By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered; his journal says, “eight hundred and ten miles west of York,” moving back and forward north and south of the river; but a comment added by Andrew Graham on the margin of the journal, says he was in latitude 59°. This is plainly a mistake, as latitude 59° is six degrees away from the Saskatchewan; but eight hundred and ten miles from York along the Saskatchewan would bring Hendry in the region between the modern Edmonton and Battleford. It is to Hendry’s credit that he remained on good terms with the Assiniboines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become the butt of the children who infested the tents like imps; but he hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch the best of them. Consequently, there is not a note in his journal of that doleful whine which comes from the weakling run amuck of hard life in a savage land. When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson Bay. Almost the entire winter, camp moved from bend to bend or branch to branch of the North Saskatchewan, heading gradually eastward. Toward spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. Among these were “green scalps” and many women captives from those Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. One hears much twaddle of the red man’s noble state before he was contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West before they had met any white men but himself, and the disposal of those captives is a criterion of the red man’s noble state. Whenever one was not wanted—the present of a girl, for instance, resented by a warrior’s jealous wives—she was summarily hacked to pieces, and not a passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life.