The Christian folk down east and over in Britain, though they knew little of what was going on out here, heard enough to make their consciences uneasy. The churches, one after another, sent missionaries to convert the Indian. The story of their devotion and sacrifice, without hope of earthly reward, would fill many books. Most of the Indians’ education has been carried on by the churches, and still is. Some of these men were as ingenious as they were devoted. There was James Evans, for example. In 1836 he not only invented a phonetic written language for the Crees, but printed it for them, at first melting down bullets to make the type, mixing soot and water for ink, and using birch bark for paper. It was hard work. “Christianity to them seems a Chimera, Religion a design to draw them from the libidinous Pleasures of a lazy life.” So it appeared to an English writer when the Hudson’s Bay Company had just started; and far on in the nineteenth century, though many tribes had been persuaded to exchange their pagan belief for the white man’s creeds, it was difficult—as it still is—to wean them from their haphazard ways to the white man’s standard of persistent industry. To uproot the Indian’s cherished belief in the virtue of war against a “hereditary foe” and “traditional enemy” was equally difficult—and not at all strange, considering how recent is our own awakening to the folly of that belief. As I look out on my farm beside the old Edmonton trail, and see the motors whizzing by, I see in imagination hordes of painted Blackfeet riding over this very land to slay the Crees, and hordes of Crees again to scalp the Blackfeet—in my own lifetime, too, though I was too far off to see it. The little town over yonder, with its churches and banks and stores, preserves the memory of those bloody times in its very name—Lacombe. One winter night in 1865 the missionary Albert Lacombe was the guest of the chief in a Blackfoot camp. Suddenly the crackle of guns awoke the sleeping Indians. “Assinaw! Assinaw! The Crees! The Crees!” shouted the braves, as they rushed out to defend the camp. Bullets whizzed through the tent; you could smell the powder—the Crees were as close as that. Now both tribes liked the missionary, as much as they hated each other. He ran out and shouted to the Crees, but his voice was drowned in the din. He found a Blackfoot woman, dying of wounds, and baptized her. A Cree came on her body, scalped her, and killed her child. The fight went on all night, and half the camp was captured. At dawn the missionary told the Blackfeet to stop firing, and went out again alone to parley with the raiders. A spent bullet struck his head, nearly stunning him, and he fell. “You have killed your friend,” a Blackfoot shouted. Then the Crees heard, and were horrified. The fight was at an end; the raiders turned right-about and made off.