It may be laid down as a general rule that all contemporary estimates as to the population of the Indian tribes which were necessarily founded upon hearsay prior to actual penetration into their country are fanciful and totally unreliable. Perhaps the most significant fact which Parkman brought home to the masses of his readers, was the astounding discrepancy between current conception of the numbers of the various tribes, particularly the Iroquois, and that attested and corroborated by the acute research of scholars, and by the testimony of contemporaries. In 1749 the Company thought the number of the Crees to be about 100,000, men, women and children. A half century later they had diminished to about 14,000, although, in 1810, Henry can find only about 300 tents full of Crees capable of furnishing less than 1,000 men. In this calculation, however, he did not include the Crees who lived north of Beaver River. The Crees were, for the most part, quiet and inoffensive, and their personal appearance not entirely prepossessing; and although compared with the wilder and more valiant tribes to the south and east, their carriage and deportment was inferior, still they were gifted with activity, and prominent, wiry figures and intelligent countenances. [Sidenote: The Assiniboines.] The next numerous tribe was the Assiniboine, or Stone Indians, who it is believed originated with the Sioux or Nodwayes. But owing to some misunderstanding between the bands they separated, and some half century before the first fort was built by the Company they were in possession of a vast extent of prairie country near the Red River, and thence running westward. The region they inhabited may be said to commence at the Hare Hills, near Red River, and running along the Assiniboine to the junction of the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan. They were generally of a moderate stature, slender and active. In complexion they were of a lighter copper colour than the Crees, with more regular features. Moreover they were readily distinguished from the latter by a different head-dress. [Illustration: ESQUIMAU WITH DOGS.] Other tribes trading with the Company were the Sioux, Blackfeet, Blood, Slave and Crow Indians. There were also the Esquimaux, with whom a traffic in the north was carried on chiefly for whalebone, ivory and oil. "I have often," wrote Captain Coats, "thought this people of the lineage of the Chinese, in the many features I see in them, their bloated flatt faces, little eyes, black hair, little hands and feet, and their listlessness in travelling. They are very fair, when free from grease, very submissive to their men, very tender to their children, and indefatigable in the geegaws to please their men and children."