Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/414

 No. XXVIII

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BY REV. P. N. POINT

We shall see what gave occasion to these remarkable words uttered by thirty-seven Black-Feet, who had fallen into the hands of the Flat-Heads.

It is rare, at present, to find any Black-Feet, even among the most vicious tribes, who are not convinced that the Black-gowns desire their happiness.

The following observations clearly prove my proposition: 1, the kind reception they gave the Black Robe who was taken by sixty of their warriors: 2, the attention with which they listened to the Rev. Mr. Thibault, a Canadian priest, who fell in with a large company of them at Fort Augusta,[243] on the River Sascatshawin: 3, sending back to St. Mary's, a horse belonging to a Flat-Head missionary; a circumstance {392} hitherto unheard of, in the relations of the Black-Feet with the Flat-Heads; 4, the confidence which several have manifested in the missionaries, on many remarkable occasions; 5, the smoking of the calumet in the plain of the Great Valley, with a small number of Flat-Heads whom they might have killed without difficulty; 6, the amicable visits they have paid the Flat-Heads by the persuasion of the hoary chief Nicholas, (baptized,) and the habitual residence of several of the tribe at the village of St. Mary's; 7, the plunder of horses is incomparably more rare than during the preceding years; 8, the four years' cessation of any serious attack; though, formerly, not a hunting party passed without a sanguinary battle with the Flat-Heads. In proof of this,