Mr McDougall got the Indians of his Victoria Mission to leave
their homes and scatter themselves over the great prairies, where, he
hoped, they would, by being isolated, escape the contagion. The pagan
Indians, rendered desperate under the terrible scourge which was so
rapidly cutting them off, and being powerless to check it, resolved to
wreak their vengeance upon the defenceless whites. So they sent a band
of warriors to destroy every white person in the country. The first
place they reached, where dwelt any of the pale-faces, was the Victoria
Mission on the Saskatchewan River. Indian-like, they did not openly
attack, but, leaving the greater number of their warriors in ambush in
the long grass, a few of them sauntered into the Mission House. Here,
to their surprise, they found that the small-pox had entered, and some
of the inmates of the home had died. Quickly and quietly they glided
away, and told their comrades what they had seen. A hasty consultation
was held, and they decided that it could not have been the Missionary
who had control of the disease; for, if he had, he would not have
allowed it to have killed his own. They then decided it must have been
the fur-traders, and so they started for the trading post. Here they
pursued the same tactics, and found to their surprise that a Mr Clarke,
the gentleman in charge of that place, had fallen a victim. Another
hasty council made them think that they had been mistaken, and so they
quickly returned to their own country without having injured any one.

But the Missionary and his family were surrounded by perils. The
Indians were excited and unsettled, and their old pagan conjurers were
ever ready to incite them to deeds of violence. The restraining power
of God alone saved them from massacre. Once the Missionary's wife and
some of the family were at work in the garden, while secreted in the
long grass not a hundred yards from them lay eleven Blackfeet, who had
come to murder and pillage the place, but, as they afterwards
acknowledged, were strangely restrained from firing. At another time
some of the fierce warriors of this same bloodthirsty tribe crawled
through a field of barley, and for a long time watched the movements of
the family, and then noiselessly retired, doing no harm to any one. To
hear the ping of a bullet as it passed in close proximity to the head
was no very rare event in the lives of several of the early Missionaries
among the excited