GOVERNOR--"I do not know about that matter; it will be enquired into. I am taking notes of all these things and am putting them on paper."
CHIEF--"I will tell you one thing. You understand me now, that I have taken your hand firmly and in friendship. I repeat twice that you have done so, that these promises that you have made, and the treaty to be concluded, let it be as you promise, as long as the sun rises over our head and as long as the water runs. One thing I find, that deranges a little my kettle. In this river, where food used to be plentiful for our subsistence,
I perceive it is getting scarce. We wish that the river should be left as it was formed from the beginning--that nothing be broken."
GOVERNOR--"This is a subject that I cannot promise."
MR. DAWSON--"Anything that we are likely to do at present will not interfere with the fishing, but no one can tell what the future may require, and we cannot enter into any engagement."
CHIEF--"We wish the Government would assist us in getting a few boards for some of us who are intending to put up houses this fall, from the mill at Fort Francis."
GOVERNOR--"The mill is a private enterprise, and we have no power to give you boards from that."
CHIEF--"I will now show you a medal that was given to those who made a treaty at Red River by the Commissioner. He said it was silver, but I do not think it is. I should be ashamed to carry it on my breast over my heart. I think it would disgrace the Queen, my mother, to wear her image on so base a metal as this. [Here the Chief held up the medal and struck it with the back of his knife. The result was anything but the 'true ring,' and made every man ashamed of the petty meanness that had been practised.] Let the medals you give us be of silver--medals that shall be worthy of the high position our Mother the Queen occupies."
GOVERNOR--"I will tell them at Ottawa what you have said, and how you have said it."
CHIEF--"I wish you to understand you owe the treaty much to the Half-breeds."