Many Indians were met, but all were strong partisans of the French. An average of ten miles a day was made by the marchers, hunting red deer as they tramped. On August 8, somewhere near what is now Red Deer River, along the line of the Canada Northern, pause was made for a festival of rejoicing on safe return from the long voyage and relief from famine. For a day and a night, all hands feasted and smoked and danced and drank and conjured in gladness; the smoking of the pipe corresponding to our modern grace before meals, the dancing a way of evincing thanks in rhythmic motion instead of music, the drinking and conjuring not so far different from our ancestors’ way of giving thanks. The lakes were becoming alkali swamps, and camp had to be made where there was fresh water. Sometimes the day’s march did not average four miles. Again, there would be a forced march of fifteen. For the first time, an English fur trader saw Indians on horseback. Where did they get the horses? As we now know, the horses came from the Spaniards, but we must not wonder that when Hendry reported having seen whole tribes on horseback, he was laughed out of the service as a romancer, and the whole report of his trip discredited. The Indians’ object was to reach the buffalo grounds and lay up store of meat for the winter. They told Hendry he would presently see whole tribes of Indians on horseback—Archithinues, the famous Blackfoot Confederacy of Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans and Sarcees. On the 15th of August, they were among the buffalo, where to-day the great grooves and ruts left by the marching herds can still be seen between the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboine Rivers toward Qu’ Appelle. For the most part, the Indians hunted the buffalo with bow and arrow, and at night there was often a casualty list like the wounded after a battle. “_Sunday—dressed a lame man’s leg and he gave me for my trouble a moose nose, which is considered a great delicacy among the Indians._” “_I killed a bull buffalo_,” he writes on September 8, “_he was nothing but skin and bones. I took out his tongue and left his remains to the wolves, which were waiting around in great numbers. We cannot afford to expend ammunition on them. My feet are swelled with marching, but otherwise I am in perfect health. So expert are the natives buffalo hunting, they will take an arrow out of the buffalo when the beasts are foaming and raging and tearing the ground up with their feet and horns. The buffalo are so numerous, like herds of English cattle that we are obliged to make them sheer out of our way._” Sometimes more dangerous game than buffalo was encountered. On September 17, Hendry writes: “_Two young men were miserably wounded by a grizzly bear that they were hunting to-day. One may recover but the other never can. His arm is torn from his body, one eye gouged out and his stomach ripped open._” The next day the Indian died.