snowfall that had powdered the slopes and
foothills of the Rocky Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 2nd,
reached the prairies again. Now he was travelling well to the south of
his former journey on a line that ran just above the American border.
In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the next two days at a
series of small towns whose very names--McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine
Hat, Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Regina--had in them a
savour of the old, brave days when the Red Man was still a power, and
settlers chose their names off-hand from local things.
McLeod, on the Old Man River, just escapes the foothills. It is
prairies, a few streets, a movie "joint," an hotel and a golf course.
In McLeod we saw the dawn of the Mackinaw, or anyhow first saw the
virtues of that strange coat which seems to have been adapted from the
original of the Biblical Joseph by a Highland tailor. It is a thick,
frieze garment, cut in Norfolk style. The colour is heroic red, or
blue or mauve or cinnamon, over which black lines are laid in a plaid
tracery.
We realized its value as a warmth-giver while we stood amid a crowd of
them as the Prince received addresses. Among the crowd was a band of
Blood Indians of the Blackfeet Tribe, whose complexions in the cold
looked blue under their habitual brown-red. They had come to lay their
homage before him and to present an Indian robe. The Prince shook
hands and chatted with the chiefs as well as their squaws, and with the
missionary who had spent his life among these Red Men, and had
succeeded in mastering the four or five sounds that make up the Indian
language.
We talked to an old chief upon whose breast were the large silver
medals that Queen Victoria and King George had had specially struck for
their Indian subjects. These have become signs of chieftainship, and
are taken over by the new chief when he is elected by the tribesmen.
With this chief was his son, a fine, quiet fellow in the costume of the
present generation of Indians, the cowboy suit. He had served all
through the war in a Canadian regiment.
At Lethbridge, the next town, there was a real and full Indian
ceremonial. Before a line of tepees, or Indian lodges, the Prince was
received by the Chiefs of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfeet Nation, and
elected one of them with the name of Mekastro, that is Red Crow.
This name is a redoubtable one in the annals of the Blackfeet. It has
been held
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