lly helped to bar
the way against Big Bear and his marauding band.

And similarly at other points the promptness, resource, wisdom and
dauntless resolution of the gallant officers of the Mounted Police
and of the men they commanded saved Western Canada from the complete
subversion of law and order in the whole Northern part of the
territories and from the unspeakable horrors of a general Indian
uprising.

But while in the Northern and Eastern part of the Territories the Police
officers rendered such signal service in the face of open rebellion, it
was in the foothill country in the far West that perhaps even greater
service was rendered to Canada and the Empire in this time of peril by
the officers and men of the Mounted Police.

It was due to the influence of such men as the Superintendents and
Inspectors of the Police in charge of the various posts throughout
the foothill country more than to anything else that the Chiefs of
the "great, warlike, intelligent and untractable tribes" of Blackfeet,
Blood, Piegan, Sarcee and Stony Indians were prevented from breaking
their treaties and joining with the rebel Crees, Salteaux and
Assiniboines of the North and East. For fifteen years the Chiefs of
these tribes had lived under the firm and just rule of the Police, had
been protected from the rapacity of unscrupulous traders and saved from
the ravages of whisky-runners. It was the proud boast of a Blood Chief
that the Police never broke a promise to the Indian and never failed to
exact justice either for his punishment or for his protection.

Hence when the reserves were being overrun by emissaries from the
turbulent Crees and from the plotting half-breeds, in the face of the
impetuous demands of their own young men and of their minor Chiefs to
join in the Great Adventure, the great Chiefs, Red Crow and Rainy Chief
of the Bloods, Bull's Head of the Sarcees, Trotting Wolf of the Piegans,
and more than all, Crowfoot, the able, astute, wise old head of
the entire Blackfeet confederacy, held these young braves back from
rebellion and thus gave time and opportunity to Her Majesty's Forces
operating in the East and North to deal with the rebels.

And during those days of strain, strain beyond the estimate of all
not immediately involved, it was the record of such men as the
Superintendents and Inspectors in charge at Fort Macleod, at Fort
Calgary and on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway construction
in the mountains, and