126 
influence might be able to control their immediate followers, but 
they could not check desertion or separate action on the part of other 
volunteers. Furthermore, natives who lived from day to day on the 
game they secured by hunting, or the fish they captured in the lakes 
and rivers, could not undertake protracted campaigns, or band 
together in numbers where fish and game were scarce. Organized 
warfare was, therefore, impossible. Small parties might occasionally 
make sudden raids or incursions, individuals might treacherously 
massacre some families that slept peacefully in their tents, or attack 
them from ambush as they straggled along a trail; but there could 
be no massing of troops to wage a campaign, no pitched battles with 
a few thousand men on each side. So eastern and northern Canada 
lay an easy prey to any small but well-organized force of invaders 
that could overcome the resistance of the individual bands. i 
5663 
Cree camp at Oxford House. (I*hoto hi/ R. Bell.) 
The plains’ Indians, although migratory themselves, had 
advanced one stage farther than the migratory tribes of eastern and 
northern Canada. They traced descent through the male line only, 
and the Blackfoot may have forbidden marriage within the band. 
1 The Montagnais campaign against the IroQuois in which Champlain, participated (The Works of 
Samuel c!e Champlain, Champlain Society e(,Utit)n. vol. 11, chapiter IX) w'as far better organized tlian 
most raids by Algonkian tribes. 
