Hendry is almost certainly the first Englishman to see this region.In the end he reached the mountains.He makes no mention of having seen or heard anything of Fort La Jonquiere, built three years earlier.He had aims different from those of La Verendrye and other French explorers.Not the Western Sea but openings for trade was he seeking.His great aim was to reach the tribe called later the Blackfeet Indians, who were mighty hunters of the buffalo.Hendry was alive to the impressions of nature.
The intense heat of August was followed in September by glorious weather, with the nights cool and the mosquitoes no longer troublesome.The climate was bracing.He complains only, from time to time, of swollen feet, and we need not wonder since his daily march occasionally went beyond twenty-five miles.Sometimes for days he saw no living creature.At other times wild life was prolific: there were moose in great abundance, bears, including the dreaded grizzly--one of which killed an Indian of his company and badly mutilated another--beaver, wild horses, and, above all, the buffalo."Saw many herds of Buffalo grazing like English cattle," he says, on the 13th of September, and the next day he goes buffalo hunting.Guns and ammunition were costly.His Indians, who used only bows and arrows, on this day killed seven--"fine sport," says Hendry.Often the Indians took only the tongue, leaving the carcass for the wolves, who naturally abounded in such advantageous conditions.It is not easy now to imagine the part played by the buffalo in the life of the prairie.As Hendry advanced the herds were so dense as sometimes to retard his progress.Other writers tell of the vast numbers of these creatures.Alexander Henry, the younger, writing on April 1, 1801, says that in a river swollen by spring floods, drowned buffalo floated past his camp in one continuous line for two days and two nights.In prairie fires thousands were blinded and would go tumbling down banks into streams or lie down to die.One morning the bellowing of buffaloes awakened Henry and he looked out to see the prairie black."The ground was covered at every point of the compass, as far as the eye could reach, and every animal was in motion."Daily as Hendry advanced he saw smoke in the distance and his Indians told him that it came from the camp of the Blackfeet.He reached them on Monday the 14th of October.When four miles away he was stopped by mounted scouts who asked whether he came as a friend or as an enemy.He was taken to the camp of two hundred tents pitched in two rows, and was led through the long passage between the tents to the big tent of the chief of whom he had heard much.Not a word was spoken.The chief sat on a white buffalo skin.Pipes were passed round and each person was presented with boiled buffalo flesh.When talk began, Hendry told the chief that his great leader had sent him to invite them to come to trade at Hudson Bay where his people would get powder, shot, guns, cloth, beads, and other things.The chief said it was faraway, and his people knew nothing of paddling.Such strangers to great waters were they that they would not even eat fish.They despised Hendry's tobacco.What they smoked was dried horse dung.
In the end Hendry was dismissed and ordered to make his camp a quarter of a mile away from that of the Blackfeet.
