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 afterwards 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. Eight hundred and ten miles 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.
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. Towards 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 wife, 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.
(To be continued)
Montizambert Post News
H. H. BUSCH, Post Manager at Montizambert, widely known in Lake Superior District, recently detailed himself as a “fatigue party” to undertake a task usually considered too weighty for one man to handle. The job was to remove the engine from Mrs. Busch’s motor boat.
Once started, however, his pride would not let him quit. He sailed into the craft with a hammer, two wrenches, a file and a pair of chisels. Chips began to fly; nuts and bolts and ejaculations filled the air.
Some hours later the clerk saw our doughty factor wrestling at the water’s brim, trying to carry the big engine to the fur house. One spectator remarks, “A fog was rising from him like that from a hot spring in winter.” After a long tussle he and the engine arrived at the fur house.