24 IlSTTEODUCTIOl^. 



moose, the beaver and the bear had for years been decreas- 

 ing, and other fur-bearing animals were slowly but surely 

 lessening with them. The natives, aware of this, were 

 now alive, as well, to concurrent changes foreign to their 

 experience. Recent events had awakened them to a 

 sense of the value the white man was beginning to 

 place upon their country as a great storehouse of mineral 

 and other wealth, enlivened otherwise by the sensible decrease 

 of their once unfailing resources. These events were, of 

 course, the Government borings for petroleum, the formation 

 of parties to prospect, with a view to developing, the min- 

 erals of Great Slave Lake, but, above all, the inroad of gold- 

 seekers by way of Edmonton.. The latter was viewed with 

 great mistrust by the Indians, the outrages referred to show- 

 ing, like straws in the wind, the inevitable drift of things 

 had the treaties been delayed. For, as a matter of fact, those 

 now peaceable tribes, soured by lawless aggression, and shel- 

 tered by their vast forests, might easily have taken an Indian 

 revenge, and hampered, if not hindered, the safe settlement 

 of the country for years to come. The Government, there- 

 fore, decided to treat with them at once on equitable terms, 

 and to satisfy their congeners, the half-breeds, as well, by an 

 issue of scrip certificates such as their fellows had already 

 received in Manitoba and the organized Territories. To this 

 end adjustments were made by the Hon. Clifford Sifton, 

 then Minister of the Interior and Superintendent-General of 

 Indian Affairs, during the winter of 1898-9, and a plan of 

 procedure and basis of treatment adopted, the carrying out 

 of which was placed in the hands of a double Commission, 

 one to frame and effect the Treaty, and secure the adhesion 

 of the various tribes, and the other to investigate and extin- 

 guish the half-breed title. At the head of the former was 

 placed the Hon. David Laird, a gentleman of wide experi- 

 ence in the early days in the North-West Territories, whose 

 successful treaty with the refractory Blackfeet and their 



