rich burnt umber in the stream, and when blown upon by the wind turns its sparkling facets to the sun like the smile upon the cheek of a brunette.  Its upward course is like a continuous letter S with occasional S’s side by side, so that a point can be crossed on foot in a few minutes which would cost much time to go around.  Its proper name, too, is not to be found in the atlases, either English or French.  There it is called the Lesser Slave River, but in the classic Cree its name is Iyaghchi Eennu Sepe, or the River of the Blackfeet, literally the “River of the Strange People.”  The lake itself bears the same name, and even now is never called Slave Lake by the Indians in their own tongue.  This fact, to my mind, casts additional light upon an obscure prehistoric question, namely, the migration of the great Algic, or Algonquin, race.  Its early home was, perhaps, in the far south, or south-west, whence it migrated around the Gulf of Florida, and eastward along the Atlantic coast, spreading up its bays and inlets, and along its great tributary rivers, finally penetrating by the Upper Ottawa to James’s, and ultimately to the shores of Hudson Bay.  I know there is strong adverse opinion as to the starting-point of this migration, and I only offer my own as a suggestion based upon the facts stated, and as, therefore, worthy of consideration.  Sir Alexander Mackenzie speaks of the Blackfeet “travelling north-westward,” and that the Crees were “invaders of the Saskatchewan from the eastward.”  Indeed, he says the latter were called by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s officers at York Factory “their home-guards.”  One thing seems certain, viz., that the Crees got their firearms from the English at Hudson Bay in the 17th century.  Thence that great tribe, called by themselves the Naheowuk, but by the Ojibway Saulteaux the Kinistineaux, and by the voyageurs Christineaux, or, more commonly, the Crees—­a word derived, some think, from the first syllable of the latter name, or perhaps from the French crier, to shout—­descended upon the Blackfeet, who probably at that time occupied this region, and undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, and drove them south along a line stretching to the Rocky Mountains.

The tradition of this expulsion is still extant, as also of the great raids made by the Blackfeet and their kindred in times past into their ancient domain.  I remember visiting, with my old friend Attakacoop—­Star-Blanket—­the deceased Cree chief, twenty years ago, the triumphal pile of red deer horns raised by the Blackfeet north of Shell River, a tributary of the North Saskatchewan.  It is called by the Crees Ooskunaka Assustakee, and the chief described its great size in former days, and the tradition of its origin as told to him in his boyhood.  Be all this as it may, and this is not the place to pursue the inquiry, the stream in question is, to the Crees who live upon it, not the River of the Slaves, but the “River of the Blackfeet.”  How it came by its white name