With the rest of the party Shaw spent the winter of 1878-9 at Battleford. It was a winter free from dull care--cold but gay; simple in its furnishings, but abounding in social diversions. Reports came in, though, that it was a winter of want for the Indians, and that trouble might be looked for in the spring, unless a miracle happened to their food supply. From time immemorial the Indian had been accustomed to an abundance of buffalo meat, limited only by his ability to slaughter it. Sitting Bull’s herding of the buffalo in Montana brought great privation to the Crees and Blackfeet. In the spring of 1879 they assembled at Battleford, demanding assistance from the Canadian Government. Shaw saw five thousand of these tented seekers after charity camped around the tiny capital. The barracks were on the narrow tongue of land just above where the Battle empties into the mighty Saskatchewan. The town was on the south side of the smaller river--a poor little collection of buildings which the Indians could have destroyed with no more trouble than is involved in firing dry wooden structures anywhere. Governor Laird, the tall thin Prince Edward Islander, who had come from Charlottetown journalism into politics, was a negotiator for the entry of the island into Confederation, became the Minister of the Interior in the Mackenzie Government, and had received the first governorship of the North West Territories in the same year that Laurier was first appointed a Minister of the Crown, was very well fitted for a post requiring many diplomatic qualities. Next to his extreme height his most memorable physical characteristic was his long hair; the fashion of which he had abbreviated long before his last special tour of the West, when he was a venerable and honoured sharer in the celebration of the creation of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan at the beginning of September, 1905. The feeding of five thousand Indians was an imperative duty of Governor Laird as long as there was anything to feed them with. He had no authority to commandeer provisions from the Hudson’s Bay Company, on Indian account. But the Company had heavy stores of pemmican in their warehouse, and Laird drew upon them, while he was trying to secure the necessary powers from Ottawa. The Indians demanded treaty guarantees against their extinction by starvation.