Introduction
It may have been the most important police post in Canadian history. The small detachment at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass, on the Canada-U.S.A. border, faced a formidable challenge. Behind it lay the Yukon basin and, some 800 km north down river, the gold-rich creeks of the Klondike River. In front of the police, massed at the rowdy communities of Skagway and Dyea, and slowly moving toward the pass, were thousands upon thousands of would-be prospectors and gold miners, sniffing the winds of the fabulous gold discovery and anxious to press ahead to Dawson City. The vast majority were Americans, and among their number were many of the criminals, swindlers and camp followers who had accompanied the westward and now northward advance of the mining frontier. To the North West Mounted Police fell the responsibility for ensuring that the Klondike Gold Rush remained a Canadian event, run on Canadian terms, and without the anarchy and chaos that Canadians associated with the American "wild west."

An institution is born
The North West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) are one of Canada's most important symbols. Their status as Canadian icons is well-deserved, for the organization played a crucial role in the peaceful settlement and development of the Canadian west and north. The NWMP was established in 1873, initially as a short-term expedient to forestall violence on the western plains and to make the prairies safe for the tens of thousands of settlers that the Canadian government expected in the area. They headed west in 1874, on the famed "Long March" that established a formal Canadian presence in the area and that sent a clear message to the Americans that the Canadian west was under government control. In the following years, the Mounted Police proved their worth. For the first settlers in the west, the Mounties were the government, providing security, protection and a full range of official services - plus the unofficial role that they played in maintaining contact between the ranchers and farmers in the region.

For the cash-strapped Canadian government, the formation of the North West Mounted Police proved to be an inspired decision. Here, in a single organization, could be found the benefits of an army, police force, and civil service. The NWMP recruited carefully, primarily from the ranks of the Canadian and British armies, and drew its officer class from men with the appropriate social rank and education. While there were problems from time to time with individuals - there were quite a few deserters and more than one drunkard in the early days - the police quickly established an impressive record of integrity, professionalism, and national service. In many parts of the west, tiny detachments, with one or two constables, were responsible for protecting and assisting settlers across a vast region. The roots of the respect that Canadians have for the present day Royal Canadian Mounted Police were firmly planted in this era.

Duties expand
Early in its history, the new Dominion of Canada became an enormous land-owner, with the vast territories of Rupert's Land becoming part of the country in 1870. This area had been controlled by Hudson's Bay Company. A decade later, and largely because the British wanted to get rid of it, Canada added to its impressive national terrain the Arctic archipelago, a string of islands pointing like a dagger at the North Pole. But adding this massive amount of land to the nation's responsibilities left a major question unanswered: how was this territory to be administered? The fledgling Dominion had little money, and what it had was over-committed to expensive railway schemes designed to settle the southern prairies. But without the enforcement of Canadian law and the assurance that national regulations were being observed across the country, the prospect of anarchy or, even worse, an American take-over, loomed high in Canadian consciousness. The U.S. purchase of Alaska in 1867 had raised fears about the much-vaunted American Manifest Destiny, and made Canadian officials more than a little nervous about the designs that their southern neighbours had on the largely uninhabited lands of the west and north.

The establishment of the North West Mounted Police sent the right message to the Americans about Canada's seriousness of purpose in the west, and effectively blocked any possible advance onto Canadian soil. The north, however, was another matter. The enormous tract of land north of the settlement zone had only a small First Nations population and a handful of non-Natives, most of them employees of the Hudson's Bay Company or the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches engaged in a great "rush for souls" in the sub-Arctic. If there was a saving grace, it was that no one else seemed much interested in the far north. In the 1880s, the Canadian government sent the Geological Survey of Canada to conduct a preliminary survey of the geography of the northwest, and their reports hinted at the prospect of considerable resource wealth in the region. But as late as 1890, the Canadian government did not have a single official permanently based in the far northwest.

So long as there were only fur traders and missionaries in the region, pressure on the government to act was minimal. But the isolation of the far northwest was not to last. The first non Native person who did not work for the Hudson's Bay Company or a church made his way into the upper Yukon River basin in 1870. In the years thereafter, first in a trickle and then in a steady flow, came prospectors and miners, following the dream of finding the Mother Lode, the one great gold deposit. The British Columbia gold rush had played out by the early 1860s and a small rush to the Cassiar region had proven to be of little value. Now, the prospectors turned their eyes to the Yukon basin. The first ones arrived in 1872, continuing a tradition of frontier expansion that stretched from the southern Rockies and California, through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and that now reached into the Yukon and Alaska.

The miners knew that there was gold to be found - the early fur traders had learned of its existence from the First Nations people - but the initial returns were disappointing. And so they scoured the creeks and river banks, frequently uncovering small amounts of gold dust and an occasional nugget, but rarely producing more than subsistence returns. In the early 1890s, a sizable strike was made at Fortymile, near the Alaska-Canada border west of the modern town of Dawson City. The miners, most of whom were American, soon numbered in excess of 1,000 and at Fortymile they established a permanent settlement. To most observers, the miners were a cautious and careful lot, not given to the rowdy behaviour typically associated with their trade. Their remote location, the harsh and long winters, and their economic interdependence ensured a high level of stability and put a premium on self- and community control. In the absence of government - for American authorities were as thin on the ground in the Alaska interior as Canadian officials were in the upper Yukon - the miners organized and regulated themselves, largely through an intensely democratic (if not legally constituted) forum called the "miners' meeting."

The American threat
While the miners were pleased with their ability to run their own affairs, and while Canadian and American governments preferred to leave well enough alone, other observers were less favourably disposed to the incursion of Americans and miners onto Canadian soil. The key figure was William Carpenter Bompas, Anglican Bishop of Selkirk (Yukon), and a long-serving missionary in the Canadian North. Bompas, who had moved to the Yukon basin from the Mackenzie and worked among the First Nations in the Fortymile region, identified completely with the interests of his flock and believed that the arrival of the miners would be devastating to the local population. He wrote several times to the government - and to prominent missionary and temperance organizations - complaining about the abuse of alcohol in the district and the licentious behaviour in the mining camp. He warned about the intrusion of Americans onto Canadian soil and about the refusal of the Canadian government to protect their "wards" (the First Nations) in the far northwest.

The second threat - and many Canadians saw it as that - came from the Arctic Ocean. Herschel Island, off the Arctic coast of the Yukon, became an important whaling centre in the late 1880s. American whalers, based out of San Francisco and Seattle, had exterminated the whales in the Bering Strait and off the north coast of Alaska. Pursuing the huge profits to be made from killing whales, the ships pushed east toward Herschel Island and the mouth of the Mackenzie River, an area that proved to be a fertile hunting ground. The whalers cared little for the conventions of law and order, and certainly gave little thought to Canadian authority. Herschel Island became a den of iniquity, particularly in the eyes of the first Anglican missionaries to visit the whaling station.. The whalers brought or made liquor and gave it freely to the local Inuit population. Sexual relations between whalers and Inuit were commonplace, and the Herschel Island camp seemed out of control. The missionaries, horrified by what they perceived to be abuse, lobbied the Canadian government to send officials to the region to establish the firm grip of Canadian law over the American whalers. Published reports of drunken brawls and misuse of Inuit women added fuel to public concerns and encouraged the Canadian government to take action, if only to save face.

The prospect of renewed American interest in the region and Bompas' effective invocation of Canadian responsibilities in the changing North, sparked a government reaction. Officials in Ottawa worried about bad publicity, but they shied away from making a major investment of government resources in a problem of unknown magnitude and seriousness. At the same time, the federal government was reconsidering the role of the North West Mounted Police. The prairie west had largely been settled, and the suppression of the 1885 Metis uprising had effectively ended the threat of an aboriginal revolt in the region. The government was not quite sure what to do with the Mounties, beyond using them as police officers and government agents in the west. Serious thought was given to disbanding the organization.