Accordingly, we find MacLeod reporting before the end of 1874 that he had interviewed the chiefs of the practically confederated tribes of the Bloods, Piegans and Blackfeet. He found them very intelligent men, and he described in some detail the stately ceremony with which these chiefs had conducted themselves in these interviews. They shake hands with Colonel MacLeod, and then, receiving the pipe of peace from the interpreter, Jerry Potts, they each smoke a few seconds and pass it around. MacLeod then explains to them the friendly attitude of the Canadian Government towards them, that the Police had come not to take the country from the Indians, but to protect these Indians against men who would despoil them and destroy them by sowing amongst them evil practices. And he adds that the Government would send soon some of the great men of the country to deal with the Indians and make treaty agreements with them. At these early interviews the chiefs gave unstinted praise to the Police, before whose coming there had been constant trouble. The Indians said they used to be robbed and ruined by the whisky-traders, that their horses, robes and women had been taken from them, that their young men were constantly engaged in drunken riots and many were killed, that their horses were stolen, so that they had no means of travelling or hunting. All this, the chiefs said, had been changed by the coming of the Police. One chief, in the graphic way by which they gesture in accord with what they are saying, crouched down and moved along with difficulty, and then stood up and walked. "Before you came," said this chief to the Colonel, "the Indian had to creep along, not knowing what would attack him, but now he is not afraid to walk erect."