forms one of the four nations comprised in the Blackfeet league, and have their hunting-grounds partly on British and partly on American territory.  I have mentioned the presence of small-pox in connexion with these Indians.  It is very generally believed in the Saskatchewan that this disease was originally communicated to the Blackfeet tribes by Missouri traders with a view to the accumulation of robes; and this opinion, monstrous though it may appear, has been somewhat terrified by the Western press when treating of the epidemic last year.  As I propose to enter at some length into the question of this disease at a later portion of this report, I now only make allusion to it as forming one of the grievances which the Indian affirms he suffers at the hands of the white man.

In estimating the causes of Indian discontent as bearing upon the future preservation of peace and order in the Saskatchewan, and as illustrating the growing difficulties which a commercial corporation like the Hudson Bay Company have to contend against when acting in an executive capacity, I must now allude to the subject of Free Trade.  The policy of a free trader in furs is essentially a short-sighted one-he does not care about the future—­the continuance and partial well-being of the Indian is of no consequence to him.  His object is to obtain possession of all the furs the Indian may have at the moment to barter, and to gain that end he spares no effort.  Alcohol, discontinued by the Hudson Bay Company in their Saskatchewan district for many years, has been freely used of late by free traders from Red River; and, as great competition always exists between the traders and the employees of the Company, the former have not hesitated to circulate among the natives the idea that they have suffered much injustice in their intercourse with the Company.  The events which took place in the Settlement of Red River during the winter of ’69 and ’70 have also tended to disturb the minds of the Indians—­they have heard of changes of Government, of rebellion and pillage of property, of the occupation of forts belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and the stoppage of trade and ammunition.  Many of these events have been magnified and distorted—­evil-disposed persons have not been wanting to spread abroad among the natives the idea of the downfall of the Company, and the threatened immigration of settlers to occupy the hunting-grounds and drive the Indian from the land.  All these rumours, some of them vague and wild in the extreme, have found ready credence by camp-fires and in council-lodge, and thus it is easy to perceive how the red man, with many of his old convictions and beliefs rudely shaken, should now be more disturbed and discontented than he has been at any former period.