's Bay Company, despite the experience and the remarkable
tact of their employees, had always found it difficult to establish
satisfactory relations with the tribes, amongst which at this period
Colonel MacLeod and his men were seeking a sphere of service for the
good of all concerned.

Accordingly, we find MacLeod reporting before the end of 1874 that he
had interviewed the chiefs of the practically confederated tribes of the
Bloods, Piegans and Blackfeet. He found them very intelligent men, and
he described in some detail the stately ceremony with which these chiefs
had conducted themselves in these interviews. They shake hands with
Colonel MacLeod, and then, receiving the pipe of peace from the
interpreter, Jerry Potts, they each smoke a few seconds and pass it
around. MacLeod then explains to them the friendly attitude of the
Canadian Government towards them, that the Police had come not to take
the country from the Indians, but to protect these Indians against men
who would despoil them and destroy them by sowing amongst them evil
practices. And he adds that the Government would send soon some of the
great men of the country to deal with the Indians and make treaty
agreements with them.

At these early interviews the chiefs gave unstinted praise to the
Police, before whose coming there had been constant trouble. The Indians
said they used to be robbed and ruined by the whisky-traders, that their
horses, robes and women had been taken from them, that their young men
were constantly engaged in drunken riots and many were killed, that
their horses were stolen, so that they had no means of travelling or
hunting. All this, the chiefs said, had been changed by the coming of
the Police. One chief, in the graphic way by which they gesture in
accord with what they are saying, crouched down and moved along with
difficulty, and then stood up and walked. "Before you came," said this
chief to the Colonel, "the Indian had to creep along, not knowing what
would attack him, but now he is not afraid to walk erect."

And so that first winter wore on with steady work on the part of the
Police, who, while seeing that the Indians had every protection afforded
them, also helped them to understand that they also had to observe the
laws of the land. In view of the general situation amongst the Indians
and the proximity of part of the North-West Territory to the boundary
line, on the other side of which there was almost continuous warfar