and the trees? was it the Great
Spirit? No; for the Great Spirit gave to us the beasts and the fish, and
the white man comes to take the waters and the ground where these fishes
and these beasts live--why does he not take the sky as well as the
ground? We who have dwelt on these prairies ever since the stars fell"
(an epoch from which the Blackfeet are fond of dating, their antiquity)
"do not put sticks over the land and say, Between these sticks this land
is mine; you shall not come here or go there."

Fortunate is it for these Blackfeet tribes that their hunting grounds lie
partly on British territory--from where our midday camp was made on the
2nd December to the boundary-line at the 49th parallel, fully 180 miles
of plain knows only the domination of the Blackfeet tribes. Here, around
this midday camp, lies spread a fair and fertile land; but close by,
scarce half a day's journey to the south, the sandy plains begin to
supplant the rich grass-covered hills, and that immense central desert
commences to spread out those ocean-like expanses which find their
southern limits far down by the waters of the Canadian River,1200 miles
due south of the Saskatchewan. This immense central sandy plateau is the
true home of the bison. Here were raised for countless ages these huge
herds whose hollow tramp shook the solid roof of America during the
countless cycles which it remained unknown to man. Here, too, was the
true home of the Indian: the Commanche, the Apache, the Kio-wa, the
Arapahoe, the Shienne, the Crow, the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Omahaw, the
Mandan, the Manatarree, the Blackfeet, the Cree, and the Assineboine
divided between them the immense region, warring and wandering through
the vast expanses until the white race from the East pushed their way
into the land, and carved out states and territories from the Mississippi
to the Rocky Mountains. How it came to pass in the building of the world
that to the north of that great region of sand and waste should spread
out suddenly the fair country of the Saskatchewan, I must leave to the
guess-work of other and more scientific writers; but the fact remains,
that alone, from Texas to the sub-Arctic forest, the Saskatchewan Valley
lays its fair length for 800 miles in mixed fertility.

But we must resume our Western way. The evening of the 3rd December found
us crossing a succession of wooded hills which divide the water system of
the North from that of the South Saskatchewan.