Note 229 — OREGON MISSIONS AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF OREGON TERRITORY AND ITS MISSIONS (continued 2)

For the Assiniboin see our volume ii, p. 168, note 75. The Assiniboin were wandering Indians grouped into many bands under separate chiefs. Early in the nineteenth century those of the woods and foothills of the Rockies became differentiated from the Assiniboin of the Plains, and were usually denominated Stoney Indians. These latter were in two bands, the Thickwood and Mountain Stoney, with dialects differing considerably from the Assiniboin of the Plains. Their characteristics were also different, they being more peaceable and inoffensive than their Eastern relatives. They were very poor, nevertheless were good hunters and energetic workers, many of them acting as guides especially in the explorations connected with the Canadian Pacific Railway surveys. First visited by Wesleyan missionaries as early as 1840, they now are largely members of that denomination. A band of about six hundred live on a reservation on Bow River near Morley, forty miles west of Calgary, not far from the region in which they were encountered by De Smet.—Ed.