Riverton, a small community of about 470 people, has experienced a lot of change over the past century, with name changes being one of the most frequent changes, finally settling on its current name, assigned by the CP railway. over seventy years ago.
While it is a fishing community with a Freshwater Fish plant in the town, it also historically is one of several Icelandic settlements on Lake Winnipeg and home to Manitoba’s First Nations people. But the most important feature of the village also probably is its least known: The gravesite of John Ramsay and his wife. His story is revealed in the following factual fiction story that follows.
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The Story of John Ramsay
John. He found it an unusual name, but then, everything about the people who had named him was unusual. Perhaps it was because of his intimate understanding of the most minute details of the world around him, but he found the odd ways of these strangers more enthralling than challenging. They, on the other hand, seemed to fear the fact that he was different. Yet, they also acted as if they knew all of the Great Spirit’s secrets. They acted as if they had each experienced their own vision quest, although none believed in his type of spirituality. Even so, these frail new arrivals had neither the skills nor the fortitude to survive all of the seasons. More than the “first” name that they had laid upon him was unusual.
Ramsay. Unusual, too, was the habit of having two names, and needing them. In his clan, family members knew who each other was. The names that had been laid upon them meant something –a connection with the world around them – a respect for the living gods of the earth and sky. They needed no names, but embraced the ones that had been gifted to them as if endowed by the spirits themselves. They were sacred.
But he had become John Ramsay. No one seemed to know, or want to know, his earth or native name. Neither the country folk, nor the Metis, as the inter-married of this region were called, had any interest in John Ramsay’s history, or his future. Not the Northwest Trading Company, nor the Hudson Bay Company. Not the Canadian government. They knew, and wanted to know, only about themselves. And soon, they would desperately need to rely upon John Ramsay, for their very survival. Yet, he remained insignificant.
Fortunately for both John Ramsay and these new Icelanders, he was amused by them, and, although they treated him with alternating disdain and disregard, or patronizing condescension and disinterest, he tolerated their quirky ways and ill manners good-naturedly. It was not only his way. It was the way of all the Saulteaux, the Swampy Cree and even the Objibwa of the region. He found them different from other whites and Indians — unusual, in many ways — and yet he neither feared nor disliked them.
John Ramsay was a large, solidly built native, with exceptionally well-chiselled good looks and aristocratic posture combined with a quiet dignity and gentleness. He was the antithesis of what newcomers to his country had been inoculated to believe that the savages of this rugged frontier would be. Sadly, it was dime novels and cheap western storylines that had perpetuated the erroneous “facts” about North American Indians and their savage ways. That, and the need for white settlers to justify their craving to eradicate those original Canadians and Americans that lived with the land. Nonetheless, John Ramsay enjoyed good relations with all of these new, naïve non-first people. His great stature merely represented his great and gentle heart.
Of course, long practice borne of feelings of superiority led the white arrivals to believe that every practice, custom, behaviour and belonging with which they were endowed were the best, and, in turn, that meant that the First Nations ways were either savage, primitive or inferior. After all, even the most essential items, such as pianos and large display cabinetry, had found their way west on York boats, often powered by Indians and Metis. Culture should not be abandoned, merely because the conditions were primeval! And culture should be forced upon those Indians who dared to mingle with the whites, even if these savages could not appreciate culture. This condition of erroneous arrogance, fortunately, was not permanent, nor engrained in all of the settlers.
John Ramsay, having lived all his life flowing with nature, naturally flowed with their current when the white men of the Selkirk settlement became known to him. The Metis, with their sashes and bright red and white garb, soon convinced him that he, too, should dress like them. And so, when 1875 rolled in, and a new type of white man arrived to the province, it was John Ramsay, dressed in all the Metis finery, that greeted them. More correctly, it was a reluctant Ramsay that resisted close interaction until the following year. But he was aware of them.
In 1876, this first of a unique breed of white man began to infect the Sandy Bar area, north of the postage stamp province boundary. It was a boundary that divided the Swampy Cree traditional grounds from Manitoba, but it was a boundary, as well, of a new territory promised to the Icelanders arriving from oversees and from Ontario. Ramsay and his people were entitled to this land, having declined to sign on to the treaty proposed by Canada, in 1875, that would have seen them pushed farther north, into less fertile and productive land. In spite of this act of provocation by the new Canadian government, John Ramsay did not hold the Icelanders responsible. He knew where the blame lay.
These New Icelanders arrived exceptionally late in October of what would be one of the harshest winters the prairies had seen, or would see for many years. Ill-prepared, poorly supplied, ignorant of the challenges they faced, these poor souls confronted obstacles that even the First Nations people — hounded, manipulated and abused – would not experience that winter. Indeed, they were unable to reach their intended destination at the mouth of the Whitemud River, instead establishing a makeshift winter camp at Willow Point.
Although there were vast differences between the Icelanders and Ramsay`s people, they shared a tragic bind, too. In October of 1876, a smallpox epidemic decimated the new Icelandic community, even though many received vaccinations against the disfiguring disease. The natives were not so fortunate. Bands of sixty to eighty shrunk to a dozen or two, almost overnight, and those that remained bore the incredible disfiguring legacy of the disease. John Ramsay`s own family – his wife, two daughters and son – succumbed to the scourge. Only he and his daughter, Mary, survived, but she was severely scarred by her encounter. In this tragedy, both Indian and Icelander paid a horrible price.
Yet, the New Icelanders, like the First Nations people, were a surprisingly resilient, gentle and stalwart lot. In that, the Icelanders had more in common with the natives than even the Indian/white mixed Metis or country folk, or any of the Scottish, French or English settlers. John Ramsay liked, mistrusted and commiserated with these quiet, yet determined people, even though, as they moved into the lands allotted to them by the Canadian government, they ate into the traditional grounds of the Cree and Saulteaux. He knew that his dispute was not with the New Icelanders, but with the authoritarian and biased eastern government of the whites. He, too, was stalwart.
If Ramsay considered the white settlers, in general, to be odd, then these new people were the oddest of the lot. With no time to build proper homes in October, 1875, they threw together makeshift shelters and tents, in which they would be forced to spend endless dark and frigid nights throughout that first winter, huddled together with several families under one roof, having set aside almost no dried meat, having no stash of firewood, no stores of essential medicinal herbs or wild-harvested foods, and no knowledge of how to survive the onslaught of snow, wind and numbing cold during long nights and short days. Worse, these people displayed an appalling lack of knowledge about how to hunt, what constituted good land, how to fish the big lake, or what tools would be most valuable. It would fall upon John Ramsay to guide these poor kin through the next few years and harsh winters. Yet, he would learn from them, too, if only meagre additions to his vast repertoire of knowledge about survival.
One of the first things that enthralled him was the almost obsessive dedication that these Icelanders had toward their favoured drink: coffee. Like other whites, they believed that their customs were the best, and, if there was a custom that identified these yellow-haired people, it was their coffee rituals.
Ramsay knew of the white perception about Indian ways – their supposed ritual celebrations (overblown and generalized, but not completely fictional), their warlike behaviours (entirely untrue of the Plains, swamp and bush people of the western regions), their simplistic, almost childlike manners (a distortion of their innocence and connection to the world around them) and their perceived indolence (only held as a notion until any white actually encountered them on the hunt, harvesting wild crops or preparing for the upcoming seasons). He supposed that, he, too, must be forming distorted biases about white behaviour. But these Icelanders – they did indeed show odd characteristics, particularly when it came to the bitter-tasting drink that they loved.
One Icelander had told him that their coffee imparted alertness and energy when drunk. This was not his first encounter with coffee, since it was the preferred non-alcoholic beverage of Metis and whites that had populated the area. But John preferred his own energy drinks, made naturally from the wild-harvested plants of the region.
If their obsession with coffee was hard to understand, so, too, was the insistence of these New Icelanders that coffee had to be drunk at special times, as if it were a sacred ritual. Not a race that tended to look down on others, they held such reverence for their drink that they found it to be ill-mannered to consume the beverage at other than pre-determined times. Fortunately, they were not head-strong, and adapted quickly to the frontier habit of drinking coffee whenever needed. The harshest winters ever known would demand that they rely on coffee for warmth, energy and alertness, as the numbing cold sapped their mental and physical reserves. Rituals gave way to reality. It was a trait that would enable the Icelanders to recoup and recover from their travails, with the help and guidance of Ramsay.
John had learned of many unusual practices of these whites. He expected quirkiness and unique behaviours, since, even in the original humans, there were marked differences among tribes, largely driven by special conditions and circumstances. Clothing was one of those variables. Natives fabricated their clothes from materials and tools at hand. Consequently, most were made of animal skins and furs. Those whites who lived affluently wore decorative fabrics, while the hard-working settlers who farmed wore heavy wools, animal skins and other materials, imported from the east. Unlike natives, though, most whites were reluctant to shed clothes as the weather warmed, declaring it to be immodest to be improperly attired. Even in the cold wet of springtime, they wore their wools, which trapped the moisture and froze stiffly to their skin. It made little sense to Ramsay. Yet, he had adapted, and often wore the garb of the whites.
Socks, however, made little sense, particularly in summer. Of what value were socks, when a skin, reversed so the soft fur was on the inside of the mukluk, would keep feet warm and dry? Or, to keep feet dry, a layer of soft moss? The use of socks, instead of fur or moss, seemed frivolous.
Socks made even less sense for coffee. Nonetheless, Ramsay was bemused when he observed, for the first time, these New Icelanders pouring boiling water over ground coffee held in what appeared to be a sock! Even a savage would not drink anything that had been filtered through sweaty, stinking footwear. Compounding the perception of strangeness was the reference that many Icelanders made to this contraption: the coffee sock. However, they hurriedly assured him that it was a name only, and that no one would dare to use an actual sock. Despite these assurances, Ramsay later would discover that this claim was not entirely true. He discovered, too, that this unique filter actually worked! Of course, as an energy drink, coffee lacked the sweet smoothness of the bee pollen, the tang of goldenseal, the bite of wild ginger or the lasting effect of ginseng, but it was adequate.
Coffee, it seemed, was the focal point of the Icelanders beverage menu. Sure, they, like other settlers, consumed alcohol, but it had far less allure than it held for many other whites and natives. Coffee was their drink of choice. John learned to enjoy this drink with them on occasion, and even grew to like its bitter taste. He wondered what power it held.
Coffee, primarily, was the focal point of social interaction: both the catalyst and the cause. Unlike the Metis and other Red River settlers, the Icelanders did not rely upon liquor and the fiddle to fuel gatherings around the table at night. A tightly-knit group, they simply enjoyed each other’s company while savouring their coffee. And, on special occasions, their vinetarta.
On October 26, 1875, a new world opened for John Ramsay, his family, and his soon-to-be white Icelandic wards. It was the beginning of the loss of his family’s traditional territory to the Icelanders, and the beginning of the true Manitoba spirit of cooperation and peaceful coexistence. But it would come at the expense of many lives, through starvation and disease. It would mark the beginning of the end of an antagonism between the eastern power of the Canadian government and the Red River settlements that formed the core of Manitoba. And it would be the beginning of a new culture that ultimately would shape the peaceful, cooperative character of the infant province of Manitoba and the Interlake region of that province. Sadly, it would also be a continuation of the destruction of the first people of Manitoba’s hereditary and traditional way of life. It would be both the mark of distinction and the brand of shame for the man who would save New Iceland.
It would be a week from October 26 when Ramsay would endure his first coffee from a sock. It would be a week before the Icelanders would meet their best friend. It would be longer before his value came to be truly recognized – a value as significant to the Icelanders as Louis Riel had been, six years earlier, to the Metis, to the new province of Manitoba and to Canada. It would be years longer before the magnitude of his benevolence would be recognized by others.
October had already seen almost a dozen days of below zero or colder days, four snowstorms and extreme winds ravaging the Willow Point area on Lake Winnipeg, so it was with great haste that the Icelanders threw up a collage of tents and makeshift buildings to protect against the onslaught. Ramsay had heard of the late arrival of this new influx of whites, and needed to see for himself.
Now, a year later, he had become integral to the survival of the New Icelanders, even though they were usurping his own land, having forced fellow Cree from their homes as they settled in. Some resented the whites, while others were resigned to the continuation of the mistreatment at the hands of the Canadian government. John Ramsay chose to help those who needed him – white or Indian – while maintaining his vigilance against further deceit by the Canadians.
The year had not been kind to either whites or natives. Smallpox swept through every village and tribe, decimating the population, disfiguring those that survived its cruelty. The plague continued, unabated, through 1876 and 1877, doubling the disaster that hit the small immigrant and large native populations. Add in cold, snow, lack of food and inadequate knowledge of how survive, hunt and fish locally, and the Icelanders faced perilous odds.
Ramsay had prepared his family well. Signs had pointed to a difficult winter, and he had ensured that the family was prepared. A wealth of herbs, plants, fruits fish, and meat were gathered, prepared and stored, in native tradition. Fresh meat would be available throughout the winter and, as was the custom of every Indian, shared with those less fortunate – even the Icelandic invaders.
The winter guaranteed a season of illnesses, even though the Saulteaux, Objibwa and Cree knew every natural advantage needed to ensure enduring health.
Seneca root, as common as thistles, grew in myriad locations throughout the Interlake area of the region. Harvested as their tops turned a deep scarlet in September, the roots held essential oils that provided excellent defences and cures for sore throats and colds. Spruce needles, always available throughout the winter, were brewed almost daily, providing a vitamin-rich tea. Cattail roots and common plantain seeds added starch and body to game stews, while stores of goldenrod, sage, mint and the essential birch, among dozens of others, had been gathered in season, dried and stored. Berries, sun-dried and blended into pemmican and bannock mixes, provided extra nourishment. Fish had been caught, sometimes smoked in the Metis manner, but most often sun-dried. Game had been snared, trapped or shot and preserved. Ramsay’s group was ready.
The Icelanders had neither stores set aside or knowledge of how to obtain their food in this new environment. There had been few breaks from the cold, but John needed to see if his new neighbours required help. His arrival in the community no longer was met with trepidation, as he had experienced in the prior year. His imposing size and swarthy skin added menace to his self-assured manner, yet his blonde friends knew him, respected him and loved him. He had earned their trust, but more critically, he had earned their appreciation. Within mere moments, though, he was always welcomed into the village and individual homes.
Whenever the weather allowed, John trekked to the community, carrying with him the little food he could afford to relinquish. Whatever he had, he shared. It was the native way. That sharing included knowledge. At first, he marvelled at the ineptitude of these people, with their broadaxes too heavy to carry into the bush to fell firewood, their ignorance of ice-fishing techniques, their lack of understanding of the ways of the wild animals and their inability to trap or snare even a single rabbit. But he soon began to marvel, too, at their willingness to learn, as he walked a few of the men along traplines, showed them how to read bush trails of rabbit and deer, how to lay in ambush for the bigger game, how to hack holes in the ice of Lake Winnipeg to catch fish on simple gut strings. The Icelanders learned quickly that winter, but, unfortunately, learned too late to save many of the community. Dozens died before the following spring.
In the spring, his task of teaching continued. How to harvest morels and late winter tree mushrooms. How to avoid the marsh marigold, even though its flowers and leaves looked succulent. How to heal wounds with plantain, willow bark and horsetail. How to gather poplar sap, and strip the inner birch bark layers for teas. How to readjust the size of their nets to catch the small lake fish. How to respect the woods, water and fields. How to survive. All of this he did, generously and without thought of reward.
By the following fall, his new Icelandic friends were ready for their third winter.
Many had become disillusioned with this environment, and had relocated to the Dakotas, hoping to find better land and a better climate. But many remained, strengthened by John Ramsay’s kindness, his dedication and his sage advice. It was the start of The Republic of New Iceland, allowed to flourish only because of the selflessness of one man: John Ramsay.
Yet, in spite of his dedication to the Icelanders, he could never develop an affinity for at least a part of who they were: he still declined most offers to drink a beverage made in a sock. It still struck John Ramsay as unusual.
John Ramsay is buried in the Riverton Cemetery, his grave tended by locals.