[Footnote 4: See p. 159.]
Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
Assiniboins--the Mekesue or Eagle Indians--who differed from the
surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
bears.
At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
hundred tents or _tipis_ were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents.
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