Almighty Voice , a Swampy Cree mentioned in my novel “Cattle Business” was born in Duck Lake , District of Saskatchewan , North West Territories in 1875. In the autumn of 1895 he married a young woman from a neighbouring reserve. During the preparations for that event he discovered a cow wandering on the prairie which he butchered to feed his guests.             Ownership of the cow is a question that can not be answered at the date of this writing. It has been said that it was loaned to the reserve for breeding purposes and was the property of the Canadian government. It has also been claimed as the property of a neighbouring ranch and had wandered onto the reserve. The one thing that is certain is that it did not belong to Almighty Voice, or as the white man had recorded his identity, Jean Baptiste. On October ...

When he arrived on Vancouver Island in 1858 he was known as Charlie Brown. Due to his proclivity for so called easy money he soon came to the attention of the newly formed British Columbia Colonial Police and Victoria Municipal Police. However, with a gold rush breaking out in some area of the colony almost every year, law enforcement was hard pressed due to the constant influx of gold seekers. Due to the lack of manpower and time as well as the insipidness of his name, little is known about Charlie’s earlier history except that he may have been in California and Oregon Territory. Once in the British colony, however, it was obvious Charlie’s search for gold would not include digging or washing for it. He was caught on several occasions selling grain alcohol to Indians. Following one of those occasions, while awaiting trial, he was attacked by another arrestee, a Haida Indian to whom he had sold a barrel of sea water as whiskey. Mr. Brown’s last extended stay in Victoria’s Bastion Stre...