long and passionate. Potts did this because he understood that long speech in Indigenous cultures was meant to show respect, while for English-speakers, it was only a way to show off. Once, following a Blackfoot chief's extremely long, flowery, impassioned speech to a delegation of visiting officials who had arrived from Ottawa to sign a historic treaty with the Blackfoot people, Potts remained silent as if fully digesting the colourful language. Finally, when asked what the chief had said, the laconic Potts shrugged and replied, "He says he's damned glad you're here." On another occasion, when asked by Inspector MacLeod what lay beyond a high rising hill ahead, Potts muttered, "Nuther hill." He was fluent in American English, Blackfoot, and Crow (Apsáalooke aliláau), had a better than average ability in Plains Cree (nēhiyawēwin) (which he would speak only when necessary), and was passable in Lakota-Sioux (Lakȟótiyapi), Assiniboine (Nakona or A' M̆oqazh), and Algonquin. He also understood the differing cultures of the Indigenous peoples and the North-West Mounted Police. He was able to instruct the police in the proper procedures for receiving a Chief. For all his ability to get along with Euro-Americans, though, Potts was very much Indigenous. He never fully understood the Euro-American reasoning. For instance, he could never understand the reason that Euro-American settlers equipped their houses with chamber pots. "Why," he once asked a Mountie, "would anyone piss in a perfectly good eating bowl when the entire prairie lay before him"? From a distance the stocky, bow-legged Potts looked like a Euro-American trapper in his buckskin clothing, his Stetson at a jaunty angle upon his head. Two .44 pistols hung from his gun belt complementing the Henry rifle which never left his side. On his leg was strapped a long-bladed skinning knife. He always kept a small gun inside a hide-away pocket, a practice that saved his life on several occasions. In 1870, various Nehiyaw-Pwat bands of Plains Cree and Plains Assiniboine began a war. They hoped to defeat the Blackfoot weakened by smallpox. An advance party of Cree and Assiniboine, under the lead of Plains Cree Chief Big Bear (Mistahimaskwa) and Piapot (Hole in the Sioux), Chief of the Cree-Assiniboines (Young Dogs), had stumbled upon a Peigan camp near Fort Whoop-Up (called by the Blackfoot Akaisakoyi - "Many Dead") and decided to attack instead of informing the main Cree body of their find. Just in the