The Europeans saw that these women were docile, or were kept in order easily by floggings with the tent poles; that they were faithful and industrious, as a rule, and that they were not all unprepossessing--from their point of view, of course. Therefore it came to pass that these were the most frequent alliances in and out of the posts in all that country. The consequences of this custom were so peculiar and important that I must ask leave to pause and consider them. In Canada we see that the white man thus made his bow to the redskin as a brother in the truest sense. The old _coureurs_ of Norman and Breton stock, loving a wild, free life, and in complete sympathy with the Indian, bought or took the squaws to wife, learned the Indian dialects, and shared their food and adventures with the tribes. As more and more entered the wilderness, and at last came to be supported, in camps and at posts and as _voyageurs_, by the competing fur companies, there grew up a class of half-breeds who spoke English and French, married Indians, and were as much at home with the savages as with the whites. From this stock the Hudson Bay men have had a better choice of wives for more than a century. But when these "breeds" were turbulent and murderous--first in the attacks on Selkirk's colony, and next during the Riel rebellion--the Indians remained quiet. They defined their position when, in 1819, they were tempted with great bribes to massacre the Red River colonists. "No," said they; "the colonists are our friends." The men who sought to excite them to murder were the officers of the Northwest Company, who bought furs of them, to be sure, but the colonists had shared with the Indians in poverty and plenty, giving now and taking then. All were alike to the red men--friends, white men, and of the race that had taken so many of their women to wife. Therefore they went to the colonists to tell them what was being planned against them, and not from that day to this has an Indian band taken the war-path against the Canadians. I have read General Custer's theory that the United States had to do with meat-eating Indians, whereas the Canadian tribes are largely fish-eaters, and I have seen 10,000 references to the better Indian policy of Canada; but I can see no difference in the two policies, and between the Rockies and the Great Lakes I find that Canada had the Stonies, Blackfeet, and many other fierce tribes of buffalo-hunters. It is in the slow, close-growing acquaintance between the two races, and in the just policy of the Hudson Bay men towards the Indians, that I see the reason for Canada's enviable experience with her red men. [Illustration: IN A STIFF CURRENT]