The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this year—1754—the two nations were not actually at war, and the two Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and2 fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding Blackfeet Indians.[4] All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on horseback.
Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of Assiniboins—the Mekesue or Eagle Indians—who differed from the surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime, absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several; fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly bears.
At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two hundred tents or tipis were pitched in two parallel rows, and down this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff. Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes. Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne, with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713, and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France the exclusive right to fish on the western and northern coasts of Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from which to approach it—just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits. But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England (United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana (which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
[1] Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company, Naywatame-poet.
[2] The young or old reader of this and other books dealing with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction must be made between the Anthony Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated Alexander Henry the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations occurred between 1799 and 1814.