But the question may be asked, If the Hudson Bay Company represent the centres round which the half-breed settlers have gathered, how then does it occur that that body should be destitute of governing power, and unable to repress crime and outrage?  To this question I would reply that the Hudson Bay Company, being a commercial corporation, dependent for its profits on the suffrages of the people, is of necessity cautious in the exercise of repressive powers; that, also, it is exposed in the Saskatchewan to the evil influence which free trade has ever developed among the native races; that, furthermore, it is brought in contact with tribes long remarkable for their lawlessness and ferocity; and that, lastly, the elements of disorder in the whole territory of Saskatchewan are for many causes, yearly on the increase.  But before entering upon the subject into which this last-consideration would lead me, it will be advisable to glance at the various elements which comprise the population of this Western region.  In point of numbers, and in the power which they possess of committing depredations, the aboriginal races claim the foremost place among the inhabitants of the Saskatchewan.  These tribes, like the Indians of other portions of Rupert’s Land and the North-west, carry on the pursuits of hunting, bringing the produce of their hunts to barter for the goods of the Hudson Bay Company; but, unlike the Indians of more northern regions, they subsist almost entirely upon the buffalo, and they carry on among themselves an unceasing warfare which has long become traditional.  Accustomed to regard murder as honourable war, robbery and pillage as the traits most ennobling to man hood, free from all restraint, these warring tribes of Crees, Assineboines, and Blackfeet form some of the most savage among even the races of Western America.

Hitherto it maybe said that the Crees have looked upon the white man as their friend, but latterly indications have not been wanting to foreshadow a change in this respect—­a change which I. have found many causes to account for, and which, if the Saskatchewan remains in its present condition, must, I fear, deepen into more positive enmity.  The buffalo, the red man’s sole means of subsistence, is rapidly disappearing; year by year the prairies, which once shook beneath the tread of countless herds of bisons, are becoming denuded of animal life, and year by year the affliction of starvation comes with an ever-increasing intensity upon the land.  There are men still living who remember to have hunted buffalo on the shores of Lake Manitoba.  It is scarcely twelve years since Fort Ellice, on the Assineboine River, formed one of the principal posts of supply for the Hudson Bay Company; and the vast prairies which flank the southern and western spurs of the Touchwood Hills, now utterly silent and deserted, are still white with the bones of the migratory herds which, until lately, roamed over their surface.