years with the Canadian North-West, and whose career had touched
the currents of primitive life at all points.

[Father Lacombe is by birth a French Canadian, his native parish
being St. Sulpice, in the Island of Montreal, where he was born in
the year 1827. On the mother's side he is said to draw his descent
from the daughter of a habitant on the St. Lawrence River called
Duhamel, who was stolen in girlhood by the Ojibway Indians, and
subsequently taken to wife by their chief, to whom she bore two
sons. By mere accident, her uncle, who was one of a North-West
Company trading party on Lake Huron, met her at an Indian camp on
one of the Manitoulin islands, and having identified her as his
niece, restored her and her children to her family. Father Lacombe
was ordained a priest by Bishop Bourget, of Montreal, and in 1849
set out for Red River, where he became intimately associated with
the French half-breeds, accompanying them on their great buffalo
hunts, and ministering not only to the spiritual but to the temporal
welfare of them and their descendants down to the present day. In
1851 he took charge of the Lake Ste. Anne Mission, and subsequently
of St. Albert, the first house in which he helped to build; and from
these Missions he visited numbers of outlying regions, including
Lesser Slave Lake. His principal missionary work, however, for
twenty years was pursued amongst the Blackfeet Indians on the Great
Plains, during which he witnessed many a perilous onslaught in the
constant warfare between them and their traditional enemies, the
Crees. Being now over eighty years of age, he has retired from
active duty, and is spending the remainder of his days at Pincher
Creek, Alta., where, it is understood, he is preparing his memoirs
for publication at an early date.]