The Last Buffalo Hunter

David E. Smith is a political science professor at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents.

The provenance of this book is almost as interesting as its contents. In
1931, Mary Weekes recorded on a Dictaphone the life of octogenarian
Norbert Welsh, the hunter of the book’s title. In the 1930s, a
serialized version of these personal recollections appeared in
Maclean’s and in a different form on the CBC. Immediately before and
after World War II, the manuscript paper was published, first in the
United States and then in Canada. Now, half a century later, it is back
in print. The mystery is why it was ever allowed to vanish, for the
subjects crammed into its pages would provide any film producer (other
than in Canada, it would seem) with lifetime employment. Among these are
the story of the entrepreneurial prairie trader, the passing of the
buffalo, the coming of the Mounted Police, the cultivation of the
prairie, Indian treaties, the creation of reserves, Riel, Dumont, the
rebellions. True, none of these events is exactly unknown today. What
makes Welsh’s account compelling is that it is both immediate and
direct: he was present when these events occurred and, as Weekes records
his reflections, he possessed, even at four score and five, a talent for
economical yet graphic depiction.

It is a long way from the electronic highway to Hudson Bay trails and
Red River carts, from the Assembly of First Nations to the bloody
attacks recounted here between the Cree and Blackfoot, and from a time
when, in the absence of government, men and women, Native or white,
lived by their own rules and depended upon one another for survival.
Welsh’s life is edifying as well as exciting, beginning with the fact
that, although of mixed blood, he opposed the Batoche uprising. He
described Dumont as “a loafer,” and thought Riel had “more
education than brains.” In turn, neither of them had much good to say
about him. Despite his ancestry, they said he was “not a true
half-breed,” a judgment Welsh thought was influenced by his refusal to
support their cause.