98 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



-Crossing the Red Deer, Hendry came to a camp of the 

 Blackfeet, where he was royally entertained. The great Chief 

 of the Blackfeet received him in his own lodge, large enough to 

 contain fifty persons. The Chief was seated on a sacred white 

 buffalo skin, and surrounded by twenty elders. He made signs 

 for Hendry to sit down upon his right hand. The calumet was 

 produced and passed around in solemn silence. Then boiled 

 buffalo was served in wicker baskets. Hendry, through his 

 interpreter, urged the Chief to send his young men down to the 

 bay to trade their beaver skins for guns and ammunition, cloth, 

 beads, etc. The Chief listened politely, but did not seem greatly 

 impressed. The way was long, he said, and his young men knew 

 not the use of the paddle. They were men of the plains. Why 

 should they journey so far to obtain things that they did not 

 need? The plains provided them with food and clothing. They 

 followed the buffalo from place to place, and killed what they 

 needed. Bows and arrows answered all their purposes. They 

 did not need guns. "Such remarks," says the candid Hendry, 

 "I thought exceeding true." He made the Chief a present of 

 various articles that he had brought with him for the purpose, 

 and they parted and went their several ways. 



On his return to the Saskatchewan, Hendry again visited 

 the French fort at The Pas, of which he gives a detailed des- 

 cription. La Corne had returned in the interval, and enter- 

 tained him courteously. Hendry was particularly pleased with 

 the French canoes. "They will carry," he says, "as much as 

 an India ship's long-boat, and draw little water; and so light 

 that two men can carry one several miles with ease." He was 

 impressed with the remarkable influence the French exercised 

 over the Indians. "They have," he admits frankly, "the ad- 

 vantage of us in every shape, and if they had Brazile tobacco, 

 which they have not, would entirely cut off our trade." 



It was in keeping with the general sluggishness of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company that, in spite of this notable journey of 

 Hendry's, and the later expedition of Matthew Cocking, they 

 should have permitted the North West Company to secure a 

 firm footing in the west before they attempted to make anything 

 like a permanent settlement in the interior. They had grown 

 so accustomed to their comfortable forts on the bay, to which 

 the tribes brought down their bundles of furs from every quarter 

 of the west, that it needed the rudest kind of an awakening to 



