The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas toward the land of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the French House. To Hendry’s surprise they came to a large river with high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose parchment skin—like the bull-boats of the Missouri—the Assiniboines rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort.
As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth-hole smoked the skins. Beating and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry remarks how in the fall of the year, the women sat in the doors of their wigwams “knitting moose leather into snow shoes” made of seasoned wood. It was October before the Indians of the far Western plains were met. These were the famous Blackfeet for the first time now seen by an English trader. They approached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He thought the mineral iron. What he saw was probably an outcropping of coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver—which were plentiful beyond the fur trader’s hopes. When, on October the 11th, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatchewan, which the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches were forks of one and the same great river—the Saskatchewan, or as the French called it, Christinaux. The Indian names for the two branches were Keskatchew and Waskesaw.
For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible southwest. On October the 14th, four riders came out to conduct Hendry to an encampment of three hundred and twenty-two tents of Blackfeet Indians “pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where we were conducted to the leader’s tent.” This was the main tribe of which Hendry had already met the outrunners. “The leader’s tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo skin attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their custom. Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader who lives on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with their furs. They would receive in return, powder, shot, guns and cloth. He made little answer: said it was far off and his people could not paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents which we pitched a quarter of a mile outside their lines.” Again invited to the leader’s tent the next morning, Hendry heard some remarkable philosophy from the Indian. “The chief told me his tribe never wanted food as they followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who frequented the settlements often starved on their journey, which was exceedingly true,” added Hendry. Reciprocal presents closed the interview. The present to the Assiniboine chief was a couple of girl slaves, one of whom was murdered at York ten years afterward by an Indian in a fit of jealousy.
Later, Hendry learned that the Assiniboines did not want these Blackfeet of the far West to come down to the bay. Neither would the Assiniboines hunt except for food. Putting the two facts together, Hendry rightly judged that the Assiniboines acted as middlemen between the traders and the Blackfeet.
By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered; his journal says, “eight hundred and ten miles west of York,” moving back and forward north and south of the river; but a comment added by Andrew Graham on the margin of the journal, says he was in latitude 59°. This is plainly a mistake, as latitude 59° is six degrees away from the Saskatchewan; but eight hundred and ten miles from York along the Saskatchewan would bring Hendry in the region between the modern Edmonton and Battleford. It is to Hendry’s credit that he remained on good terms with the Assiniboines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become the butt of the children who infested the tents like imps; but he hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch the best of them. Consequently, there is not a note in his journal of that doleful whine which comes from the weakling run amuck of hard life in a savage land.
When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson Bay. Almost the entire winter, camp moved from bend to bend or branch to branch of the North Saskatchewan, heading gradually eastward. Toward spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. Among these were “green scalps” and many women captives from those Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. One hears much twaddle of the red man’s noble state before he was contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West before they had met any white men but himself, and the disposal of those captives is a criterion of the red man’s noble state. Whenever one was not wanted—the present of a girl, for instance, resented by a warrior’s jealous wives—she was summarily hacked to pieces, and not a passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life.
By spring, Hendry’s camp had dwindled down to a party of twelve. He now had only two pounds of powder in his possession, but his party were rich in furs. As the time approached to build canoes, the Assiniboines began gathering at the river banks. Young men searched the woods for bark. Old men whittled out the gun’els. Women pounded pemmican into bags for the long voyage to the bay. The nights passed in riotous feast and revel, with the tom-tom pounding, the conjurers performing tricks, the hunters dancing, the women peeping shyly into the dance tent. At such times, one may guess, Hendry did not spare of his scant supplies to lure the Indians to York Fort, but he did not count on the effects of French brandy when the canoes would pass the French posts.
Ice was driving in the river like a mill race all the month of April. Swans and geese and pigeons and bluejays came winging north. There was that sudden and wondrous leap to life of a dormant world—and lo!—it was summer, with the ducks on the river in flocks, and the long prairie grass waving like a green sea, and the trees bleak and bare against the vaporous sky now clothing themselves in foliage as in a bridal veil shot with sunlight.
The great dog feast was solemnly held. The old men conjured the powers of the air to bless them a God-speed. Canoes were launched on April 28, and out swung the Assiniboines’ brigade for Fort York. It was easier going down stream than up. Thirty and forty miles a day they made, passing multitudes of Indians still building their canoes on the river banks. At every camp, more fur-laden canoes joined them. Hendry’s heart must have been very happy. He was bringing wealth untold to York.
Four hundred miles down stream, the Blackfeet Indians were met and with great pow-wow of trading turned their furs over to the crafty Assiniboines to be taken down to York. There were now sixty canoes in the flotilla and says Hendry “not a pot or kettle among us.” Everything had been bartered to the Blackfeet for furs. Six hundred miles from their launching place, they came to the first French post. This distance given by Hendry is another pretty effective proof that he had wintered near Edmonton, if not beyond it, for this post was not the Pas. It was subordinate to Basquia or Pasquia.