PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT.
The position in Saskatchewan filled by the people of foreign extraction
is so important (and as the West fulfils its destiny will continue to be even
more so) that anything which helps the English speaking man to under-
stand his European brother as he is, and to appreciate his good qualities,
is doing something in the nature of a public service. With this end in
view, and somewhat reluctantly in fear of being considered egotisitical,
the writer has decided to set loosely down, as they come to him some of
his reminiscences of the early European settler.
Whitewood was in the eighties the most cosmopolitan point in the west.
It came to be a saying that one should know eleven languages to do busi-
ness in Whitewood. When provision had to be made for incoming colonies
requiring considerable tracts of land it was found that the Moosomin
district was already occupied by independent settlers-men who without
any shepherding came into the country "on their own", and fought their
own individual battles with nature without assistance or supervision of
any kind. The general tendency of immigration is to settle as it goes,
although there is always a proportion of adventurous souls who forge on
ahead of the general movement. When one came to the country a little
farther west adjacent to Wapella and Whitewood available land was found
mostly north of the Qu'Appelle River Valley.
Bibliography follows:
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