stroyed. Since that-period the disease appears to have visited some of
the tribes at intervals of greater or less duration; but until this and
the previous year its ravages were confined to certain localities and did
not extend universally throughout the country. During the summer and
early winter of '69 and '70 reports reached the Saskatchewan of the
prevalence of small-pox of a very malignant type among the South Peagin
Indians, a branch of the great Blackfeet nation. It was hoped, however,
that the disease would be confined to the Missouri River, and the Crees
who, as usual, were at war with their traditional enemies, were warned
by Missionaries and others that the prosecution of their predatory
expeditions into the Blackfeet country would in all probability carry
the infection into the North Saskatchewan. From the South Peagin tribes,
on the head-waters of the Missouri, the disease spread rapidly through
the kindred tribes of Blood, Blackfeet, and Lucee Indians, all which new
tribes have their hunting-grounds north of the boundary-line.
Unfortunately for the Crees, they failed to listen to the advice of those
persons who had recommended a suspension of hostilities. With the opening
of spring the war-parties commenced their raids; a band of seventeen
Crees penetrated, in the month of April, into the Blackfeet country, and
coming upon a deserted camp of their enemies in which a tent was still
standing, they proceeded to ransack it, This tent contained the dead
bodies of some Blackfeet, and although these bodies presented a very
revolting spectacle, being in an advanced stage of decomposition, they
were nevertheless-subjected to the usual process of mutilation, the
scalps and clothing being also carried away.

For this act the Crees paid a terrible penalty; scarcely had they
reached their own country before the disease appeared among them, in its
most virulent and infectious form. Nor were the consequences of this raid
less disastrous to the whole Cree nation. At the period of the-year to
which I allude, the early summer, these Indians usually assemble together
from different directions in large numbers, and it was towards one of
those numerous assemblies that the returning war-party, still carrying
the scalps and clothing of the Blackfeet, directed their steps. Almost
immediately upon their arrival the disease broke out amongst them in its
most malignant form. Out of the seventeen men who took part in the raid,
it is a