Everywhere Mr. Crean found an abundance of hay. In places the meadows were small, but always numerous. Among the chief birds he saw were swans, geese, ducks, partridges, gulls, jays, kingfishers, crows, robins and loons. He noticed that the staple food of the native north of the Saskatchewan is fish, with which he is abundantly provided. “North of the Churchill,” Mr. Crean reported, “lies a district of great promise from a mineral point of view.” Finally, we learn, “there are many points where a large amount of water power could be developed.” CHAPTER XV INDIANS AND THE MISSIONARY The presence of the red man in Canada—and, for the matter of that, in the United States—has put the white man’s capacity and character to a searching test. I refer to the white man of the modern world, for the attitude of our ancestors towards the Indian was controlled by different contemporary conditions. Here were some belated representatives of prehistoric man—human beings without culture or conscience, and who, but for a superior resourcefulness, seemed on a plane with the brutes of the field. By arms this wild people had easily been tamed. But from that moment they became a political and social problem with which, though it well might prove insoluble, obligations of humanity compelled the Government of Canada to grapple, without stint of effort, money or patience. Could these quelled savages be civilised? Worldly wisdom shook its head, and hope had nothing but faith to rest upon. The Red Indian had inherited no higher ideal of conduct than the slaughtering and scalping of tribal enemies—men, women and children—and self-mutilation as a stimulus to personal bravery. True, those practices were now prohibited by the whites—by that mysterious, masterful race who had brought fire-arms and fire-water into the Red Indian’s life. Vaguely I knew of the missionaries who labour among the Indians and Eskimos, their lives consecrated to the work which holds them, from year to year and decade to decade, outside the range of public knowledge and recognition. I sought through the mind of one of those missionaries to peer into the Red Indian heart, so that my readers might be able to judge, from definite testimony on crucial points of human character, whether Canada’s aborigines are fitted to survive. My visit was to the Rev. Canon H. W. G. Stocken (of the Church Missionary Society), at the Blackfoot Reserve near Gleichen, Alberta.