The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas towards the land of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the French House. To Hendry's surprise they came to a large river with high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose parchment skin--like the bull boats of the Missouri--the Assiniboines rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort. As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth hole smoked the skins. Beating and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry remarks how in the fall of the year the women sat in the doors of their wigwams "knitting moose leather into snow shoes" made of seasoned wood. It was October before the Indians of the far western plains were met. These were the famous Blackfeet, for the first time now seen by an English trader. They approached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He thought the mineral iron. What he saw was probably an outcropping of coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver, which were plentiful beyond the fur traders' hopes. When, on October 11th, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatchewan, which the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches were forks of one and the same great river, the Saskatchewan, or, as the French called it, Christinaux. The Indian names for the two branches were Keskatchew and Waskesaw. For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible, southwest. On October the 14th, four riders came out to conduct Hendry to an encampment of three hundred and twenty-two tents of Blackfeet Indians, "pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where we were conducted to the leader's tent." This was the main tribe of which Hendry had already met the outrunners. "The leader's tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo skin, attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their custom.