still exist in the
River Assineboine and its surroundings. Nothing testifies more
conclusively to the varied changes and vicissitude's Indian tribes than
the presence of this branch of the Assineboine nation in the pine forests
of the Rocky Mountains. It is not yet a hundred years since the
"Ossinepoilles" were found by one of the earliest traders inhabiting the
country between the head of the Pasquayah or Saskatchewan and the
country of the Sioux, a stretch of territory fully 900 miles in length.

Twenty years later they still were numerous along the whole line of the
North Saskatchewan, and their lodges were at intervals seen along a
river line of 800 miles in length, but even then a great change had come
upon them. In 1780 the first epidemic of small-pox swept over the Western
plains, and almost annihilated the powerful Assineboines. The whole
central portion of the tribe was destroyed, but the outskirting portions
drew together and again made themselves a terror to trapper and trader.
In 1821 they were noted for their desperate forays, and for many years
later a fierce conflict raged between them and the Blackfeet; under the
leadership of a chief still famous in Indian story--Tehatka, or the
"Left-handed;" they for a long time more than held their own against
these redoubtable warriors. Tehatka was a medicine-man of the first
order, and by the exercise of his superior cunning and dream power he was
implicitly relied on by his followers; at length fortune deserted him,
and he fell in a bloody battle with the Gros Ventres near the Knife
River, a branch of the Missouri, in 1837. About the same date small-pox
again swept the tribe, and they almost disappeared from the prairies. The
Crees too pressed down from the North and East, and occupied a
great-portion of their territory; the Blackfeet smote them hard on the
south-west frontier; and thus, between foes and disease, the Assineboines
of to-day have dwindled down into far-scattered remnants of tribes.
Warned by the tradition of the frightful losses of earlier times from the
ravages of small-pox, the Assineboines this year kept far out in the
great central prairie along the coteau, and escaped the infection
altogether, but their cousins, the Rocky Mountain Stonies, were not so
fortunate, they lost some of their bravest men during the pre ceding
summer and autumn. Even under the changed circumstances of their present
lives, dwelling amidst the forests and rocks instead o