JUNE 23, 1906.] 
985 


plains; they hated the Americans as much as 
they did the English, and in their vile bastard 
French cursed us until, one day, I could stand 
it no longer. I jumped over the counter and 
struck one of them, a fellow named Amiott a 
stinging blow in the cheek which sent him 
sprawling to the floor, and it was all I could do 
to keep from kicking him when he was down. 
“That is for your low down cursing of us,” I 
told him. “I will not hear any-more of it in 
this place. If you don’t like it, you and the 
others here go and heel yourselves and come 
back.” 
Strange to say, we did not lose any trade by 
this. The very ones I had called down re- 
mained our customers, and quiet ones they 
were, too. : 
Louis Riehl! How well and yet how little I 
knew him, he who led the halfbreed rebellion 
of 1885 in Canada, you.remember. He was a 
fine looking man, even if his bright black eyes 
were a bit shifty and uncertain in their gaze; 
and he had such courtly manners. When still 
thirty or forty yards away he would remove his 
wide sombrero with a ground sweep and ap- 
proach you bowing and smiling, and filling the 
air with high-flown compliments. He had a fine 
education; the Jesuits having trained him for 
the priesthood; but certain lapses had prevented 
his ordination. It was his education, I believe, 
which caused his downfall, for he overestimated 
himself and his power. Still, I was never able 
to determine whether he really believed in his 
cause and his power to right what he called the 
wrongs of his oppressed and defrauded people, 
or whether he got up the row, expecting to be 
bought off by the Canadian Government and to 
live in wealth ever afterward. Also, it may be 
that in his estimate of himself, his people and 
his position, he was mentally unbalanced. He 
came to us with his people from the plains of 
the north and soon got into Berry's good 
graces, for he was an exceedingly smooth and 
persuasive talker. He wanted some goods on 
credit with which to trade in his camp, and got 
them. We kept an open account with him for 
nearly two years. It is still open, for he left, 
vanished between sun and sun, owing a balance 
of seven hundred dollars. 
“Well,” said Berry, “I don’t know but what 
we are about even. He must have bowed to us 
about seven hundred times, and I reckon that 
such grand and low bows as those are worth 
about a dollar apiece.” 
‘Do you know,” Riehl once told me, “these 
people of mine are just as were the children of 
Israel, a persecuted race deprived of their 
heritage. But I will redress their’ wrongs; I 
will wrest justice for them from the tyrant. 
I will be unto them a second David. Yes, I 
can compare myself to the great leader of the 
Jews. I, too, am writing psalms, Riding at 
the head of our columns, by the evening fire, in 
the stillness of the night, I think them out and 
put them on paper. Some day I shall have them 
printed.” 
None of the Red River halfbreeds, save Riehl 
had the slightest conception of the power of 
the Canadian, and back of that, the English 
people. But he knew, for he had been eastward 
to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, and from his 
reading had acquired an all-round knowledgge 
of the world in general. Yet there at our place 
he held meeting after meeting and wrought his 
people up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, 
telling them that the Canadian-English were few} 
and inexperienced, and that in a very few weeks 
for our opinion, we told them that they had no 
earthly chance to win, and so did a Catholi 
priest, Father Scullin, who lived with us. Th 
Bishop of Edmonton had sent -him there to loo 
after the spiritual welfare of the different tribes 
He spoke Cree, and Blackfoot, and the Canadia 
French fluently. Had the buffalo lasted, | doub 
if Riehl would have succeeded in getting the| 
Red Rivers to revolt. But when they could n 
longer live by the chase, and began to starve, 
they became desperate and broke out. 
bated there on the Missouri. 
have made, and Riehl was tried, condemned 
and hung for treason. 
Far different from the French, were the Eng-, 
lish and Scotch Red River breeds, who came 4% 
down to us. They were neither negro hued nor * 
black hearted, and it was a pleasure to trade 
and associate with them. The women were 
mostly fair haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked 
dames, and the men great muscular, sturdy 
specimens of manhood, good to look upon. But 
hold! I must not utterly condemn the French 
breed women. I remember that some of them 
were exceedingly lovely, even in the sombre 
and outlandish garb they wore. There was a 
certain Amelie X., for instance, whose husband, 
a Frenchman, was killed in a buffalo chase. 
Every young French breed in camp was courting 
her, but she told them to go about their business 
and leave her alone. “I don’t want no more 
French mans,” she told us. “I don’t want no 
H’Injun, no H’Englis mans. I want Ameri- 
cane mans, me.” 
Long John Pape and Mike Duval fought over 
her, and the former was badly whipped. Mike 
thought then that he had her sure, and was 
begging her to name the day, when, lo! one 
morning, Billy Burns walked into her cabin, 
picked her up in his arms without a word, and 
carrying her over to our place, he set her on 
her feet before the astonished priest. “Just 
hitch us up,” he said, ‘“‘and be quick about it.” 
“T won't!’ Amelie screamed, giving him a re- 
sounding slap in the face. “I won't! Go way 
from me, you bad mans! Let me alone!” 
“Oh! well,” said Billy, “if you won't, of course 
you won't. I thought you kind o’ liked me.” 
He turned away abruptly and started for the 
door, but Amelie ran after him and grasped his 
arm, ‘Come back you big fools,’ she com- 
manded, with a stamp of her pretty moccasined 
foot. “Come back! Me,.I’m only make it joke; 
course I marry you; you got blue h’eyes.” 
They stood again before the father: “It’s a 
go, then?” he asked them. It was, and he 
married them then and there. 
Such a blowout as there was that night! The 
dancing and drinking were something to be re- 
membered! Long John and Duval not only 
made friends, but when Nat-ah’-ki and I looked 
in for a moment, they were weeping on each 
other’s shoulder. Billy and Amelie had fled. 
Having provided the cabin, the musicians, the 
solid and liquid refreshments for the party, they 
hitched a horse to a halfbreed sled and sped 
away down the river to the camp of a friend. 
The buffalo remained in our vicinity and their 
numbers did not seem to diminish, although a 




















M breeds. 
That} 
was four years after the matter was first de-{ 
The whole body t# 
of them, Crees and Red Rivers, did not put up 
as good a fight as a handful of Blackfeet would} 
Wdaily horde of hunters rode out to slay them. 
a I went once, with a number of the Red River 
they could subdue them by force of arms. Asked}}} 
We sighted a herd soon after passing 
he rim of the valley and, screened from their 
ight by a sharp rise of ground, my companions 
ismounted, removed their hats, fell upon their 
nees, crossed themselves, and one old patriarch 
ffered up a long prayer, asking for a success- 
ful chase and that no harm befall them or their 
orses in the run. Then they sprang up into 
ye saddle and were off, quirting their horses 
madly and cursing them with the most terrible 
aths at their command. Some, who found not 
sufficient of them in their own tongues, swore 
also in broken English. 
“Paul,” I said to one of them after the run, 
‘had you been killed in the chase, where would 
your soul have gone?” 
“Why, to the good God, most certainement.” 
“But after you prayed you cursed your horse; 
ou used terrible oaths.” 
“Ah! but that was in the excitement; to speed 
the ill-born brute. The good God knows I 
meant no disrespect; most certainement. My 
—what you call him—soul would have gone to 
the pleasant place.” 
To accommodate the Bloods, and a large camp 
of Red Rivers, late in the fall we established a 
branch post on Flat Willow Creek, a tributary 
of the Musselshell. I rode over there several 
times during the winter, through great herds 
of buffalo, and antelope, and once I saw a 
band of wild horses, wilder by far than the game 
with which they mingled. Along the foot of the 
Snowy Mountains, in which the Flat Willow 
has its source, there were immense herds of elk 
and deer, and we bought large numbers of their 
skins. 
I think that the Crees and Red Rivers loved 
liquor more than any other people I met on 
the plains. The Blackfeet liked it, but not well 
enough to impoverish themselves for it. The 
former, however, would sell anything they had 
to obtain it, even their women, and it was rare 
for a family to have more than half a dozen 
horses. Many of the Crees were obliged to 
walk when moving camp, packing their few 
effects on dogs. They were not lazy, however, 
and killed and tanned a great many robes which 
they exchanged for liquor, tea, and tobacco, 
seldom buying any finery. There were nights 
when at least a thousand of them would be 
drunk together, dancing and singing around little 
fires built down in the timber, some crying 
foolishly, some making love, others going 
through all sorts of strange and uncouth antics. 
There was very little quarreling among them, 
not half a dozen being killed in the whole winter. 
More than that number froze to death, falling 
on their way in the night and being unable to 
rise and go on. 
WALTER B, ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED. ] 

A BERLIN paper tells of a new device that 
makes herring fishing easy. A microphone, 
which magnifies sounds, is plunged into the sea 
to ascertain if fish are passing that way. A wire 
connects the submerged microphone with an 
ordinary receiver, with which one listens to what 
is going on in the depths of the sea. Excellent 
results have been obtained in the North Sea by 
the invention for signaling the passing of the 
herring shoals. 
