History SAM STEELE OF THE MOUNTED: The Greatest Mountie

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SAM STEELE OF THE MOUNTED: The Greatest Mountie
"Sam Steele of the Mounted." The very name sounds heroic. Superintendant Samuel Benfield Steele, "The Lion of the Yukon," had his detractors, but not very many. A man of enormous strength...

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"Sam Steele of the Mounted." The very name sounds heroic. Superintendant Samuel Benfield Steele, "The Lion of the Yukon," had his detractors, but not very many. A man of enormous strength and courage, he lived the life of a Mountie as envisioned by Commissioner French. His story is the story of the North-West Mounted at its best.
Sam Steele (1849-1919) was born in Medonte Township, Upper Canada. He was the son of Royal Navy Captain Elmes Steele and Anne Macdonald. As one writer put it, "Men of action had run through the Steele clan like water down Niagara Falls." Sam's predecessors had fought on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec in 1759, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and at Waterloo in 1815. Sam received his education at Purbrook, the family home, and later at a private school in Orillia. Following the death of his father, he lived for a time with his older brother, John.

In 1866, with the coming of the bloody Fenian raids into Canada from American bases, Steele joined the Militia. He later volunteered for the Red River Expedition of 1870, serving with several battalions. In 1871, Steele returned to Ontario, enrolling in the artillery school at Kingston. After taking a year-long course, he was assigned to Toronto in 1872, to reorganize that city's battery. He then returned to Kingston to act as an artillery instructor.

When Steele heard about the formation of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873, he immediately requested permission to join the Force. He was given the rank of Staff Constable, and sent west with a contingent in 1874. The big, burly Mountie helped rid the west of whisky traders. Among other activities, Steele was part of the team negotiating between Sitting Bull and General A H Terry of the United States Army, during the Lokota medicine man's exile in Canada, following the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

In 1880, Steele was promoted to Inspector and given his first independent command at Fort Qu’Appelle. Up to this point, his responsibilities had mainly been dealing with the First Nations. But with the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he was charged with negotiating settlement and construction disputes, and with policing the rail line. Steele also laid out the NWMP post at Regina.

When the railhead of the CPR reached Fort Calgary in 1883, he was sent there as commanding officer. The North-West Rebellion prompted Steele to return to Saskatchewan. Given a leave of absence from the NWMP, Steel joined the Alberta Field Force and, as a major, commanded a paramilitary unit which had been organized at Fort Calgary in April. Known as "Steele’s Scouts," the unit was composed of twenty members of the North-West Mounted Police, twenty American (mostly from Texas) cowboys from local ranches, and twenty-two members of the Alberta Mounted Rifles. They departed northward from Calgary on April 20, and pursued Cree chief Big Bear until his surrender in July.

The Scouts were disbanded in August. Sam Steele, returning to the NWMP, was promoted to Superintendent. Steele returned to patrolling construction camps adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway and was present at the driving of the last spike. He was then posted to Battleford where he spent most of his time training recruits.

In 1887, he led 75 Mounties to British Columbia to settle a dispute between that far western province and the Kootenai Indians. The policemen built a post, Fort Steele, and stayed about a year. In December 1888, Steele was given command of Fort Macleod.

In 1890, Steele married Marie Elizabeth Maye de Lotbinière Harwood of Vaudreuil, Quebec. They had two daughters and one son. The son, Harwood Elmes Robert Steele, would follow his father's footsteps into military service and would later write POLICING THE ARCTIC (1935) and a number of novels and short story collections based on Mounted Police cases.

By the mid-1890's, the Canadian West was becoming settled. Sam was starting to consider retirement from the Force and seeking new adventures.

But the discovery of gold in the Klondike changed that. The Dominion of Canada needed someone to control the thousands of miners, mostly American, who flooded the Yukon. They also needed someone to hold the territory for the Dominion. The man for the job was Sam Steele.

Steele arrived in the American port of Skagway, Alaska in February 1898. Skagway was a wide-open town, dominated by a suave killer named Soapy Smith. Smith controlled the saloons and dance halls, where gamblers and prostitutes parted miners from their gold. Steele was determined to keep Smith and his type of corruption out of Canadian territory.

He scaled the passes of the St. Elias Mountain that terrible winter. With parties of Mounted Policemen, he set up border posts flying the Union Jack. The Mounties collected custom duties, confiscated handguns, and arrested men who mistreated their pack animals. It was clear that Steele was in charge. Soapy Smith's desperadoes were met at the border by Winchester rifles and Canadian law.

In the spring, Steele moved down to Lake Bennett, a tent city of more than 10,000 people. Here, prospectors saw two sides of Steele. He was known to lend his own money to men down on their luck, and to write personal letters to the families of those who died in the territory. But he could also be tough. One American caught with marked cards protested that he had rights as a U.S. citizen. Steele confiscated all of his goods and had a Mountie escort him on the 100 mile climb to the border.

Once the ice cleared, Steele and the other stampeders of Lake Bennett rode the wild Yukon River down to Dawson, with many hazards and fatalities on the way. Dawson was a chaotic boomtown of saloons, gambling dens, dance halls and a population of 14,000, including a number of veterans from Soapy Smith's gang. With a force of only 13 men, Steele cleaned up the town. He knew that he could not prevent the gambling and other vices, but he made sure that the games were honest, and he dealt swiftly with those who disturbed the public order. He also formed a board of health that stemmed a raging typhoid epidemic.

Unfortunately, it was political corruption that ended Steele's career as a Mountie.

With the arrival of steamboats down the Yukon River after spring thaw, came Eastern government clerks and business opportunists -- many of them looking for quick money through graft and corruption -- "business as usual" for the civilized Easterners. Politicians in Ottawa wanted their friends to get a share of the Yukon gold. But Sam Steele stood in their way. Steadfast in his oath to "Maintain the Right," Sam refused to bend and turn a blind eye to the corruption. His reply to his critics was simple: "The Law applies to all."

In September 1899, the crooked government Minister in charge of the Mounted Police relieved Steele of his command. When word of his firing reached the citizenry of Dawson City, there was an uproar.

When Steele tried to leave Dawson quietly, the prospectors, gamblers, ragtime piano-players, and dancehall girls of Dawson poured down to the wharf to give Steele "such an ovation and send-off as no man has ever received from the Klondike gold-seekers," in the words of a local newspaper. They cheered Sam Steele until his steamboat was out of sight.

In 1900, he was offered command of Lord Strathcona's Horse, a British Army regiment to serve in South Africa during the Boer War. The regiment was occupied with scouting for the advancing troops, winning high praise for its efforts. Although the unit returned to Canada in January of 1901, Steele himself went back to South Africa in June as a divisional commander in the South African Constabulary, a mounted police unit. Steele went home to Canada in 1907, after a short stay in England. He eventually assumed command of Military Division No. 10 in Winnipeg, where he spent his time in regrouping Lord Strathcona's Horse, and in starting his autobiography.

Steele requested active military duty with the outbreak of the First World War. He was initially rejected for command on the grounds of age. However, a compromise was reached which allowed him to act as commander of the 2nd Canadian Division until the unit was sent to France, where he would be replaced. After accompanying the Division to England, Steele was offered an administrative post as commanding officer of the South-East District.

Matters were complicated, however, when Canadian Minister of Defence Samuel Hughes insisted that Steele also be made commander of all Canadian troops in Europe -- a slight problem, as there were two brigadier-generals who each believed the Canadian command was theirs. The issue was not resolved until 1916, when the new Minister of Overseas Military Forces of Canada, Sir G. H. Perley, removed Steele from his Canadian command after Steele refused to return to Canada as a recruiter. He kept his British command until his retirement on July 15, 1918. While in Britain, Steele was knighted, on January 1, 1918. Unfortunately, Sir Samuel Steele died of influenza just after his 70th birthday and was later buried in Winnipeg.

Sam Steele wrote an autobiography: FORTY YEARS IN CANADA: Reminiscences of the great North-West, with some account of his service in South Africa. FORTY YEARS is a detailed account of his life and experiences. But readers who want a more intimate look at the character of the man and his heroic accomplishments should read the biographical novels written by Sam's son, Harwood Steele: SPIRIT-OF-IRON and THE MARCHING CALL.