United States or Tonga ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Bordering the Thickwood Crees on the south and west lies the country of the Plain Crees a land of vast treeless expanses, of high rolling prairies, of wooded tracts lying in valleys of many-sized streams, in a word, the land of the Saskatchewan.

Passing west from Edmonton, we enter the country of the Rocky Mountain Stonies, a small tribe of Thickwood Indians dwelling along the source of the North Saskatchewan and in the outer ranges of the Rocky Mountains,-a fragment, no doubt, from the once-powerful Assineboine nation which has found a refuge amidst the forests and mountains of the West.

That afternoon the bateau passed Fort McMurray, and before the sun was well down in the west Carrigan saw the green slopes of Thickwood Hills and the rising peaks of Birch Mountains. He laughed outright as he thought of Corporal Anderson and Constable Frazer at Fort McMurray, whose chief duty was to watch the big waterway.

Passing north-west from Fort Ellice, we enter the country of the Cree Indians, having to the north and east the Thickwood Crees, and to the south and west the Plain Crees. The former, under the various names of Swampies or Muskego Indians, inhabit the country west of Lake Winnipeg, extending as far as Forts Pelly and

A simpler classification, and one which will be found more useful when estimating the relative habits of these tribes, is to divide them into two great classes of Trairie Indians and Thickwood Indians the first comprising the Blackfeet with their kindred tribes of Bloods, Lurcees, and Peagins, as also the Crees of the Saskatchewan and the Assineboines of the Qu'Appelle; and the last being composed of the Rocky Mountain Stonies, the Swampy Crees, and the Salteaux of the country lying between Manitoba and Fort Ellice.

The tree seems to thrive all the same, and is a very noticeable, and not infrequent, object throughout the whole Thickwood Indian country. Just opposite the cliff referred to, the Little Buffalo, a swift creek, enters between two bold shoulders of hills, and on its western side are the wonderful gas springs.

I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thickwood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land.

Some distance to the southward of this people are the Rocky Mountain Indians, a small tribe which musters about forty men and boys capable of pursuing the chase. They differ but little from the next we are about to mention, the Edchawtawhootdinneh, Strong-bow, Beaver, or Thickwood Indians who frequent the Riviere aux Liards or south branch of Mackenzie's River.