Long-Haired Joe, Buffalo and Dad
- Shaune Jonasson
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Shaune Jonasson
Storytelling is as old as time itself. The progression of time has afforded us storytelling through various mediums. It is easy to lose track of time while reading a good story or listening to a talented storyteller.
Summertime often gives us the opportunity to do just that: take out that book that you’ve been longing to read, or open that audiobook and plug in your earbuds. Curl up on a comfy chair in the shade and enjoy the adventure that awaits you.
This summer has given me the opportunity to read at my leisure, or to continue with some of my own story writing. Because I have the rare luxury of a less hectic schedule I dug deep in my research. It had me twisting and turning through rabbit holes, up and down. It was fun! Being steered off path often rewards me with enticing story nuggets.
My family was fortunate to find nine short accounts of our dad’s life when he was a youngster growing up in the community of Wynyard, Saskatchewan. These make for some interesting fodder to add to our family story. I am very grateful, and, yes, I am using them, or parts of them.
Reading one of Dad’s stories titled “The Last Buffalo Hunt” I was unexpectedly drawn to some familiar names. This piqued my interest and a-hunting I did go.
My grandfather as a veteran of WWI obtained the initial quarter section of land as part of the Soldier’s Settlement project in the Grandy district near Wynyard, Saskatchewan. It was here that he and my grandmother built their life in the early years and raised their family. By all accounts, the community was congenial and relied upon one another in tough times. I think this could be said about many rural areas of North American in the early half of the 20th century.
A man with resources and talents, my grandfather was a farmer, but enjoyed fishing and hunting and taking his boys along with him. Creating puzzle mazes and whittling were some of his favourite pastimes. He was also sought out to provide physical relief from sore and aching muscles, in particular by an older fellow, an original settler in the Grandy area, who went by “Joe Stefansson” (I185063). They also called him “Long-Haired Joe.” In the IR database, he is known as Jóhannes Jóhannsson / Stefansson. He is the brother to Vilhjalmar Stefansson (I185068), who was featured as the IR Interesting Icelander in November 2024.
Dad remembers Joe:
“Joe Stefanson, the old-timer that told me this story, visited our place several times, coming in his buggy drawn by an old gray horse. Apparently, he suffered from rheumatism, and for relief he came to my dad for a rub-down and massage. Dad was not noted for being a masseur and, reflecting back, Joe was probably more attracted to our place for a good meal and my mother’s cooking.
Joe Stefanson (brother to the Arctic explorer, Vilhjalmar Stefanson) emulated the famous cowboy, Buffalo Bill. He wore the wide rimmed ten-gallon hat, wore his hair long, set off by a large mustache and goatee beard. He had been a cowboy and hunter in his younger days, and though this is the only story I can recall, he was a good storyteller, as most Icelanders are.
On this particular visit, after having coffee and cake, (he saucered his coffee and drank with amazing suction, the droplets of coffee glistening in his mustache), he related this spellbinding story of the last buffalo hunt in the area. The year would have been around 1875 or 1880 as the buffalo were gone by the turn of the century.”
Now, Dad claims he wrote this story as best he could remember and without embellishment. I’ve calculated that he would have been five to seven years old at the time he heard this story from Joe. I visualize him and his siblings lined up on the floor, cross-legged, mesmerized with bated breath as cowboy-Joe brought reality of the magnificent buffalo into their home. They knew the buffalo by the visible remnants of their existence that were some fifty years earlier along the west shore of Big Quill Lake.
Joe was explaining how a hunt was organized when a herd of buffalo was spotted. Dad continues:
“A funnel-shaped fence of poplar poles was built, widely separated on one end, narrowing down to a gate which led to a larger fenced-in corral. The method of herding the buffalo, as Joe described it, and the [local Metis population] draped wolf skins over their backs and hunkered down, would appear to the buffalo [that] they were wolves. They slowly crept towards the buffalo, sometimes on their hands and knees, chasing them into the wide separation of the fences until the buffalo were inside the corral. Once inside, poles were placed across the gate.”
As much as Dad claimed to write without embellishment, after additional research I am confident the same can’t be said for Joe’s account, assuming it was told within the present tense and Joe included himself. I don’t know that detail. But if Joe claimed he was there, that’s a tale unto itself!
Joe was, after all, regaling his tales to a very young and enthusiastic audience. His cowboy persona fit that of a buffalo hunter. Who wouldn’t believe him? Perhaps, the youngsters didn’t understand it was an historical tale Joe narrated. Is that important to a young lad? Probably not. To hear about the buffalo hunt from a real-time cowboy in their own living room would be enough; the tale stood the test of time.
Truth be known, the buffalo were almost extinct on the Canadian prairies by the late 1870s-early 80s. It’s questionable that Joe would have been at the “last” buffalo hunt given this fact.
Johannes Stefansson was born in Iceland in 1867 and emigrated with his family to Canada in 1876 as a nine-year-old boy. He didn’t move to Saskatchewan until approximately 1904 as one of the earliest settlers in the area. The story told to the youngsters would have been the mid-1930s. As such, Long-Haired Joe would have been in his mid-to-late 50s.
Joe was indeed a storyteller. A good one according to Dad, who in turn loved to tell a story. Thankfully Dad has captured many of his thoughts in print. I know he had more to say, but time didn’t allow for that. I am so grateful for what he has left us, in every way.
My family and the folks from this era are all gone now. Their voices are silent but for the stories alive in my memory, and those shared with first cousins. It is our responsibility to keep telling these stories so they too can stand the test of time. Now it is also up to us to capture our own stories, to preserve the past for the future.
Additional Reading Suggestions:
Two papers describing the slaughter of the last remaining herds of buffalo in western Canada during the 1870s and 1880s https://iportal.usask.ca/record/17318https://mysteriesofcanada.com/manitoba/how-canada-saved-the-buffalo/
The Icelandic Canadian Spring 1974 (p39) “The Legend of Joe Stefansson” https://timarit.is/page/8129792#page/n40/mode/2up
The Great Buffalo Saga https://www.nfb.ca/film/great_buffalo_saga/
Reflections of the Quills. See pg 55 Stefansson, Johannes and Gudfinna (Finnson)
