PETER
ERASMUS: LEADING TRAPPER, LINGUIST, INTERPRETER AND GUIDE IN
THE BOW VALLEY AREA
BY JACKIE GOLD CANMORE LEADER STAFF
The Palliser Expedition, led by Captain John Palliser, a 42-year-old
Irishman, was a turning point for a number of individual's
lives, including one of its guides and interpreters, Peter
Erasmus.
Erasmus, who was born in 1833, was 24 when the expedition
began, and eager to take part in such a unique experience.
As a member of the group Erasmus not only got to experience
history in the making, he also got to meet some of the great
explorers of early Western Canada .
With a Danish father and a part Ojibwa mother, it should come
as no surprise that Erasmus was exceptional at languages. In
fact Erasmus was fluent in no less than nine languages, six
of them being native languages, as well as English, Latin
and Greek.
His dad worked for the Hudson's Bay Company, and had seen
to it that he received the best early education possible.
When his dad died in 1849, Erasmus went to work hand and hand
with his uncle, Rev. Henry Budd at Christ Church Anglican Missionary.
While working with his uncle, Erasmus continued with his education,
while teaching local children and translating religious
texts into Cree. He showed such promise as a teacher that his
uncle and the bishop decided that he would be an excellent
candidate for the ministry, and Erasmus was sent off, reluctantly,
to Red River to attend St. Johns School .
Two terms later Erasmus was convinced the minister life was
not for him. He left his training, and took up with a Methodist
missionary, Thomas Woolsey, to act as an interpreter.
While the two worked well together the draw of the Palliser
Expedition, when it passed through, proved too much for Erasmus.
Joining the Expedition, Erasmus proved a worthy and useful
guide, helping interpret the native languages in different
areas across Canada . In the three years that followed he enjoyed
getting to know the explorers, and would later tell his life
story to a Metis journalist who would convert it into
a novel. In the book Erasmus described his fellow explorers
and travellers, including James Hector, a geologist and
doctor. Peter described Hector as "a tireless worker".
His capacity for endurance in any kind of weather was the talk
of men around camp. He had four horses to his string and they
were not too many for his demands. There was no let up in his
persistence, as day after day, all except Sunday, he continued
his unending labours to cover as wide a range of territory
as possible.
So great was his admiration for Hector that Erasmus waxed
eloquently over the gentleman for a number of paragraphs, adding
that Hector, "could walk ride, or tramp snowshoes with
the best of our men, and never fell back on his position to
soften his share of the hardships, but in fact gloried
in his physical ability after a hard day's run to share in
the work of preparing camp for the night, building shelters
from the wind, cutting spruce boughs, or even helping
get up wood for an all-night fire. He was admired and talked
about by every man that travelled with him, and his fame as
a traveller was a wonder and a byword among many a teepee that
never saw the man."
It may have been Hector's medical abilities, even more
so then his perseverance on the trail that impressed Erasmus,
as the doctor had noticed that a cancerous growth had begun
to sprout on the face of Erasmus, a result of a bruise from
a trail ride accident that had been irritated by the harsh
climate and frequent freezing of his face. Hector treated the
growth using ancient Stoney medicine and natural treatments
to halt the growth, which spread no further.
George Gooderham of the Alberta Historical Review, who
met Erasmus in 1909, described him as a large man with a scruffy
beard and a nose that was "a mass of pitted flesh that
laid flat across his brown face!' This, apparently, was the
only lasting effect of the growth, which had remained as a
permanent fixture on his face, though thanks to Hector
had never again spread.
When the Palliser expedition ended Erasmus tried his hand
as a gold miner and then returned to help WooIsley.
In 1862 Erasmus was enlisted by George McDougall as an interpreter
and assistant. While he was not initially taken with McDougall
he began to enjoy his company more as the partnership progressed
commenting later that “Each day as we travelled he seemed
to take a fresh joy out of our camp life and the vast open
spaces that lay before his view on every side without a single
sign of habitation in our way. He was almost boyish in
his exuberance, and I began to form a new opinion of the man.”
Before leaving the partnership in 1865 Erasmus married a young
Metis woman named Charlotte Jackson. They went on to make a
home at Whitefish Lake in Alberta , where Erasmus trapped and
traded to make a living. They had six children over the course
of their marriage before Charlotte died in 1880.
Erasmus did not spend all of his time at his home at Whitefish
Lake with Charlotte and his children, as he was an interpreter
between the Cree and the government in 1876 when the two parties
were negotiating over Treaty 6. He went on to try to help them
settle on the reserve land allotted to them by the government
following their agreement with the Crown, watching sadly as
their food source of the buffalo dried up, as well as
when open rebellion broke out in 1885.
The abilities of Erasmus to translate, guide, trade and negotiate
in several languages brought him to more places than many
of his peers. His highly educated background and deep appreciation
for the variety of cultures that existed in Canada gave him
more insight into the makings of the west than many others
involved in the shaping of Alberta .
His death in 1931 at the age of 97 occurred at Whitefish
Lake . While his grave is unmarked his memory has not been
forgotten. In 1930, a year before his death, the Geographic
Board of Canada made Mount Erasmus an official peak in
the Canadian Rockies, a tribute to his efforts throughout his
lifetime.
<<back |
