The Colonists were certainly a puzzle to the Red man.  To the banks of the Red River and to the east of Lake Winnipeg had come many of the Chippewas.  They were known on the Red River as Sauteurs, or Saulteaux, or Bungays, because they had come to the West from Sault Ste. Marie, thinking nothing of the hundreds of miles of travel along the streams.  They were sometimes considered to be the gypsies of the Red men.  It was they coming from the lucid streams emptying into Lake Superior and thence to Lake Winnipeg, who had called the latter by its name “Win,” cloudy or muddy, and “nipiy” water.  When the Colonists arrived, the leading chief of the Chippewas, or Saulteaux, was Peguis.  He became at once the friend of the white man, for he was always a peaceful, kindly, old Ogemah, or Chieftain.

All the Indians were, at first, kindness itself to the new comers, and they showed great willingness to supply food to the hungry settlers, and to assist them in transfer and in taking possession of their own homes.

The Saulteaux Indians while active and helpful were really intruders among the Crees, a great Indian nation, who in language and blood were their relations.  As proof of this the Crees at this time used horses on the plains.  The horse was an importation brought up the valleys from the Spaniards of Mexico.  Seeing his value as a beast of burden, more fit than the dog which had been formerly used, they coined the word “Mis-ta-tim,” or big dog as the name for the horse.  Their Chiefs were, with their names translated into pronounceable English, “the Premier,” “the Black Robe,” “the Black Man,” while seemingly Mache Wheskab—­“the Noisy Man”—­represented the Assiniboines.  The Crees, so well represented by their doughty Chiefs, are a sturdy race.  They adapt themselves readily enough to new conditions.  While the northern Indian tribes met the Colonists, yet in after days, as had frequently taken place in days preceding, bands of Sioux or Dakotas, came on pilgrimages to the Red River.  Long ago when the French Captain Verandrye voyaged to Lake of the Woods, his son and others of his men, were attacked by Sioux warriors, and the whole party of whites was massacred in an Island on the Lake.  The writer in a later day, near Winnipeg, met on the highway, a band of Sioux warriors, on horse-back, with their bodies naked to the waist, and painted with high color, in token of the fact that they were on the warpath.  On occasion it was the habit of bands of Sioux to find their way to the Red River Valley, and the people did not feel at all safe, at their hostile attitude, as they bore the name of the “Tigers of the Plains.”

With Saulteaux, Crees, Assiniboines, and Sioux coming freely among them, the settlers had at first a feeling of decided insecurity.

[Illustration:  Osoup, Agent, Atalacoup, Kakawistaha, Mistawasis four Cree chiefs of Rupert’s land]

THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS AND MEN.