&4 THROUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIN

bodies iu the country, met and dined with our party, after whieh all adjourned to the treaty ground, where the peaple bad already assembled, and where all soon. seated themselves on the grass in front of the treaty tent—a large marqnee— the Indians being separated by a small space from the half- breeds, who ranged themselves behind them, all conducting themselves in the most sedate and orderly manner.

Mz. Laird and the other Commissioners were seated along the open front of the tent, and one could uot but be impressed by the seene, set ag it was in a most beautiful environment ef distant mountains, waters, forests and meadows, afl sweet and primeval, and almost untonched by civilized man. The whites of the ragion had slso turned out to witness the seene, which, though lacking the wild aspeet of the old assemblages on the plains in the early ‘seventies, had yet eharacter of its own of great interest, and of the most hopeful ‘pronuise.

The erowd of Indians ranged before the marques had lost all semblance of wildness of the trun type. Wild men they were, In a sense, living as they did in the forest and on their great waters. But it was plain that these people had achieved, without auy treaty at all, a stage of civilization distineily in advance of many of our treaty Tndiaus to the south after twenty-five years of education. Tnstead of paint and feathers, the sealp-lock, the braech-clout, and the bn@alo. robe, there presented itself a body of respectablelouking mex, as well dressed and evidently quite as independent in their feelings as any Hike number of average pioneers in the Fast, Tndeed, I bad seen there, in my youth, many a tae, crowds at white settlers inferior to these in sedateness and seli-pos- session. One was prepared, in this wild region of forasi, to behold soxme savage types of men; indeed, I craved ta renew the vanished scenes of old. But, alas! one beheld, instead, men with well-wnshed, unpainted faces, and combed and common hair; men in suits of ordinary “ store-clothes,” and some even with “boiled” if not laundered shirts. One felt dis.