David R. Elliott - Adventures in the West: Henry Halpin, Fur Trader and Indian Agent

ADVENTURES
IN THE WEST

Henry Ross Halpin,
Fur Trader
and
Indian Agent

David R. Elliott

Foreword by Dr. Richard J. Preston

Copyright 2008 David R. Elliott

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy-edited by Nigel Heseltine
Edited by Jane Gibson
Designed by Courtney Horner
Printed and bound in Canada by Webcom

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Halpin, Henry, 1856-1930.
Adventures in the West : Henry Halpin, fur trader and Indian
agent / edited by David R. Elliott.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55002-803-4

1. Halpin, Henry, 1856-1930. 2. Northwest, Canadian--History-
1870-1905. 3. Indians of North America--Prairie Provinces--History-
19th century. 4. Fur traders--Canada--Biography. 5. Indian agents-
Canada--Biography. 6. Hudsons Bay Company--Biography. 7. Canada,
Western--Biography. I. Elliott, David Raymond, 1948- II. Title.

FC3217.1.H35A3 2008 971.202092 C2008-900711-5

1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08

We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
www.dundurn.com

Published by Natural Heritage Books
A Member of The Dundurn Group

Photo Credits:
Front cover: top, Cree trappers. Courtesy of the Glenbow Archives, NA1041-8; bottom left, Henry Ross Halpin circa 1872. Courtesy of Flora (Halpin) Ross; bottom right, Henry Ross Halpin, circa 1928. Courtesy of the Saskatchewan Archives Board, RB821.
Back Cover: Flora and Henry Halpin with their baby. Courtesy of Flora (Halpin) Ross.
All maps are by Nancy Elliott, unless otherwise indicated.

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Everyones lives feature people who stimulated their intellectual formation. I wish to mention one who did that for me. In grade eight, at Penticton Junior High School, I, with reluctance, had to attend an art class taught by N.L. (Bill) Barlee. In his class I did not learn much about art, but he stimulated my interest in history. Barlee was an amateur archaeologist and superb storyteller. During art class he enthralled us with stories of treasure hunts, ghost towns, and Native lore. He even took us to the local First Nations reserve to look for arrowheads and taught us how to pan for gold. He himself had explored much of the back country of the interior of British Columbia, visiting many of the old mining camps. He built up an impressive collection of artifacts, which have been loaned to museums across the country.

Bill Barlee went on to be the co-host of a television show entitled Gold Trails and Ghost Towns, which is still seen on cable networks. Later, he entered politics and was British Columbias minister of agriculture and food from 1991 to 1993 and minister of small business, culture, and tourism from 1993 to 1996. In 2000, he unsuccessfully ran against Stockwell Day for the federal seat representing Kootenay-Boundary-Okanagan.

The stories that Henry Ross Halpin had to tell about his life in the West would have thrilled Bill Barlee and if he could have, he would have put him on his television show. Thank you, Bill Barlee, for making the past real to me.

I owe much to the graduate seminar in Canadian economic history that I took from Professor Arthur J. Ray at the University of British Columbia in 1983. No matter what the topic of our weekly discussions, our conversations somehow always went back to the fur trade. The grounding that he gave me in fur trade history has stood me well in my teaching career and in developing my manuscript for this book.

The late retired Major John P. Elliott, my cousin, was an invaluable help as a research assistant. His internet research skills have brought to light many of the Halpin documents and newspaper articles that I otherwise would have missed.

Many institutions and people have helped make this project possible. Research help, photographs, and documents have been obtained from the Saskatchewan Archives Board, which has graciously granted reproduction rights, as did the Provincial Archives of Manitoba, the Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) Archives in Winnipeg, and the Glenbow-Alberta Archives in Calgary. Bill Russell, archivist at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa, was especially helpful in assisting me with the material from Indian Affairs that is held there. The Lambton County Archives, the London Public Library, and the University of Western Ontario were valuable sources of information on the Halpin familys life in Ontario.

I wish to thank my publisher and Barry L. Penhale and editor Jane Gibson, who recognized the value of Halpins story and arranged for its publication.

Photographs of the Halpin family were graciously provided by Flora Ross and Brian Halpin, grandchildren of Henry Ross Halpin. Finally, Nancy Elliott prepared the maps, provided encouragement, and spent hours checking the manuscript.

Dr. David Elliotts edition of this fur traders story is interesting to me for several reasons. One of them is the immediacy that most of us find in personal kinship. Henry Halpin was the husband of Elliotts great aunt, and David is the husband of my wifes double cousin. And David and I share an academic background with a strong common interest in the history of the northern Canadian fur trade. Now, to Henry Halpin:

A second reason that this book is interesting to me is that Halpin sounds like an echo of the youthful Robert M. Ballantyne, whose dozens of books extolling the romance of the northern Canadian fur trade were enormously popular in the 1870s and are credited with recruiting many youths into the service of the Hudsons Bay Company. Like Ballantyne, one generation previously, Halpin came from a middle-class family with an interest in publishing businesses, who signed on with the Honourable Company when the family fortunes were low. Also like Ballantyne, Halpin was a lacklustre employee whose business skills were minimal and whose real enthusiasm was for living among the Natives and experiencing the awe-inspiring solitudes of the great northern forest. In his elder age he still conveys his youthful sense of being glad to be alone to watch nature in all [of] its pristine glory.