f French Canada. However, in this
year--1754--the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and
fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
Blackfeet Indians.[4] All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
horseback.

[Footnote 4: See p. 159.]

Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
Assiniboins--the Mekesue or Eagle Indians--who differed from the
surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
bears.

At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
hundred tents or _tipis_ were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
sacred skin of a white buffalo. T