James Cooper Halford was 18 years old when he came west from Ontario in 1882 as far as Crooked Lake. In 1884, he began work at the Assiniboine Reserve - Carry-The-Kettle or Ce-Ga-Kin - as the farm instructor. In 1889, he married Minnie Thornbeck and they took up a homestead southwest of Sintaluta. One newspaper story entitled "Believe story of naming Indian Head found" in which Halford asserted that the Indian Head Hills, southeast of the town of Indian Head, were so-named by Hudson Bay Company traders who, on the top of the hills, found human bones of First Nations people who had perished in an earlier wave of smallpox. (see Indian Head History Book pp 416-418)