The Committee now began to extend its work. George Flett, who had left Prince Albert Mission in 1869, was sent to two bands, one near Fort Pelly, the other on the west side of Riding Mountain. These missions were very successful. Mr. Flett was ordained as an Indian missionary, and lived to see the Okanese Reserve on Little Saskatchewan entirely Christianized. The Fort Pelly band was left to a young half-breed of Red River, Cuthbert McKay, since dead, and has grown to be the Crowstand Mission of to-day. In 1875 the Sioux or Dakota band of refugees from the United States living on the Birdtail Creek were taken under the care of the Presbytery's Foreign Mission Committee and a pure blooded Sioux missionary from the States obtained for them. This mission is still maintained, and is part of the constituency of the Birtle Indian boarding school. Mr. Black lived long enough to see the Mistawasis, Okanese, Pelly, and Birdtail missions fairly established. Nothing delighted him more than to preside at the meeting of his committee, read the letters from the missionaries, and then to write the necessary letters of counsel and advice, and at times even of gentle fault-finding, which were agreed on. All his friends lament that he passed away too soon to know of Round Lake, File Hills, the western Qu'Appelle Valley reserves and the Portage la Prairie, Birtle and Regina Indian schools. He saw enough, however, to assure him that his dream of a Christianized Indian population would in the end be realized. CHAPTER IX. Red River Becomes Canadian. The union of Red River Settlement with Canada was in the air in 1857. In a letter to his brother, Mr. Black, after discussing the reasons given by the settlers for the change, says in his own cautious way: "I do not know whether Canadian annexation will much better them. However, it looks as if the time was come for a change, and if we suffer some inconvenience during the transition period perhaps 'the good time coming' may compensate for all. I have taken no part for or against the movement. I do not think it is good for ministers to jump into the maelstrom of politics. Let them stop till they are pushed in. I have my views and preferences, _and aiblins it wadna hae taen a muckle dunch to ding me in_, but in the meantime I am better pleased to be out." While Mr. Black was thus so politic the leaders among the people of Red River were by no means undecided. The movement seems to have taken so strong a form that the greater part of the people, who were not immediately connected with the Hudson's Bay Company, strongly favored it. Ten or eleven years before this, the desire for self-government took a much more disagreeable form. Petitions from some of the people of Red River at that time were to the American Government asking it to "annex the Red River Territory to the United States, and promising assistance against the Hudson's Bay Company in case of war." BUT WE SHALL BE FREE.