26 INTKODUCTIOIsr. 



l^ot associated with the Commission, but travelling with it 

 as a guest, was the Eight Eev. E. G-rouard, O.M.I., the 

 Eoman Catholic Bishop of Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers, 

 who was returning, after a visit to the East, to his head- 

 quarters at Eort Chipewyan, where his influence and know- 

 ledge of the language, it was believed, would be of great 

 service when the treaty came under consideration there. The 

 secretaries of the Commission were Mr. Harrison Young, a 

 son-in-law of the Rev. George McDougall, the distinguished 

 missionary who perished so unaccountably on the plains in 

 the winter of 1876, and Mr. J. W. Martin, an agreeable 

 young gentleman from Goderich, Ont. Connected with the 

 party in an advisory capacity, like Father Lacombe, and as 

 interpreter, was Mr. Pierre d'Eschambault, who had been 

 for over thirty years an officer in the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany's service. The camp-manager was Mr. Henry McKay, 

 of an old and highly esteemed ITorth-West family. Such 

 was the personnel, official and informal, of the Treaty Com- 

 mission, to which was also attached Mr. H. A. Conroy, as 

 accountant, robust and genial, and well fitted for the work. 



The Half-breed Scrip Commission, whose duties began 

 where the treaty work ended, was composed of Major Walker, 

 a retired officer of the Eoyal ISTorth-West Mounted Police, 

 who had seen much service in the Territories and was in corn- 

 Company trading party on Lake Huron, met her at an Indian camp 

 on one of tlie Manitoulin islands, and having identified her as 

 his niece, restored her and her children to her family. Father 

 Lacombe was ordained a priest by Bishop Bourget, of Montreal, and 

 in 1849 set out for Red River, where he became intimately associated 

 with the French half-breeds, accompanying them on their great 

 buffalo hunts, and ministering not only to the spiritual but to the 

 temporal welfare of them and their descendants down to the present 

 day. In 1851 he took charge of the Lake Ste. Anne Mission, and 

 subsequently of St. Albert, the first house in which he helped to 

 build; and from these Missions he visited -jiumbers of outlying 

 regions, including Lesser Slave Lake. His principal missionary 

 work, however, for twenty years was pursued amongst the Blackfeet 

 Indians on the Great Plains, during which he witnessed many a 

 perilous onslaught in the constant warfare between them and their 

 traditional enemies, the Crees. Being now over eighty years of age, 

 he has retired from active duty, and is spending the remainder of his 

 days at Pincher Creek, Alta., where, it is understood, he is preparing 

 his memoirs for publication at an early date. 



