238 Natural History Bulletin. 



The Hudson's Bay Company is all powerful throughout 

 the entire Saskatchewan country, and indeed all of Northern 

 British America. It has absolute control in fact, if not in 

 name, of every Indian in that domain, and the result is highly 

 creditable to the company. I had my tent pitched in the 

 middle of a settlement of the Swampy Cree Indians for sev- 

 eral weeks. I could speak no Cree, and very few of them 

 any English. In my tent was wealth, in their eyes, in the 

 shape of ammunition, camping outfit, guns, provisions, etc., 

 which was daily left unprotected, and not a cent's worth was 

 taken. I could not help the reflection that such a procedure 

 would not be safe in any American village of my acquaint- 

 ance. The Hudson's Bay Company has ahuays keft its zvord 

 with the natives^ correctly representing the quality of all goods 

 sold to them. Absolutely no liquor is sold to the Indians 

 so far as we could ascertain, and the result is that the Swampy 

 Cree, although shiftless and improvident to the last degree, is 

 honest, and his word can be depended upon. During hard 

 winters the company will tide over the Indians by supplying 

 them with provisions on trust, and I was told by the com- 

 pan3^'s agent that these debts were almost never repudiated. ^ 



Our second station v/as the Cree village of Chemawawin, 

 about sixty miles to the west of Grand Rapids. To reach it 

 we went around the Rapids by a portage, and up the Sas- 

 katchewan River to Cross Lake, about ten miles wide, and 

 then to the "Narrows," near the spot where Cedar Lake 

 finds an outlet via the Saskatchewan. Clear Lake is said to 

 be forty miles wide, and Chemawawin is near the spot where 

 the Saskatchewan enters the lake. This latter point, by the 

 way, is regarded by the inhabitants as the true mouth of the 

 Saskatchewan River, although Grand Rapids is doubtless 



1 Of course it can be said that the Indians are completely in the Hudson's 

 Bay Company's power, and so are forced to pay; but it is equally true that 

 our western Indians are completely in the power of the United States Gov- 

 ernment, but a comparison of the results would be a sad commentary on our 

 Indian policy. 



