a suggestion based upon the facts stated, and as, therefore,
worthy of consideration. Sir Alexander Mackenzie speaks of the
Blackfeet "travelling north-westward," and that the Crees were
"invaders of the Saskatchewan from the eastward." Indeed, he says
the latter were called by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at
York Factory "their home-guards." One thing seems certain, viz.,
that the Crees got their firearms from the English at Hudson
Bay in the 17th century. Thence that great tribe, called by
themselves the Nahéowuk, but by the Ojibway Saulteaux the
Kinistineaux, and by the voyageurs Christineaux, or, more
commonly, the Crees--a word derived, some think, from the first
syllable of the latter name, or perhaps from the French _crier_,
to shout--descended upon the Blackfeet, who probably at that
time occupied this region, and undoubtedly the Saskatchewan,
and drove them south along a line stretching to the Rocky
Mountains.

The tradition of this expulsion is still extant, as also of the
great raids made by the Blackfeet and their kindred in times
past into their ancient domain. I remember visiting, with my
old friend Attakacoop--Star-Blanket--the deceased Cree chief,
twenty years ago, the triumphal pile of red deer horns raised
by the Blackfeet north of Shell River, a tributary of the North
Saskatchewan. It is called by the Crees Ooskunaka Assustakee,
and the chief described its great size in former days, and the
tradition of its origin as told to him in his boyhood. Be all
this as it may, and this is not the place to pursue the inquiry,
the stream in question is, to the Crees who live upon it, not
the River of the Slaves, but the "River of the Blackfeet." How
it came by its white name is another question. Possibly some