APPENDIX A | XLV 
Similarly the presence of a Canadian military force in Winnipeg 
in 1870, the organization of regular courts and the firm administration 
of justice had their due effect. 
Once in an Indian scare in western Manitoba a detachment of 
troops was sent by the Governor to Gladstone. Again to protect a 
company of peaceful Mennonites from unruly natives a military force 
hurried west from Winnipeg to Baie St. Paul, thirty or forty miles from 
Winnipeg. The emphatic and almost despotic action of Chief Justice 
Wood stamped out for all time in Manitoba the senseless contempt for 
law. 
In the first decade of Canadian rule in western Canada rose the 
grave question of preserving order in the Territories and of dealing 
with 68,000 Indians east of the Rocky Mountains. This included the 
management of several bands of Sioux refugees—some of them des- 
peradoes who had taken part in the bloodly Minnesota massacre of 
1862. These had come within the bounds of Manitoba, and were a 
menace to the white settlers. In what is now southern Saskatchewan 
and Alberta were thousands of prairie Indians who lived on the buffalo, 
who were dashing horsemen and were used to firearms. Along the 
American border these tribes were in touch with a reckless and desperate 
band of whiskey traders, who frequented their camps and incited them 
to vice and bloodshed. ‘Travellers of to-day can have no conception of 
what elements of danger there were in the tribal feuds, drunken revels 
and ignorant superstitions of these wild tribes. Few things are more 
unlikely in these piping times of peace than to meet, as the writer once 
did, a band of Sioux going on the war path against the Sauteaux, and 
this at a time when the Sioux war and Custer massacre were taking 
place in the United States. It took all the courage and resourcefulness 
of Canada to deal successfully with these conditions. But it was done. 
Treaties at 1. Stone Fort; 2. Manitoba Post; 3. Northwest Angle; 
4. Qu’Appelle; 5. Winnipeg; 6. Carlton and Pitt (a large treaty) 
including large parts of Manitoba, Keewatin and Saskatchewan, and 
especially that with the Great Nations of the Blackfoot, Blood, 
Sarcee and Piegan Indians, were notable. While in the former treaties 
the Hon. Alexander Morris was prominent, in these it is the Hon. David 
Laird, first resident Governor of the Northwest Territories, known by 
the Indians as “the man whose tongue is never forked,” 1.e., Indian for 
the man who keeps his word. But treaties though written on parch- 
ment are not always fulfilled. It is to the Royal Mounted Police and its 
officers, as a strong executive, that highest credit belongs. 
The Provisional Northwest Council suggested the establishment of 
a mounted police force, and this was carried out by the Dominion Gov- 
ernment in 1874. This was one of the greatest achievements of the first 
