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1850 sightseer preserves priceless Prairie history
"A ridiculous thing happened this morning. I was in the act of washing myself in my india-rubber bath, when suddenly the door flew open , and two splendidly dressed Indians walked into the room as if the whole place belonged to them, but on seeing me they stopped and stared with all their might. We stared at one another for a moment, then a radiant smile came over their faces, and there was a general laugh, after which I continued my sponging, to their evident wonder and amazement. What they thought of the ceremony I never happened to find out."  An "octopus bag" believed to be from the Red River area. Royal Alberta Museum curators have dubbed the elaborately hand-beaded piece the Mona Lisa of Metis handicrafts. At auction in May, it sold for $69,000 US. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal Lordly moose were slain and carried O'er the snow to those that tarried Halting on their hunters' track; Sighted on the far horizon, Moved a mighty band of bison, Surged a bellowing sea of black. -- From The Meda Maiden, by James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk. In the dingy basement of the Royal Alberta Museum sits a treasure fit for a king. Or at least an earl. The Southesk Collection -- a remarkable group of Aboriginal and Metis artifacts, gathered here in 1859 and 1860 by James Carnegie, the Earl of Southesk -- is home at last. It's a unique assemblage of Prairie artistic history, inadvertently preserved for us by a most eccentric traveller.  Blackfoot leggings, fringed in horse and human hair. To the museum's sorrow, the matching tunic was sold to a private American collector for $800,000 US, what Sotheby's called a record price for an American Indian art object. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal Back then, the areas now known as Alberta and Saskatchewan weren't part of Canada, or even, strictly speaking, British Crown land. They were the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company. A smattering of white traders and missionaries lived here, but most of the population was aboriginal and Metis. Alberta in the 1850s had seen its fair share of European explorers, cartographers, fur traders and missionaries. Tourists? They were unheard of. Scions of the British Empire, men of Southesk's rank and wealth, went on hunting tours of Africa or India. They didn't come here. In fact, Southesk was the first person to travel to Alberta not to make money or to save souls, but just to admire the scenery. He was the Rocky Mountains' original celebrity sightseer.  A deerhide mitten, trimmed in ribbon. The museum paid $4,500 US for the pair. At the Sotheby's auction, that was a bargain. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal The 32-year-old earl travelled in style. He arrived with his private servants, the works of William Shakespeare and an India-rubber bathtub. He hired guides, hunters, cooks and bearers: at times, he travelled with an entourage of as many as 75. A dedicated horseman, he travelled on horseback from Fort Garry, near present-day Winnipeg, west to Fort Edmonton, then on to the Rocky Mountains. He returned that winter by horse, boat, snowshoe and dogsled. Along the way, he hobnobbed with the likes of Hudson's Bay governor Sir George Simpson, painter Paul Kane, missionary Father Albert Lacombe and fur-trade luminaries James McKay, John Rowland, Richard Hardisty and William Christie. Southesk was a sportsman, a former soldier who had been educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and who had served with the Gordon Highlanders and the Grenadier Guards. He was also a passionate amateur scholar, fascinated by everything from linguistics to archeology. Above all, he was a capital-R Romantic, an enthusiastic if somewhat tin-eared poet, much inspired by Wordsworth and Longfellow, who came west on a quest for beauty, for adventure, for some kind of spiritual epiphany.  A bag made of green and red wool stroud and deerhide. Museum curators speculate the bag may have been made by missionary nuns or their pupils. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal His wife had recently died, leaving Southesk with four young children, and the earl had suffered an emotional and physical collapse. His great northwest trek was designed to restore his health and spirits -- and to put him, quite literally, on the Victorian intellectual map. We know much about Southesk's journey, because he kept detailed diaries of his travels -- which he published in 1875, under the title Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains. The journal tell us a lot about the Hudson's Bay Territories in 1859 -- and even more about Southesk, who read Much Ado about Nothing on the banks of the North Saskatchewan while the wolves howled outside his tent; who intersperses his commentary on Cree syllabics, the excellence of saskatoon jelly and the proper design of snow shoes with literary analysis of the work of Sir Walter Scott and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton; who upbraided his guides for choosing easy, comfortable campsites, when he wanted more picturesque ones.  A Nakoda or Assiniboine stone pipe, which Southesk received as a gift from a visiting chief near Old Bow Fort. I afterwards gave him in return some things that I found him to be in want of, adding two pairs of my own woolen socks, which he received with interest, though evidently puzzled as to their exact use. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal He travelled with an entourage. Yet he travelled alone. The dictates of the British class system meant he usually slept alone, while his men told stories and sang songs a discreet distance way. "The men seem happy in their large tent, singing jolly songs; and I am not uncomfortable in mine, warmly clothed, a great fire of pine-logs blazing before me, and Shakespeare dividing the time with great meals of mountain mutton," he wrote, rather wistfully, in his diary on Sept. 9, 1859, while waiting out a snowstorm in the Rockies. Like many a visitor after him, Southesk complained about the mosquitoes, the cold and the bland food.  Moccasins, likely created by Red River craftswoman Mary Monkman Tait as souvenirs for the Southesk children. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal And like any good tourist, Southesk shopped for souvenirs. Some he purchased directly from the locals. Others he commissioned to be made especially for him and his children back home. Mittens and moccasins, knife sheaths and pretty bags, hunting gear, exotic trophies to bring back to his ancestral Kinnaird Castle. And there they remained until this May, when the current earl put them up for auction at Sotheby's. The museum succeeded in purchasing much, though sadly not all, of the collection, for just under $1.1 million. Today, the museum will unveil them for an invited audience -- and then spend the next few months preparing a major public exhibition, to open next March. For the museum, the collection is a brilliant addition to its holdings. It had no aboriginal pieces from the 1850s and early 1860s -- its holdings came from a later date.  The Edmonton Dag: The Edmonton hunters always carry very strong and large knives. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal The Southesk collection includes the handiwork of many peoples: Cree, Blackfoot, Blood, Nakoda, Iroquois, Metis -- with a generous dollop of French and Scottish influence. Some of the pieces are immensely elaborate -- such as an intricately beaded Red River "octopus bag," embroidered with lush, three-dimensional flowers and strawberries, which museum ethnology curators Susan Berry and Ruth McConnell have taken to calling the Mona Lisa of Metis art; or a pair of Blackfoot elk-hide leggings, decorated with blue and white beads, fringed with horse and human hair. Others are simple and functional -- like a moose-leather rifle-case made by the wife of one of Southesk's Iroquois guides. But the gun case is just as special to Berry and McConnell -- it's one of the only known surviving artifacts of the Iroquois presence in Alberta.  A Red River Metis pouch, trimmed with blue silk ribbon, attributed to Mary Monkman Tait. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal "The collection really speaks to the multicultural quality of fur trade society," says Berry. What's most striking about Southesk's hoard is that it is a collection of authentic artifacts of Edmonton, Alberta and the West, the artistic expression of our shared history, and the diverse cultural matrix on which our West was built. The Southesk collection serves, too, as an intriguing testament to the global reach of the Victorian British Empire. At Fort Edmonton, the earl bought a bone-handled double-edged dagger with a beaded moose-leather sheath, a piece now at the Royal Alberta Museum. In his journal, Southesk remarks that Edmonton hunters always carry such "dags," and that he's been told the knives were "originally copied from a weapon borne by one of the hill tribes of India" -- a surprising reminder of the imperial trade links that loaded British ships with trade goods in Calcutta to swap for beaver pelts in Edmonton to make top hats in London.  A porcupine quill embroidered pouch, likely Cree handiwork. Photograph by : Larry Wong, The Journal Such personal notes from the earl are part of what makes this particular collection so doubly exciting. We know where these artifacts came from. They have provenance, a rare and valuable quality for items this old. They each have their own story, their own narrative. They are part of Southesk's story -- but also part of ours, as Albertans. Southesk's own narrative has a happy ending. He returned from Rupert's Land with his nerves restored. That year, he was accepted as a fellow in the prestigious Royal Geographic Society -- and he was remarried, to the daughter of another Scottish earl, with whom he had three sons and four daughters. He went on to publish books and papers on everything from Etruscan art to Pictish symbols to historic gems. And he wrote several volumes of verse, which include what are perhaps the first published poems inspired by the people, wildlife and landscape of Alberta. Alberta's seen a lot of tourists since James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk. Few, though, have left us a legacy quite so rich -- one we can all now finally share. AUG. 10, 1859 "Camped for the night on a knoll a few hours from Edmonton, from which there was a beautiful view over a circle of wooded plain, perfectly level except where the steep north bank of the river was discernible. My tent was pitched when a heavy thunderstorm began, and lasted about an hour. After this it cleared, and there was a lovely effect caused by the setting sun; on one side all was orange and gold, beneath a black cloud which melted into misty gray as it met the bright tints of the sunlight, and on the opposite side moved the dark departing thunder-cloud with a perfect rainbow enamelled on its face." AUG. 27, 1859 "One solitary gleam of consolation enlivened this weary day -- an unexpected far-off view of two grand peaks of the Rocky Mountains, over which a thunder-cloud cast an imperfect view, but so marvellous was the contrast between the damp, confined darkness of our track through the dripping fir-trees, and the sudden freedom of an open sky bounded only by magnificent mountain form that for a moment I was quite overwhelmed. Then one of those strange tides of emotion that transcend both control and analysis, rushed through me from head to foot -- I trembled all over -- my limbs lost their strength, I could hardly sit on my horse. He, poor beast, did not share in his rider's excitement -- as in a momentary fancy I thought he would -- and seemed no happier than before." FROM THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, 1884 How grandly, O mountains, your forests are spread O'er the low sunny slope in the valley's deep bed, How sweet the pine-fragrance that gladdens the air In the haunts of the Moose and the grim Grisly Bear! But oh! to be up on the heights, alone, Where the curly-horned Mountain Ram dwells with his own; Dwells with his own on the pleasant steep Quenches his thirst as the glacier brook Crops the sweet grasses that crisply creep To cover the sides of a sheltered nook; Wanders a while, or rests at his ease Basking in sunshine and screened from the breeze. Source: Edmonton Journal >>> Discuss (0 comments) <<< Back to news portal |
