306 Sport and Life. 



1879, spread dismay and death among some of the white settlers 

 invading their hunting grounds. 1 was agreeably surprised, there- 

 fore, to find that the Kootenays were a tribe practically untouched 

 by the baneful influences of the aggressive civilisation of the West. 

 They had no reservation; they had no agents over them; they 

 received no assistance from the Government ; no official census 

 had ever been taken of them ; they lived entirely upon the products 

 of their rivers, lakes, and forests ; they spoke a tongue unknown to 

 their next neighbours ; they kept strictly to themselves, and, with 

 the exception of their annual buffalo hunt, they never left their 

 own beautiful mountain-girt home. They were peaceful, and they 

 had been won over to the Roman Catholic religion by missionaries, 

 who have dwelt in their midst since the year 1842.* A more 

 unsophisticated and at once attractive race than the Kootenays it 

 would ha.ve been difficult to find. 



The two sub-divisions of the tribe (the Upper and the Lower 

 Kootenays), in consequence of natural features, differed con- 

 siderably. The home of the former is the country round the 

 Upper Kootenay river, from its source in the very heart of the Rocky 

 Mountains, to where it enters U.S. territory. Here, under the 

 shadow of the towering main chain, this singularly isolated tribe 

 of Indians have lived and thrived. They were Horse Indians, in 

 distinction to the Canoe Indians, to which the Lower Kootenays 

 or Flatbows belong. And a wonderful playground to run their 

 hardy beasts their mountain-girt home afforded them. Undulating 

 hill-land, with occasional " bunch grass " prairies, fringed by fine 

 forests, make it the very ideal of an Indian country, such as we 

 read of, but, alas ! very rarely indeed discover. The Kootenays 

 were a fine, manly-looking race. In one of the most interesting 

 reports of the English International Boundary Commissioners, 

 Captain (now Sir Charles) Wilson, when speaking of these 



* The Kootenays' independence ended soon after my first visit, when an 

 agent was appointed, and "reserves" given to them. According to the first 

 official census, which was taken a year or two later, the whole tribe numbered 

 about 600 souls. 



