No. 3.] G. M. DAWSON — INDIANS OF CANADA. 145 



took to themselves Indian wives, usually from among the Crees. 

 Thus arose the Metis or half-breed population of the Red River, 

 for a long time hunters rather than farmers, and as yet — especially 

 the French half-breeds — in too many cases making but a half- 

 hearted attempt at the cultivation of the soil. Yearly expeditions 

 on a great scale — of which we have all read — were made by 

 these people against the buifalo, in early days abounding in the 

 Red River valley itself. Gradually, however, under the attacks 

 of the people, the increasing demand for robes in all quarters, and 

 the quantity of pemmican required by the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany for the supply of their posts, the great northern herds of 

 buffalo were thinned, and year by year the Red River hunters 

 had to travel farther in search of their game. At last the con- 

 nection between the Peace River herds and those to the south 

 was broken alons: the line of the Saskatchewan, and the former 

 all but annihilated ; and at the present day a wide belt of coun- 

 try near and south of the Missouri, separates the buffalo still 

 remaining in the South-Western States from those of the north, 

 which are con2;refrated in a limited area near the foot of the 

 Rocky Mountains in the British possessions, and surrounded by 

 a cordon of hungry savages. With this change, a great altera- 

 tion in the position of the various Indian tribes has occurred. 

 The Assineboines and plain Crees have followed the retreating 

 herds to the south and west, while the thick-wood Indians, for- 

 merly confined to their forests by the pressure of these tribes,, 

 have issued on the plains ; and natives from the vicinity of the 

 Red River and great lakes of Manitoba may now be found even 

 to the Coteau of the Missouri. The remaining buffalo at the 

 present time inhabit a portion of the territory of the Blackfeet ; 

 but those Indians do not, now, in the absence of valuable game, 

 try to maintain their former extensive boundaries, and are 

 hemmed in by their hereditary enemies the Sioux and Assine- 

 boines to the east, and Crees to the north. In 1874 I met a 

 large camp of Cree Indians on the Milk River at the 49th 

 parallel, a point farther south than I know them to have attained 

 before. In this year, basing my estimate on the information 

 obtainable in the country itself, I ventured to state that the 

 northern herd of bufi"alo could scarcely maintain its existence as 

 such for longer than twelve or fourteen years, and that at or 

 before that date the trade in pemmican and robes would cease to 

 be of importance. Unless the regulations adopted by the North- 

 VoL. IX. K No. 3. 



