were warned by Missionaries and others that the prosecution of their predatory expeditions into the Blackfeet country would in all probability carry the infection into the North Saskatchewan.  From the South Peagin tribes, on the head-waters of the Missouri, the disease spread rapidly through the kindred tribes of Blood, Blackfeet, and Lucee Indians, all which new tribes have their hunting-grounds north of the boundary-line.  Unfortunately for the Crees, they failed to listen to the advice of those persons who had recommended a suspension of hostilities.  With the opening of spring the war-parties commenced their raids; a band of seventeen Crees penetrated, in the month of April, into the Blackfeet country, and coming upon a deserted camp of their enemies in which a tent was still standing, they proceeded to ransack it, This tent contained the dead bodies of some Blackfeet, and although these bodies presented a very revolting spectacle, being in an advanced stage of decomposition, they were nevertheless-subjected to the usual process of mutilation, the scalps and clothing being also carried away.

For this act the Crees paid a terrible penalty; scarcely had they reached their own country before the disease appeared among them, in its most virulent and infectious form.  Nor were the consequences of this raid less disastrous to the whole Cree nation.  At the period of the-year to which I allude, the early summer, these Indians usually assemble together from different directions in large numbers, and it was towards one of those numerous assemblies that the returning war-party, still carrying the scalps and clothing of the Blackfeet, directed their steps.  Almost immediately upon their arrival the disease broke out amongst them in its most malignant form.  Out of the seventeen men who took part in the raid, it is asserted that not one escape the infection, and only two of the number appear to have survived.  The disease, once-introduced into the camp, spread with the utmost rapidity; numbers of men, women, and children fell victims to it during the month of June; the cures of the medicine-men were found utterly-unavailing to arrest it, and, as a last resource, the camp broke up into small parties, some directing their march towards Edmonton, and others to Victoria, Saddle Lake, Fort Pitt, and along the whole line of the North Saskatchewan.  Thus, at the same period, the beginning of July, small-pox of the very worst description was spread throughout some 500 miles of territory, appearing almost simultaneously at the Hudson Bay Company’s posts from the Rocky Mountain House to Carlton.

It is difficult to imagine, a state of pestilence more terrible than that which kept pace with these moving parties of Crees during the summer months of 1870.  By streams and lakes, in willow copses,’! and upon bare hill-sides, often shelterless from the fierce rays of the summer sun and exposed to the rains and dews of night, the poor plague-stricken wretches lay down to die—­no assistance of any kind, for the ties of family were quickly loosened, and mothers abandoned their helpless children upon the wayside, fleeing onward to some fancied place of safety.  The district lying between Fort Pitt and Victoria, a distance of about 140 miles, was perhaps the scene of the greatest suffering.