The Iron Creek meteorite has been brought back to Alberta and placed on display in the Provincial Museum and Archives. Long kept in a comparatively obscure corner of the Royal Ontario Museum, it occupies a place of honor in the Provincial Museum after an absence from this area of over a century.

The 386 pound meteorite is said to be Canada's largest. It is over 91 percent iron, about 8 percent nickel and has traces of cobalt. 1

It is believed to have been moved from a hill to Victoria Mission in about 1866. 2. It is certain that W. F. Butler saw it in the mission yard in 1870. Butler's account was the first one to reach the general public mentioning the reverence in which it was held by the Indians: "No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity without paying a visit to the great medicine... The old medicine men declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes, and that war, disease and death of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the Saskatchewan. 3

George McDougall had previously written a letter to Dr. Wood of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Toronto in which he alluded for a reason for moving the meteorite: "For ages the tribes of Blackfeet and Crees have gathered their clans to pay homage to this wonderful manitou. Three years ago, one of our people put the idol in his cart and brought it to Victoria. They declared that sickness, war and decrease of buffalo would follow the sacrilege. Thanks to a kind of Providence these southsayers have been confounded, for last summer thousands of wild cattle grazed upon the sacred plain." 4

It would seem that the missionaries considered the "manitou" an obstacle in their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity.

By 1886 the meteorite was at Victoria University, Cobourg, Ontario, where it was studied and reported on by Dr. A. P. Coleman. It was later moved to the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, where for a number of years the display sign stated that it had been found near Iron Creek, "Saskatchewan".

In recent years several Alberta groups have pressed for the return of the meteorite to Alberta. Ralph Sorenson, MLA for Sedwick-Cornation, and Hon. Horst Schmid, Minister of Youth, Culture and Recreation, have been instrumental in arranging for it to be put on display in the Provincial Museum.

A number of references to the meteorite have been made by traders, missionaries and travelers familiar with the West. A study of these references makes one curious as to where the meteorite was located before the McDougalls had it moved.

The earliest recorded reference to the meteorite was made by Alexander Henry, then at Paint Creek Post near where the Lea Park bridge is now, about twelve miles north of Marwayne, Alberta. On Sunday, September 2, 1810 he wrote: "This afternoon four Crees with their families arrived from the Sarcee camp on the S. side of Battle River, at the Iron Stone."5

The Battle River is a long tributary of the North Saskatchewan River, rising south-west of Edmonton and reaching that river at Battleford, Saskatchewan. The names of many landmarks in the Battle River water-shed have come to us from the Indian languages: Maskwa Hill, the Four Black-foot Hills, Grizzly Bear Coulee, Buffalo Coulee, Iron Creek, Paintearth Creek, "the Maples", Dried Meat Hill. Is one safe in assuming that the Battle River and the Iron Stone are close enough together so that if one went to the Iron Stone, the camp would be nearby, and south of the Battle River?

Writing in 1860, the Rev. Thomas Wool-say stated: "When with the Crees last August, I visited the locality renowned for having a large piece of iron there. In fact, an adjoining lake and a rivulet bear the respective designations of Iron Lake and Iron Rivulet . ". . It is on the summit of a mound . . ." 6

In 1863 Baptiste Supernat told Milton and Cheadle about the "piece of iron" which had been "placed many years ago on top of a hill".7

Captain Butler in 1870 wrote that it had been on "the summit of a hill". Probably his information came from the McDougalls at Victoria. When Rev. George McDougall wrote to Dr. Wood he stated that it had lain "out on the hills ever since the place was first vested by Na-ne-boo-shoo after the flood had retired". 8

Woolsey mentioned an Iron Lake and an Iron Rivulet. Iron Creek is still on the map, and is well known to the inhabitants of the area. Iron Lake has evidently been renamed, for it no longer appears under that name, and residents of the area know of no lake having that name.

In his book In the Days of the Red River Rebellion John McDougall wrote of an Iron Creek hill which figured prominently in his activities of September, 1869. They crossed the Battle River "at the mouth of Iron Creek" and stopped for noon at the "junction of the streams". Then George McDougall and "Old John" Whitford requested that John McDougall ride ahead as scout to the party. In that afternoon's scouting he came to "Iron Creek Hill" and went "away up the edge of the brow" and surveyed the country from there - "the sweep of the valley, the windings of the stream..." 9

In my opinion Iron Creek hill is just a few miles north-east of Lougheed, and within a mile of Iron Creek. 10 There are two hills, both on the same section of land, which could be Iron Creek hill. I tend to favour the more westerly one, locally known as "Strawstack Hill". Some twenty years ago, in the course of removing gravel from this hill, crews unearthed a skeleton. District people were of the opinion that it must be an Indian skeleton. A Mounted Policeman was called, and he recommended that the bones be reburied and that excavation should cease. Evidently the hill was considered of some importance if burials were made there.

The hill is not high, but it is high enough to be seen for many miles along the length of Iron Creek. It can also be seen from high points like Ribstone Hill, southeast of Viking, and from Flagstaff Hill, south-west of Hardsity.

This hill is just a little more than ten miles from the Battle River "as the crow flies", close enough to be used as a landmark of the kind mentioned in Henry's Journal. The Sarcee camp was likely in the area south of Hardisty, an area that was a favorite camping and hunting ground of the Sarcees, Crees and Blackfoot Indians. 11  Water, firewood and game were all plentiful in the region, and, indeed, it was the home of one of the last of the great Canadian buffalo herds. 12

A last point is worthy of mention. For many years while on display in Toronto the meteorite was labeled as being from "Saskatchewan". Alberta visitors were annoyed at this, knowing full well that Iron Creek is in Alberta, and eventually the museum's management changed the label. However, one should remember that beginning in about 1886 the boundary between the "districts" of Saskatchewan and Alberta was at the western side of range 10, west of the fourth meridian. The hill north-east of Lougheed is in range 10, as are the lower ten or twelve miles of Iron Creek before it joins the Battle River in Range 9.

John McDougall lived to see this region surveyed, mapped and settled. Was he the one who provided the museum with information that the meteorite had been found in territory which until 1905 was, indeed in "Saskatchewan"? Thorough searches in the files of the Royal Ontario Museum have failed to produce anything signed by McDougall. An unsigned sheet of information is on file, however, giving the longitude of the original location of the meteorite as 111 degrees, fifteen minutes, which would have indicated range 9 west of the fourth meridian. 13.

It will never be possible to prove the point beyond all doubt, but, from a thorough study of the area and of the literature available, I feel sure that the Iron Creek meteorite was on the Iron Creek hill near Lougheed before it was moved to Victoria Mission, then to Cobourg, and, finally, to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Return to the Missionary Menu
Or to the Smoky Lake History Archive

Footnotes:

1. Dr. A. P. Coleman, A Meteroite From the Northwest, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, section 111, 1886, p. 97

2. John McDougall, George Millward McDougall, p. 138. A letter written by George McDougall is reproduced in the book. In it, writing of the events of 1869, George McDougall says, "three years ago one of our people... brought it to Victoria."

3. Sir. W. F. Butler, The Great Lone Land, p. 304.

4. John McDougall, op. cit., p. 138.

5. Thompson and Henry, New Light on the History of the Greater Northwest, edited by Ellion Coues, Henry's entry for Sept. 2, 1810, Vol. 2, p. 622

6. Earl of Southesk, Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains, p. 423, in a letter from Rev. T. Woolsey, included in the Appendix.

7. Dr. Cheadle's Journal of a Trip Across Canada, 1862 - 3, p. 127.

8. John McDougall, op. cit., p. 138.

9. John McDougall, In the Days of the Red River Rebellion, pp. 95 - 107.

10. On section 17-44-10-W4.

11. The Palliser Expedition saw traces of Indians there on July 8, 1858, and met Sarcees on July 9. "Peigans and Blood" Indians had just left the vicinity. See The Papers of the Palliser Expedition, edited by Irene M. Spry, p. 245-7. John McDougall met Crees in the vicinity in September of 1869, and in the fall of 1870 came upon a camp of "Sarcees or Blackfeet" who had been wiped out by smallpox. See In the Days of the Red River Rebellion pp. 103 - 5 for the first incident, and pp. 140 - 1 for the second. Charles Napier Bell visited the same vicinity in the winter of 1872 - 3, and met both Crees and Blackfeet there, and hunted and traded with them. The diary is now, I believe, in the Manitoba Archives. I was permitted to read it by Dr. F. C. Bell, the son of Charles Napier Bell.

12. Charles Napier Bell, in a letter written for publication in the Manitoba Free Press, November, 1922, to refute statements made by Madge Macbeath of Ottawa, discussed the presence of a great herd there in 1872 - 3. The letter is in the Manitoba Archives.

13. A copy of this unsigned sheet of information, obviously prepared by someone who knew the circumstances of moving the meteorite, is in the possession of the writer of this paper. For example, John Whitford's Cree name "O-mah-chees" is given. See page 80 of In the Days of the Red River Rebellion, where John McDougall gives it as "Omacheesk" prone to hunt".