The frontier campaign against the whiskey runners in the south-west was undertaken by half the force, 150 men. In 1874 prohibition was established for the whole territory, with severe penalties for selling or giving liquor to Indians. At the end of one year Colonel MacLeod, the commander, was able to report a “complete stoppage of the whiskey trade throughout the whole of this section”—which was the worst in the country. The drunken riots, which had been almost a daily occurrence, were entirely at an end. In fact, “a more peaceable community than this, with a very large number of Indians camped along the river, could not be found anywhere. Everyone united in saying how wonderful the change is. People never lock their doors at night, and have no fear of anything being stolen which is left outside; whereas, just before our arrival, gates and doors were all fastened at night, and nothing could be left out of one’s sight.” “It is like a miracle wrought before our eyes,” said the veteran missionary John McDougall, whom I met years afterwards riding as a volunteer scout in the Saskatchewan campaign. It was chiefly owing to MacLeod that the Blackfoot tribes in 1877 signed a treaty by which certain lands were set apart for ever as their Reserves, the Government agreeing to pay them a yearly subsidy of $5 a head. Such treaties had already been made with Indians farther east. At a great gathering of the Blackfoot and kindred tribes, the Governor of the Territory, David Laird, told them that the Queen was much pleased by the way they had helped the Police and obeyed the law. “The Great Spirit,” he said, “has made the white man and the red man brothers, and we should take each other by the hand. The Great Mother loves all her children, white men and red men alike. You will always find the Mounted Police on your side if you keep the Queen’s laws.”
The head Chief, Crowfoot, coming forward to sign the treaty, declared that the advice given to his people had proved to be good. “If the Police had not come,” said he, “where would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few of us indeed would have been left to-day. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter.” And Red Crow, Chief of the Bloods, who signed with Crowfoot, added that MacLeod had made many promises to him and kept them all; not one of them was broken. The town that grew up beside MacLeod’s old fort preserves his memory in its name; and Calgary, where he built a fort in 1875, was called after his birthplace on the west coast of Scotland. A French trading post had been established near the same spot on the Bow River as far back as 1752, by Niverville, a kinsman of the great explorer Vérendrye.