helped them
and obeyed her laws since their arrival. She hopes you will continue to
do so and you will always find the Mounted Police on your side if you
keep the Queen's laws." Then Mr. Laird explained the terms of the treaty
and asked the Indians to go to their Council tents if they wished to
consider the matter.

Next day the Commissioners again met the chiefs and made all the points
clear, and on the third day the treaty was concluded amid great
satisfaction on all sides. There were some remarkable tributes to the
Police by the Chiefs. Crowfoot, the head chief, said, "The advice given
to me and my people has proved to be good. If the Police had not come to
this country where would we all be now? Bad men and whisky were indeed
killing us so fast that very few of us indeed would have been left
to-day. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird
protect it from the frosts of winter. I wish them all good and trust
that all our hearts will increase in goodness from this time forward. I
am satisfied, I will sign the treaty." Red Crow, head chief of the
Bloods, the most powerful tribe of the Blackfeet Confederacy, said,
"Three years ago, when the Mounted Police came to this country, I met
and shook hands with Stamix-oto-kan (Colonel MacLeod) at Belly River.
Since that time he made me many promises, he kept them all; not one of
them was broken. Everything that the Mounted Police have done has been
good. I entirely trust Stamix-oto-kan (Colonel MacLeod) and will leave
everything to him. I will sign with Crowfoot." Many others spoke in the
same strain, and after this great treaty was signed, on September 21,
1877, there was a salute of guns and general jubilation. The point to be
specially recalled in connection with this treaty is that it was
practically accomplished upon the splendid record that Colonel MacLeod
and his men had made amongst these powerful tribes in the most difficult
part of the West.

The annual money payment to the Indians under the treaties required
careful and honest handling. And at the conclusion of his report to the
Government in regard to this most famous of all the treaties, Governor
Laird made this remarkable witness-bearing recommendation: "I would urge
that the officers of the Mounted Police be entrusted to make the annual
payments to the Indians under this treaty. The chiefs themselves
requested this, and I said I believed the Government would gladly
consent to the arrange