LKER (CALGARY) The oldest survivor of
those who were commissioned officers during the great march of 1874.]

David Laird was a Prince Edward Islander of great stature and
gentlemanly bearing. He was of imposing appearance, and had the grace of
easy speech with a good voice. Fearless in his general attitude, he had
withal a fine genius for diplomacy, and came to have a remarkable
insight into the Indian mind. The Indians, who prefer giving men names
that describe some outstanding characteristic, christened Laird as "the
man who talks straight," or, in other words, the man who tells the truth
and sticks to it. Few people, perhaps, nowadays know the obligation this
country owes to men like Governor Alexander Morris, of Manitoba, and
Governor David Laird, of the Territories, for the extraordinary success
with which they and their faithful native interpreters, backed and
flanked by the fair-minded Mounted Police, dealt with the Indians. The
impressive scarlet uniform of the Police somehow or other came to be
recognized by the Indians as a sign royal of friendship. Once when
Inspector Walsh with several men was riding into a camp of American
Indians who had crossed to this side in the winter time, with his dark
blue overcoat lightly buttoned and the men in their great coats, the
Indians, thinking they were American cavalry, met them with levelled
rifles and angry faces. Walsh was not the kind of man to halt for that,
and would probably have paid the penalty for his devotion to duty, had
not one of the troopers, catching the situation, thrown his overcoat
open and disclosed the scarlet tunic. In a flash the Indians lowered
their rifles--they recognized their friends. Little wonder that Morris
and Laird and the other treaty-makers were grateful for the high
standing of these stalwart riders of the plains.

This matter of the Indian treaties deserved some special notice, because
it is not well understood by people outside this country and because it
is closely connected, as already intimated with the story of the Mounted
Police. It is inevitable in the progress of human history that higher
civilizations should supersede the lower. Wherever the contrary has been
the case and a lower civilization overran the higher the movement of
humanity was retrograde. Hence, if the Indian type of civilization in
Western Canada was to be superseded by the British type and this change
effected without injustice and hardship for the original dwel