The case was not only a portrayal of the persistent
methods of the Police, but it threw a fine sidelight on the way in which
the Police had won the friendship of the Indians through guarding the
Indians against exploitation by white men. It moreover gave a good
exposition of the Indians' unique powers of observation.

[Illustration: CORONATION CONTINGENT. LONDON. 1911.]

[Illustration: CORONATION CONTINGENT. LONDON. 1911.]

[Illustration: INDIANS RECEIVING TREATY PAYMENT ON PRAIRIE.]

[Illustration: FORT FITZGERALD, ATHABASCA.]

[Illustration: ICE-BOUND GOVERNMENT SCHOONER.]

In October, Moos Toos, the headman of the Indian Reserve at Sucker
Creek, came to Sergeant Anderson and told him that white men were
cutting rails on his Reserve. Anderson immediately went over with the
Chief and found men employed by a very prominent firm of contractors
cutting rails. The Sergeant stopped them at once and made them pay the
Indian for what they had already cut. This, of course, was pleasing to
Moos Toos, who, on returning home with Anderson told the Sergeant that
some days before, two white men with four pack-horses had come from
Edmonton and camped on the Reserve near a slough. They had stayed there
some three days or so and then one of them left, but there was no sign
of the other. An Indian boy had noticed that the dog that had come with
the white men would not follow the one that left. This was observation
number one. Then some Indian women, as their custom is, went over to the
place where the men had camped to see if anything was left that might be
of service. One Indian woman noticed that the camp fire-place was much
larger than required for ordinary use. Another Indian woman stood at the
edge of the fire-place and looking up noticed, on the underside of the
leaves of a poplar tree, globules of fat where the thick smoke had
struck the cool leaves and the evaporating fat had condensed. She said,
"He was burning flesh in this fire." These two things, added to the fact
that a shot had been heard by other Indians in the direction of the
white men's camp, made them suspicious. They told Moos Toos, their
headman, and he, in recognition of the goodness of the Police to him,
told Anderson about it, and added that he thought something was wrong.
Anderson thought so too, and with Constable Lowe went down to the place.
They raked in the ashes and found fragments of bone and other substances
which they carefully sealed up and kept f