It is observed by a report of the Canadian Parliament, that the number
of Indians now in Canada is 12,000. Of these, 3,301 are residing in
Lower Canada, and the remainder 8,862, in Canada West. The number
of Indians is stated to be on the increase, partly from the access
of births over the deaths, and partly from a numerous immigration
of tribes from the United States. This report must be taken with
allowances. It is, at best, but an estimate, and in this respect, the
Canadians, like ourselves, are apt to over estimate.
The Indian is a man who has certainly some fine points of character;
one would think a man of genius could turn him to account. Why then are
Indian tales and poems failures? They fail in exciting deep sympathy.
We do not feel that he has a heart.
The Indian must be _humanized_ before he can be loved. This is the
defect in the attempts of poets and novelists. They do not show the
reader that the red man has a feeling, sympathising heart, and feeling
and sympathies like his own, and consequently he is not interested in
the tale. It is a tale of a statue, cold, exact, stiff, but without
_life_. It is not a man with man’s ordinary loves and hopes and hates.
Hence the failure of our _Yamoydens_, and _Ontwas_, and _Escatlas_, and
a dozen of poems, which, although having merits, slumber in type and
sheepskin, on the bookseller’s shelf.