variety of names, may all be classed under the two essentially distinct
groups of Algonkins and Iroquois. Under the former head properly rank
the Micmacs, and other tribes of Prince Edward’s Island, Nova Scotia,
and New Brunswick; and the Chippeways, including Ottawas, Mississagas,
Pottawattomies, etc., of Ontario. Under the other head have to be placed
not only the Six Nations—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas,
and Tuscaroras,—but also the Wyandots, or Hurons, both of Upper and
Lower Canada; though among the one were found the faithful allies of the
English, while the other adhered persistently to the French; and to the
deadly enmity between them was due the expulsion of the Hurons from
their ancient territory on the Georgian Bay, and the extermination of
all but an insignificant remnant, including the refugees on the St.
Charles river, below Quebec.
The Canadian census of 1871 includes the aborigines in the enumeration
of the population of the Dominion, and states the grand total of the
Indians of the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New
Brunswick, at 23,035.
That the Indian population, gathered on their own reserved lands under
the care of Government superintendents, is not diminishing in numbers,
appears to be universally admitted. But as, at the same time, the pure
race is being largely replaced by younger generations of mixed blood,
the results cannot be looked upon as encouraging the hope of
perpetuating the native Indian race under such exceptional conditions;
nor can it be overlooked that the increase is partly begot by the
addition of a foreign element. At best the results point rather to such
a process of absorption as appears to be the inevitable result wherever
a race, alike inferior in numbers and in progressive energy, escapes
extirpation at the hands of the intruders.
In the boyhood of the older generation of Toronto, hundreds of Indians,
including those of the old Mississaga tribe, were to be seen about the
streets. Now, at rare intervals, two or three squaws, in round hats,
blue blankets, and Indian leggings, attract attention less by their
features than their dress; for in complexion they are nearly as white as
those of pure European descent. The same is the case on all the oldest
Indian reserves. The Hurons of Lorette, whose forefathers were brought
to Lower Canada after the massacre of their nation by the Iroquois in
1649, are reported to have considerably increased in numbers in the
interval between 1844 and the last census. But while the Commissioners
refer to them as a band of Indians “the most advanced in civilisation in
the whole of Canada,” they add that “they have, by the intermixture of
White blood, so far lost the original purity of race as scarcely to be
considered as Indians.” In their case this admixture with the European
race has been protracted through a period of upwards of two centuries,
till they have lost their Indian language, and substituted for it a
French patois. Were it not for their hereditary right to a share in
certain Indian funds, which furnishes an inducement to perpetuate their
descent from the Huron nation, they would long since have merged in the
common stock. Yet the results would not thereby have been eradicated,
but only lost sight of. Their baptismal registers and genealogical
traditions supply the record of a practical, though undesigned,
experiment as to the influence of hybridity on the perpetuation of the
race, and show the mixed descendants of Huron and French blood still,
after a lapse of upwards of two centuries, betraying no traces of a
tendency towards infertility or extinction.
In the Maritime Provinces the Micmacs are the representatives of the
aboriginal owners of the soil. Small encampments of them may be
encountered in summer on the Lower St. Lawrence, busily engaged in the
manufacture of staves, barrel-hoops, axe-handles, and baskets of various
kinds, which they dispose of, with much shrewdness, to the traders of
Quebec, and the smaller towns on the Gulf. So far as I have seen, the
pure-blood Micmac has more of the dark-red, in contrast to the prevalent
olive hue, than other Indians. But the Micmacs of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick reveal the same evidence of inevitable amalgamation with the
predominant race as elsewhere. The Rev. S. T. Rand—a devoted missionary
labouring among the Indians of Nova Scotia,—on being asked to obtain a
photograph of a pure-blood representative of the tribe, had some
difficulty in finding a single example, and stated that not one is to be
found among the younger generation.
In the old provinces the Indians are in the minority; but the same
process is apparent where little bands of pioneers leave the settled
provinces and states to begin new clearings, or to engage in the
adventurous life of hunters and trappers in the far West. The hunter
finds a bride among the native women; and when at length the wild tribe
recedes before the growing clearing and the diminished supplies of game,
it not only leaves behind a half-breed population as the nucleus of the
civilised community, but it also carries away with it a like element,
increasingly affecting the ethnical character of the whole tribe.
The same circumstances have continued, in every frontier settlement, to
involve the inevitable production of a race of half-breeds. Even the
cruellest exterminations of hostile tribes have rarely been carried out
so effectually as to preclude this. In New England, for example, after
the desolating war of 1637, which resulted in the extinction of the
Pequot tribe, Winthrop thus summarily records the policy of the victors:
“We sent the male children to Bermuda by Mr. William Pierce, and the
women and maid children are disposed about in the towns.” Such a female
population could not grow up in a young colony, with the wonted
preponderance of males, and leave no traces in subsequent generations.
Seeing, then, that the meeting of two types of humanity so essentially
distinct as the European and the native Indian of America, has, for
upwards of three centuries, led to the production of a hybrid race, it
becomes an interesting question, what has been the ultimate result? Has
the mixed breed proved infertile, and so disappeared; has it perpetuated
a new and permanent type of intermediate characteristics; or has it been
absorbed into the predominant European race without leaving traces of
this foreign element? These questions are not without their significance
even in reference to the policy in dealing with the Indian settlements
in old centres of population; for the traces of this intermingling of
the races of the Old and New World are neither limited to frontier
settlements nor to Indian reserves.
Among Canadians of mixed blood there are men at the Bar and in the
Legislature, in the Church, in the medical profession, holding rank in
the army, in aldermanic and other civic offices, and engaged in active
trade and commerce. A curious case was recently brought before the law
courts in Ontario. A son of the chief of the Wyandot Indians settled in
Western Canada, left the reserves of his tribe, engaged in business, and
acquired a large amount of real estate and personal property. He won for
himself, moreover, such general respect that he was elected Reeve of
Anderdon by a considerable majority over a White candidate. Thereupon
his rival applied to have him unseated, on the plea that a person of
Indian blood was not a citizen in the eye of the law. Fortunately the
judge took a common-sense view of the case, and decided that as he held
a sufficient property-qualification within the county, the election was
valid.
That an Indian ceases to be such in the eye of the law, and in all
practical relations to society, when he becomes an educated industrious
member of the general community, and competes not only for its
privileges but for its highest honours, is inevitable. But it is not
with the Indian as with the Negro mixed race. The privileges and the
disabilities of the Indian ward may both be cast off; but a certain
degree of romance attaches to Indian blood, when accompanied with the
culture and civilisation of the European. The descendants of Brant and
other distinguished native chiefs are still proud to claim their
lineage, where the physical traces of such an ancestry would escape the
eye of a common observer. Traces of Indian descent may be recognised
among ladies of attractive refinement and intelligence, and with certain
mental as well as physical traits which add to the charm of their
society. Similar indications of the blood of the aborigines are familiar
to Canadians in the gay assemblies of a Governor-General’s receptions,
in the halls of Legislature, in the diocesan synods and other
ecclesiastical assemblies, and amongst the undergraduates of Canadian
universities.
But the condition of men and women of mixed blood, admitted to all the
privileges of citizenship, and mingling in perfect equality with all
other members of the community, is in striking contrast to that of the
occupants of the Indian reserves, where they are settled, for the most
part in isolated bands, in the midst of a progressive White population.
Such a condition is manifestly an unfavourable one, and one, moreover,
which cannot be regarded as other than transitional. They are
confessedly dealt with as wards, in a state of pupilage.
A growing sense of the necessity for some modification of this system
has been felt for a considerable time; and in 1867 “An Act to encourage
the gradual Civilisation of the Indian Tribes,” received the royal
assent. This Act avowedly aims at the “gradual removal of all legal
distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s other Canadian subjects; and
to facilitate the acquisition of property, and of the rights
accompanying it, by such individual members of the said tribes as shall
be found to desire such encouragement, and to have deserved it.”
That the ultimate result of this will involve the disappearance of the
Indian as a distinct race is inevitable. He will be absorbed into the
dominant race; not to be displaced or driven out of the community; but
to be perpetuated, as the precursors of the blonde Aryans of Europe
still survive in the “dark Whites” that now, in undisputed equality,
enjoy all the rights of citizenship of a common race. They will indeed
constitute but a small remnant of the nations of Euramerican blood. That
whole tribes and peoples of the American aborigines have been
exterminated in the process of colonisation of the New World is no more
to be questioned, than that a similar result followed from the Roman
conquest and colonisation of Britain. Nevertheless, long and careful
study of the subject has satisfied me that a larger amount of absorption
of the Indian into the Anglo-American race has occurred than is
generally recognised.
Fully to appreciate this, it is necessary to retrace the course of
events by which America has been transferred to the descendants of
European colonists. At every fresh stage of colonisation, or of
pioneering into the wild West, the work has necessarily been
accomplished by hardy young adventurers, or the hunters or trappers of
the clearing. It is rare indeed for such to be accompanied by wives or
daughters. Where they find a home they take to themselves wives from
among the native women; and their offspring share in whatever advantages
the father transplants with him to this home in the wilderness. To such
mingling of blood, in its least favourable aspects, the prejudices of
the Indian present little obstacle. Henry, in his narrative of travel
among the Cristineaux on Lake Winipagoos upwards of a century ago, after
describing the dress and allurements of the women, adds: “One of the
chiefs assured me that the children borne by their women to Europeans
were bolder warriors and better hunters than themselves.” This idea
recurs in various forms. The half-breed lumberers and trappers are
valued throughout Canada for their hardihood and patient endurance; the
half-breed hunters and trappers are equally esteemed in the Hudson Bay
territory; and beyond their remotest forts Dr. Kane reported, as his
experience within the Arctic circle, that “the half-breeds of the coast
rival the Esquimaux in their powers of endurance.”
Mr. Charles Horetskey, in his _Canada on the Pacific_, after remarking
on the well-known fact that Japanese junks have been known to drift on
to the Pacific coast of America, and so contribute new elements of
Mongolian character to the native population, thus proceeds to notice
another element of hybridity. “There is,” he says, “another mixture in
the blood on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and a very marked
one—the Spanish, owing to the Spaniards having long had a settlement at
Nootka. Strangely enough, the Spanish cast of countenance does not show
in the women, who have the same flat features as their sisters to the
eastward. Nor is it so noticeable among the young men, many of whom,
however, have beards—a most unusual appendage among American Indians,
and of course traceable to the cause referred to. The features are more
observable among the older men, many of whom, with their long, narrow,
pointed faces and beards, would, if washed, present very fair models for
Don Quixote.” Within the region of Alaska, Russian traders have
contributed another element to the mingling of races; and Mr. Wm. H.
Dall, in his _Alaska and its Resources_, states specifically the number
of the Creoles or half-breeds of that region as 1421. But the present
condition of society there favours their increase. In 1842, they were,
for the first time, qualified to enter the Church as priests; and in
1865, the American Expedition found Ivan Pavloff, the son of a Russian
father and a native woman of Kenai, filling the office of Bidarshik, or
commander of the post at Nulato. He was legally married to a
full-blooded Indian woman, by whom he had a large family.
Another intrusive element, that of the Asiatic Mongol, has awakened
alarm for the possible future of the white race of settlers, both in
America and in Australia. In 1875 the number of Chinese in California
amounted to 130,000; 19,000 arrived in a single year. They speedily made
their way to the New England States, and to Eastern Canada; till it has
been deemed politic to forbid further immigration. It is the intrusion
of a type approximating to the American Mongol, and so has a special
interest in its bearing on the ethnology of the continent; for here we
see the approximate types of Asia and America brought into contact, it
may be as descendants of a common stock, separated through unnumbered
centuries by untraversed oceans.
The Indians of Vancouver Island and British Columbia were estimated in
1860 to number 75,000. The observations of Paul Kane in 1846 showed that
a considerable half-breed population already existed then in the
vicinity of every Hudson Bay fort. But at the later date the reported
richness of the gold-diggings was attracting hundreds of settlers; and
as usual, in such cases, nearly all males. The admixture of blood with
the native population consequent on such a social condition is
inevitable; and though such a population is least likely to leave behind
it any permanent traces among settled civilised colonists, yet the
condition of things which it presents illustrates the social life of
every frontier settlement of the New World. Everywhere the colonisation
of the outlying territory begins with a migration of males, and by and
by the cry comes from Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, for stimulated
female emigration. It is a state of things old as the dispersion of the
human race, and typified in such ancient legends as the Roman Rape of
the Sabines. The abstract of the United States census of 1860 showed
that the old settled states of New England are affected even more than
European countries by this inevitable source of the disparity of the
sexes. In Massachusetts, at that date, the females outnumbered the males
by upwards of 37,000; while in Indiana, on the contrary, they fell short
of the males by 48,000.
In the latter case, on a frontier state, where the services of the
Indian women must necessarily be courted in any attempt at domestic
life, intermixture between the native and intruding races is inevitable,
and the feeling with which it is regarded finds expression constantly
through the genuine New World lyrics of Joaquin Miller, with his “brown
bride won from an Indian town”—
Where some were blonde and some were brown,
And all as brave as Sioux.
Thus the same process still repeats itself along the widening frontier
of the far West, which has been in operation on the American continent
from the days of Columbus and Cabot. Hardy bands of pioneer adventurers,
or the solitary hunter and trapper, wander forth to brave the dangers of
the prairie or savage-haunted forest, and to such, an Indian bride
proves the fittest mate. Of the mixed offspring a portion cling to the
fortunes of the mother’s race, and are involved in its fate; but more
adhere to those of the white father, share with him the vicissitudes of
border life, and cast in their lot with the first nucleus of a settled
community. As the border land slowly recedes into the further West, new
settlers crowd into the clearing; the little cluster of primitive
log-huts grows up into the city, perhaps the capital of a state, and
with a new generation the traces of Indian blood are well nigh
forgotten. If any portion of the aboriginal owners of the soil linger in
the neighbourhood, they are no less affected by the predominant
intruding race.
The transfer of the rich prairie lands of the great North-West from the
care of Hudson Bay factors and trappers, the organisation of it into the
Province of Manitoba, and the territories already in preparation for new
provinces, under the government of their own legislatures, has
necessarily brought to an end the condition of things so favourable to
friendly relations between the White and Red races. The region,
moreover, is now traversed by the Canadian Pacific Railway; and the
herds of buffalo, on which the Indian mainly depended for his supplies
of food, fur robes, and teepe skins, have finally disappeared. Railways,
telegraph lines, and other appliances of civilisation are equally
incompatible with the existence of the wild buffalo and the wild Indian.
The former inevitably vanished from the scene. It remains to be seen if
the latter can adapt himself to the novel conditions of such an
environment.
As some preparation for the inevitable revolution, the half-breeds,
already numbering thousands, accustomed to mingle on perfect equality
with the Whites, and trained in some partial degree to agricultural
industry, entered on the possession of farms allotted to them by the
Government. But such a transitional stage, forced into premature
development, could scarcely be expected to pass through all its
revolutionary stages without a conflict, and clashing of interests; and
the efforts of the Dominion Government to deal with this novel condition
of things were only partially successful. But perhaps the most notable
feature in the results has been that the chief difficulty was, not with
the wild tribes transferred from the management of the fur-traders to
the direct jurisdiction of the Government, but with the half-breeds,
claiming civil rights, and jealously resenting encroachments on lands
appropriated for their own settlement.