A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

attributed farewell to his people, 25 April 1890; John Peter Turner The North-West Mounted Police: 1873–93 (1950)