“No, Hugh, of course, you’re right, but it does seem as if the world and the territory would be better off if Froggy did not live here.”
“Maybe, maybe,” said Hugh, “but, as I say, it isn’t your business nor yet mine.”
That night they camped on Dupuyer Creek, and Hugh and Joe said that to-morrow they would be at the agency.
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll be glad to get there. It’s queer, isn’t it, the number of times I’ve been up here and camped with these Piegans that I’ve never seen their agency, the place which is really their home?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “it really has not been their home very long, only since the buffalo gave out. Before that they only came in once in a while, but not long before they saw the last of the buffalo the Government sent out troops to bring them in and tell them that they must stay at the agency.
“That’s one reason, I reckon, that they starved, as Joe was telling us the other night. If it hadn’t been that the troops kept them there, I believe they’d all have gone up north into Canada and have tried to make the two other tribes, the Blackfeet and the Bloods, give them help. I don’t know what help they could have given them, because those people up there must be just as poor as these down here. They all depended on the buffalo and they had nothing else. None of them have any idea of farming, and of course none of them have any cattle.”
“But, Hugh,” said Jack, “what are they going to do now? The buffalo won’t come back; how are they going to live?”
“Why,” said Hugh, “the only way they can live is for the Government to support them, to send them out beef and flour and bacon. They’ve got to be fed until they learn to do something for themselves, either to raise crops or raise cattle, or get jobs as hands on the steamboats or as hands for the ranchmen; but, of course, there are not enough ranchmen in the country to hire even a small part of the able-bodied men among the Piegans.”
“Well,” said Jack, “they have a pretty melancholy outlook, haven’t they?”
“They have, it’s true,” Hugh answered. “At the same time,” he went on, “some of those men are pretty industrious and have a pretty good idea of work, if they only knew how, but as yet they don’t know anything. Joe says though—you heard him the other night—that they were trying to learn to farm, but this country up here is so cold that I don’t think they can ever do anything with crops. There are a few warm spots where crops might ripen, but they are very few.”