family are still in the Lac La Biche area. I knew one of the great great granddaughters of Marie-Anne.

[Red Bullets]

Originally Posted by Bigwoodsman

Those pictures of the High Level are insane! Mother Natures at her finest!

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE A STICKY NOTE AT THE TOP OF THE FORUM PAGE

The pictures are of the low level bridge, not the high level bridge.

[Red Bullets]

Another 1890's Edmonton area gold tidbit.

A mention of one site that was mined for gold. There was not much of "drifting" happening on the North Sask river. Drifting was digging a shaft or pit down and then drifting off at different levels.

An average sample taken from a flat underneath which miners had been drifting during winters for many years was assayed in 1896. I believe the
miners worked at the 'drifting' in winter because water levels would have been low. Gold was 20 dollars an ounce.

"The first level was 20 feet of surface and subsoil assaying out to 50 cents per ton. The second level was 9 inches of hardpan assaying to nil. The third level was 3 1/2 feet assaying to 2.50 per ton."

This assay shows that level 3 at today's prices would be 150-170 bucks a ton.

[Red Bullets]

Alberta's FN people started to get horses from the south in 1730. In a few short years they were amazing horsemen.

(I couldn't resist putting the pic of the introduction of the horse to north america.)

[Red Bullets]

Now this is a cool find. The story this 1863 pistol could tell.

Excerpt from a Retroactive publication:
"The gun was discovered along a path on Buffalo Lake in 2004 when Darryl Bereziuk, now Director of the Archaeological Survey of Alberta, was scanning dirt for tiny trade beads and arrowheads and spotted the rusty barrel. “We realized it was likely associated with an historic Métis occupation nearby. The artifact attests to how lively a place this was in the 1800s”. The design and markings indicate that the gun was produced in the latter half of 1863 and had been accepted by the U.S. Army. It was likely issued to a soldier in 1864 but it’s not known if the gun was used in the final year of Civil War combat that ended in 1865." photograph by Darryl Bereziuk.

To read the whole story...
https://albertashistoricplaces.wordp...usty-revolver/

[Spidey]

I work in the field of psychology and psychopathology and in my undergrad and graduate studies, one of the predominant psychologists we studied was Albert Bandura and his work in social cognitive theory, aggression, educational psychology and personality. He is most widely known for his "Bobo Doll" experiments in the early '60's.

At 92 years old he still serves as Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University and is considered the greatest living psychologist and the fourth most cited academic of all time in the field of psychology only behind B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Piaget.

And where was he born, and where did he graduate high school? You'll have to read the link to find out. Hint: he came back in 2010 to receive a community award and the town put on a perogie and kielbasa feast in his honor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura

[Red Bullets]

Thanks for the post spidey. Alberta has produced some very exceptional people. Mr. Bandura comes from good polish and ukrainian roots in that area.

[Red Bullets]

A recent tidbit of info about some of Alberta's mineral wealth. Mentioned in a gov't geological report...

2007- "Significant amounts of placer gold, platinum and rare diamonds have been found in gravel deposits on the northern outskirts of Whitecourt, Alberta. These deposits are currently being worked for their cobble and gravel components, but test circuits have been set up to recover heavy minerals from the gravel washings. These minerals are recovered by various density-sensitive methods, such as a jig concentrator, shaking table, spiral concentrator and Knelson concentrator. Quartz, almandine garnet, magnetite, ilmenite, hematite, gold, zircon and monazite were the main minerals identified in these concentrates during this study, along with minor amounts of platinum, pyrite, dolomite, calcite, cerussite, lead, rutile, chromite and barite. Rare diamonds recovered from other samples were also shown to us, but not recovered from the samples used in this study.

Knight et al. have detailed a method whereby the flatness (ratio of length and breadth to thickness) of gold grains can be used to provide an estimate of the transport distance. The flatness ratio of grains from this study ranges between 40% and 50%, which suggests nearby derivation from as little as 3 to 8 km away."

[Red Bullets]

At the time of Confederation, 1867, market hunting was so rampant it was a public concern. By the late 1870's the buffalo were wiped out and then the passenger pigeons were exterminated. This was a concern of the Canadian gov't with respect to the nutritional needs of the FN peoples of the prairies. Until 1905 the gov't idea was that hunting must eventually disappear.

[ponokajoe]

Just joined up to this forum. I found this thread very interesting. An often overlooked area in Albertas history is the stretch along the North Saskatchewan river between Edmonton and Ft. Sask. Some think the original FT Edmonton was built in that area(horse hills).The Victoria trail went through there on the north side of the river. I and friends spent many days ****ing around the south side of the river fishing and looking for arrow heads. There were parts of old wagon trails that could still be seen back in the sixties east of the prison farm land. Don,t know who owns all that now. Might be worth a walk if one didn,t get in trouble for trespassing.

[Bigrib]

Alice Kehoe explains how a Blackfoot man named Old Swan , drew maps that white fur exploiters used to expand the fur removal business in Alberta and beyond.

As well she shows that so called white explorers didn't discover anything , they used native guides and followed native trails without giving credit to those that made them .

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...pened_the_West

[Red Bullets]

Originally Posted by Bigrib

Alice Kehoe explains how a Blackfoot man named Old Swan , drew maps that white fur exploiters used to expand the fur removal business in Alberta and beyond.

As well she shows that so called white explorers didn't discover anything , they used native guides and followed native trails without giving credit to those that made them .

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...pened_the_West

Thanks for this post. You are right in saying that the white explorers really didn't discover much. They really only knew they were lucky to have the FN guides like Old Swan.

[Red Bullets]

In 1893 a new homesteader, Thomas J. Waltin(?) was walking down the east shoreline of Pine Lake SE of Red Deer and he noticed bones. Thomas wrote:
"I Discovered a rather large amount of human bones and skulls..possibly 20 or 30 of the latter of all sizes. They were scattered over 3 to 4 acres of land and evidently had been laying there a long time."

He asked two local homesteaders if they knew anything about them. The homesteaders, Page and Brewster, thought they were the remains of FN people that succumbed to an early smallpox epidemic. There had been a large FN village at Quill lake east of Pine lake.

Thomas goes on to say.." I was not satisfied with their answer as I found some of the skulls bore the marks of tomahawks or axes."

Thomas spoke with local FN people and was told this story...East and west of Pine lake was was debatable land as far as hunting rights between the Blackfoot and Cree nations. A cree group were camped in the Pine Lake area. These bones were the result of a group of the Blackfoot tribe killing everyone in the cree camp, except one young man. The 50 year old FN person that told the man this story was told this by his grandfather.

[Red Bullets]

After the horse arrived in Alberta territory one FN chief grazed his horses on a 100 acre flat on top of Chief Mountain. The grass there was believed to have mythical properties on this flat.

[Red Bullets]

So next time you are out looking at our Alberta scenery be reminded this landscape was once not so breathtaking but rather humbling and stark.

With my second last post I mention a 3 acre boneyard of human skeletal remains on the shore of Pine Lake. In previous posts I have mentioned the land being strewn with buffalo bones. The landscape we enjoy would have been so different. In the 1860's and 1870's the prairie would have had the stench of death.. of decaying buffalo carcasses. During the mass extermination of the buffalo the buffalo hunters were only taking the tongues and hides. And some FN villages of death left alone and intact with the resident bones of whole villages of smallpox victims.

And aside from the prairie strewn with bones on hilltops there were places where there were tree burials. The tree burials were even being practiced into the early 1900's. The pic shows a tree burial in southern Alberta in 1910. (No disrespect meant to the Blackfoot nation for posting such a picture.)

[Red Bullets]

Southern Alberta grizzly bears?

An 1871 Hudson's Bay Company report is interesting...
- many grizzly bears were killed in the Cypress Hills that year. Also elk.
- 750 grizzly skins were acquired that year from the Cypress Hills. Most were unprimed summer bearskins as they were shot off of horseback. Many of the bear skins were of an immense size. 1500 elk skins were acquired from the Cypress Hills that year too.
- The report mentioned that there were many more bears and elk taken that year in the Cypress Hills but the skins went to other traders.

[Scottish]

Thank you for this thread. Pretty cool

[Red Bullets]

Swan Hills has had some big grizzly bears. Here are some of them. The last pic is the skull of the biggest grizzly ever shot, by Bella Twin in 1953.

Wonder if any bears still get to any size in the Swan Hills forest.

[Bigrib]

Interesting to get numbers of grizzly bear hides taken out of SE Alberta .

Growing up I thought that Grizzly bears , elk and wolves were creatures of remote mountain areas but over the years I started to find out that those 3 species were in fact much more numerous on the prairies . The Grizzly is by nature more suited to the prairies and elk are grass eaters by preference and the wolves followed the buffalo .

It's hard to comprehend the numbers of large animals killed in Alberta in the 20 year span from 1860 - 1880 but it must have been in the millions .

[Jack Hardin]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

Looked like this one. 1886 model.

I won a replica lever action 12 ga shotgun as a door prize about 10 years ago but, sold it.

[Jack Hardin]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

Now this is a cool find. The story this 1863 pistol could tell.

Excerpt from a Retroactive publication:
"The gun was discovered along a path on Buffalo Lake in 2004 when Darryl Bereziuk, now Director of the Archaeological Survey of Alberta, was scanning dirt for tiny trade beads and arrowheads and spotted the rusty barrel. “We realized it was likely associated with an historic Métis occupation nearby. The artifact attests to how lively a place this was in the 1800s”. The design and markings indicate that the gun was produced in the latter half of 1863 and had been accepted by the U.S. Army. It was likely issued to a soldier in 1864 but it’s not known if the gun was used in the final year of Civil War combat that ended in 1865." photograph by Darryl Bereziuk.

To read the whole story...
https://albertashistoricplaces.wordp...usty-revolver/

With a top strap, it could be a Remington. Can you tell what cal it is, .36 or .44? .36 cal was usually carried by officers, but not necessarily. Wild Bill Hickok carried two .36 cal cap and ball revolvers right up to his demise.

[Red Bullets]

Originally Posted by Jack Hardin

With a top strap, it could be a Remington. Can you tell what cal it is, .36 or .44? .36 cal was usually carried by officers, but not necessarily. Wild Bill Hickok carried two .36 cal cap and ball revolvers right up to his demise.

Hard to tell by the pic. The article doesn't mention if the bore was gauged.
I looked at pictures of both calibers online and it could be either. A gun back then could have been carried by and officer or the person who lifted the officer topknot.

[Red Bullets]

I thought I would post a picture of the home of a FN Blackfoot family only 106 years ago. There are still a few 100+ year old people around so it's really not that long ago. No disrespect meant to the family descendants of Duck Cheif. Looks like a pretty comfortable home.

A excerpt from the Provincial Archives:
" Here’s a rare glimpse into the interior of a very large tipi, in this case, the home of Duck Chief, the son of the Siksika (Blackfoot) warrior Aatsista-Mahkan, also known as Running Rabbit. The photograph was taken in 1912.

This is Photo Number: P122 from the Provincial Archives collection. The photo is over 75 years old so I do not think there are legalities to copyright or re-posting the pic and sharing. I'm posting it to a historical tidbit thread about Alberta. Hopefully no repercussions.

The tepees had transitioned from the heavier buffalo skins of the mid 1800's and earlier to a lighter fabric once more merchants were around for the settlers. A well made tepee will hold up to extremely strong winds and storms way better than the wall tents some settlers lived in.

[Red Bullets]

On this day, June 19, 104 years ago in Southwestern Alberta, the Hillcrest coal mine explosion claimed the lives of 189 miners. Nine days after the explosion World War One started. I was going to read more about this tragedy and discovered this website.

The story is best told here:
http://hillcrestminedisaster.com/

[JeanCretien]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

On this day, June 19, 104 years ago in Southwestern Alberta, the Hillcrest coal mine explosion claimed the lives of 189 miners. Nine days after the explosion World War One started. I was going to read more about this tragedy and discovered this website.



The story is best told here:

http://hillcrestminedisaster.com/

Excellent. Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Red Bullets]

This post has some tidbits that are just interesting. Not necessarily Alberta history but indirectly these thing helped form our game laws.

An essay written by John Donihee is all about the evolution of game laws or Canada. Interestingly he mentions...

Did you know that Alberta and Canadian wildlife laws have roots based on Roman law? Roman law was that wildlife belonged to no one until it was killed. English wildlife laws were derived from roman laws. These laws created "licences" which transferred the right to people from the crown to hunt on crown lands. So those people that did not own land could hunt.

Interesting that...
-Forests were one of King William's most valued possessions. He expand his tract by evicting tenants and destroying farms and homes. Hunting was for nobles to mark their status and distinguish themselves from the peasantry.

-In England, first appearing in the 1400's, a person had to have 40 shillings worth of property in order to hunt. By the 1700's one hundred english pounds of property per year to qualify for the hunt. This law was in place until 1831.

-"Seasons" being opened or closed were established in the time of Henry the Eighth....to protect waterfowl and their eggs. Herons could only be taken by long bow or hawk.

-King George the 1st's parliament passed a law that had a penalty for poaching of 50 pounds and 3 years in jail or deportation to the colonies in the new world for at least 7 years.In 1723 the "Black Act" was implemented and enforced anyone armed and disguised in a forest shall suffer death as a felon withouth the benefit of clergy.

- Qualification laws did more than reserve game. There were restrictions on possession of hunting gear, nets, dogs and guns. Only the privileged class and supporters of the crown had access. This disarmed the dissidents and unreliable peasant element. Only the prominent citizens were allowed to own guns and hunt and eat wild game. Privilege and qualification requirements were eliminated in 1831.

While this is not directly Alberta based info this past does have bearing on how we came to our game laws.

[Anvil1010]

I haven't read the whole thread, this may have been posted already. If this is not the place for this please PM me and I will remove it.

The following was just in the local paper.

“Terrible Tragedy Happens Near Grande Prairie,” screamed the headline. “Foul Play Suspected.”

It remains the biggest unsolved mass murder in Alberta’s history: Six Eastern European immigrants slayed on two farms outside Grande Prairie. Plenty of suspects, no convictions.

It was in the early morning of June 20, 1918, that the first bodies were discovered.

Dan Lough, a settler, rode his horse to the local Alberta Provincial Police office and told Corporal William Allen that some criminal act may have transpired on his neighbour’s farm, three miles northwest of Grande Prairie.

They arrived at the homestead of Joseph Snyder and nephew, Stanley, to find it burned to the ground. The men’s dead bodies were buried in the debris. Lying near Joseph Snyder’s corpse was a .38 calibre revolver with five empty cartridges in the chamber.

“Whoever committed the dastardly deed had been very deliberate and from appearances it was certainly premeditated,” the Herald article said. “Immediately northwest of the house signs are very distinct proving where a body still bleeding had been dragged and thrown into the building.” Fence posts and wood had been piled inside the house to start the fire.

Three days later, police found four more bodies on another farm about four miles from the Snyder place. Two of them were decomposing inside the house, with another in the storehouse and another in a wagon.

The men were Ignace Patan, who owned the house, and James Wudwand, Charles Zimmer, and Frank Parzychowsky. They appeared to have been killed a few days before. The aforementioned revolver, which had belonged to Patan, was used to kill five of the victims with shots to the back of the head or through an eye. Patan’s throat was cut.

It seems to have been common knowledge, before the murders took place, that Patan, Zimmer and Wudwand had large sums of cash on them. The money was never found, but residents were scandalized when blood-stained bank notes began circulating throughout the area soon afterwards.

To the outrage of the public, the investigation dragged on and no one was charged, due to the failure to find any direct evidence, according to historian David Leonard.

A Herald editorial accused police of bungling the investigation, an opinion that many came to share. According to Leonard, investigators dropped the ball because all of the competent men who would normally have been policemen had joined the war.

Eventually, Lough was charged for all six murders and tried before a jury in Grande Prairie on Dec. 20, 1920, but the only evidence martialled against him was circumstantial. He was acquitted. Richard Knechtel, a Clairmont farmer, was later charged, but Magistrate Percy Belcher dismissed the case.

Many people at the time had theories about the murders. Although investigators looked mostly within the immigrant community for suspects, Leonard himself favours the idea that it may have been someone of British descent.

“I have a feeling that it probably could have been that,” he said. “Now, am I going to name anyone that I think did it? I don’t know.”

Leonard acknowledges the evidence is scanty. It consists in the general animosity towards Germans and Eastern Europeans at the time. Canada in 1918 was a nation that conceived of itself as British, and the vast majority of citizens outside Quebec were of British ancestry. Large numbers of men enlisted to fight in the Great War against Germany and its allies, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

“A lot of the young men did not return,” Leonard said. “And very few of the (enlistees) who were signing up were of Eastern European origin. There began to develop a lot of animosity towards them, that these good British boys are being killed by Eastern Europeans fighting on the battlegrounds of Europe.”

The late Wally Tansem, an amature historian who conducted “the most thorough reexamination of the case in recent years,” according to Leonard, believed Lough to be the most likely culprit.

As a child, Tansem often heard the murders discussed by his father and uncle, who homesteaded in Wanham in 1917. He spent 10 years working on his posthumous book, “The Foulest of Murders”.

For further reading find an article by Leonard here.