of wild cattle grazed knee-deep among gorgeous flowers
and sweet grasses. They brought few white women with
them, the larger number being young men who had bade
their "Heeland" lassies good-bye with warm kisses,
promising to come back for them when they had built
homesteads for themselves in the far away wilds of the
West.

But when Lord Selkirk planted here his sturdy Scotchmen,
wild beasts and game were not the only inhabitants of
the plains. The Crees, a well-built, active, war-loving
race, had from ages long forgotten roamed over these
interminable meadows, fishing in the streams, and hunting
buffalo. Here and there was to be found one of their
"towns," a straggling congregation of tents made of the
skins of the buffalo. Beautiful, dark-skinned girls, in
bare brown, little feet, sat through the cool of evening
in the summer days sewing beads upon the moccasins of
their lovers, while the wrinkled dame limped about,
forever quarrelling with the dogs, performing the household
duties.

But the Crees liked not the encroachment upon their
territories by these foreign men with pale faces; and
they held loud pow-wows, and brandished spears, and swept
their knives about their heads till their sheen gleamed
many miles over the prairie. Then preparing their paint
they set out to learn from the pale-faced chief what was
his justification for the invasion.