It's a strange and imposing sight: a tall black granite obelisk, rising through the brambles of a neglected cemetery on a quiet country road in South Africa.
Even more mysterious is the inscription, declaring that the man buried here was a police constable, killed "in an encounter with a lion" more than a century ago. It offers no clue as to why this grave was honoured with such a spectacular monument, while the other policemen nearby were buried with small standard markers.
When a local historian began investigating, a fascinating tale soon unfolded. The man in the grave was a Canadian aboriginal who had become a legend in the wild northern fringe of South Africa in the early years of the 20th century. And today, as the historian tells the saga to enthralled audiences across South Africa, the long-forgotten Canadian has become a legend again.
The man was Charles William Eagle, known as Billy Eagle, and was born near Canoe Creek in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. The son of an English rancher and his Secwepemc wife, he joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles and travelled to South Africa in 1902 to fight on the British side in the Anglo-Boer War. The war ended before he could fight, and so he joined the local constabulary and patrolled the dangerous northern corners of the country, where lions and other predators lurked.
One of his fellow officers described him as an "eccentric character" of unknown origins who never spoke of his past. "Eagle was a powerful man, not of the heavy variety, but lithe," the officer wrote. "A well-read man, wonderful shot, excellent tracker and a superb horseman, and he revelled in the open life."
But why did the police officers pay for such a grandiose and expensive obelisk for the Canadian who was killed by a lion? It was this mystery that first intrigued the historian, Charles Leach, and led him to write a book published in 2007 about Billy Eagle.
The answer seems to lie in the extraordinary popularity that the enigmatic man from the Cariboo achieved in his six years in South Africa. Although he was a racial minority and subjected to racism from British authorities in the land where apartheid later emerged, his fellow officers rallied around him.
When the Canadian Mounted Rifles boarded a ship after the war to return home, 29 of their soldiers stayed behind in South Africa to join the police. But a British recruitment officer refused to enlist Billy Eagle in the constabulary because of his aboriginal blood. This sparked a remarkable rebellion by the other 28 officers, who said they would withdraw from the police unless their Canadian comrade was allowed to join. The British officer agreed to their demand, and Mr. Eagle is believed to be the only Canadian aboriginal man ever to serve in the Transvaal police.
His great popularity on the police force was partly because of his "outstanding hearing, eyesight and marksmanship" and his ability to "sense danger long before anyone else could," according to Mr. Leach's biography. "None could ride as well as he could. None could spot a leopard when it lay in total camouflage in the dappled shadows of the bushveld."
His police career, however, was marred by several criminal charges, mostly related to alcohol use. After one charge of being drunk on duty, he pleaded for leniency, noting that he was suffering from malaria as a result of his arduous work in remote places. "I had just returned off a long hard patrol of 14 days, on which we had to live on rice, coffee and what meat we could shoot," he wrote to his superiors. His punishment was reduced to a small fine.
In September of 1908, while on horseback patrol among the baobab trees and sweet-thorn acacias of the wilderness near the Limpopo River, the 39-year-old Canadian policeman heard from two transport riders that a wounded lion was in the area. He went to investigate and, rounding a corner, stumbled upon two lions, which immediately leaped at him and knocked him from his horse. He fired his rifle and wounded both lions, but one of the animals clamped its jaw on him and raked him with its claws, until a nearby prospector rushed to the scene and scared it away.
Badly wounded, he was carried away for help, but it took three days of bumpy travel on poor roads before he could get proper medical treatment at a hospital. After several days in a coma, he died of his wounds.
The death of the much-loved Canadian was a local sensation. A local newspaper, the Zoutpansberg Review, wrote: "His wonderful intrepidity and tenacity is almost the sole topic of conversation in the Zoutpansberg, and his comrades of the Transvaal Police mourn the loss of one of the bravest men who ever donned the uniform."
Billy Eagle was buried in the police cemetery in Fort Edward, near the hospital where he died. At the time of his death, he was almost penniless and had no family in South Africa, but his fellow officers raised substantial funds for a three-metre-high granite obelisk, which still towers over the disused cemetery today.
Over the decades, Billy Eagle was forgotten. But when Mr. Leach gave tours of local battlefields and cemeteries, the visitors kept asking about the tall granite obelisk, especially since "Eagle" was an uncommon name. "Everyone asked: 'Who on earth was this guy?'" he recalled in an interview.
"Despite the criminal charges against him, he gets buried under one of the most beautiful obelisks that we've ever seen in a police cemetery. So there must have been something special about him. That's what led to my research."
Despite years of hunting, Mr. Leach has found no photograph of Billy Eagle, which only added to the mystery. He contacted the Tk'emlups First Nation in British Columbia, from where then-chief Shane Gottfriedson told him that the eagle is "held in very high honour" among aboriginal people. And he contacted a former Kamloops mayor, Mel Rothenburger, whose great aunt married Billy Eagle in 1892 and later divorced him, and who said that the story of his fatal battle with a lion was "family legend."
Mr. Leach's research also revealed that Billy Eagle had attended a Catholic mission school, St. Joseph's, near Williams Lake, which later became an Indian residential school.
His book about Billy Eagle, titled … Of a Lion and Eagle, has sold more than 2,000 copies in South Africa, and has attracted interest from film producers.
Geoffrey York