lains lying
between the Red Deer River and the Missouri, a vast tract of country
which, with few exceptions, is treeless, and sandy--a portion of the
true American desert, which extends from the fertile belt of the
Saskatchewan to the borders of Texas. With the exception of the Lurcees,
the other confederate tribes speak the same language--the Lurcees, being
a branch of the Chipwayans of the North, speak a language peculiar to
themselves, while at the same time understanding and speaking the
Blackfeet tongue. At war with their hereditary enemies, the Crees, upon
their northern and eastern boundaries--at war with Kootanais and
Flathead tribes on south and west--at war with Assineboines on the
south-east and north-west--carrying on predatory excursions against the
Americans on the Missouri, this Blackfeet nation forms a people of whom
it may truly be said that they are against every man, and that every man
is against them. Essentially a wild, lawless, erring race, whose natures
have received the stamps of the region in which they dwell; whose
knowledge is read from the great book which Day, Night, and the Desert
unfold to them; and who yet possess a rude eloquence, a savage pride,
and a wild love of freedom of their own. Nor are there other indications
wanting to lead to the hope that this tribe may yet be found to be
capable of yielding to influences to which they have heretofore been
strangers, namely, Justice and Kindness.

Inhabiting, as the Blackfeet do, a large extent of country which, from
the arid nature of its soil mist ever prove useless for purposes of
settlement and colonization, I do not apprehend that much difficulty will
arise between them and the whites, provided always that measures are
taken to guard against certain possibilities of danger, and that the
Crees are made to unnderstand that the forts and settlements along the
Upper Saskatchewan must be considered as neutral ground upon which
hostilities cannot be waged against the Black feet. As matters at present
stand, whenever the Blackfeet venture in upon a trading expedition to the
forts of the Hudson Bay Company they are generally assaulted by the
Crees, and savagely murdered. Pee Lacombe estimates the nunber of
Blackfeet killed in and around Edmonton alone during his residence in the
West, at over forty men, and he has assured me that to his knowledge the
Blackfeet have never killed a Cree at that place, except in self-defence.
Mr. W. J. Christie, ch