British North Americ

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: has always been just and humane, with the result that wars and disturbances of the peace have but rarely occurred, and the native races of the Dominion may now be classed among the most peaceable and law- abiding of his Majesty's subjects. Industrial, boarding, and ordinary day schools have of late years...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: has always been just and humane, with the result that wars and disturbances of the peace have but rarely occurred, and the native races of the Dominion may now be classed among the most peaceable and law- abiding of his Majesty's subjects. Industrial, boarding, and ordinary day schools have of late years been established in different centres among them, and the present generation of Indians is fast fitting itself for the conditions of modern civilised life. Many of the tribes live to-day in well-ordered villages with lighted streets and waterworks systems of their own, and are better housed and have more comforts than the average European peasant. The men of the tribes engage regularly in fishing and lumbering or in agriculture and stock raising, and their outlook for the future is by no means a discouraging one. Truth, however, compels one to say that a backward glance over the history and condition of the native races of the province as a whole since our advent among them does not present so satisfactory a picture; and one is obliged to confess that contact with the white man has not been everywhere an unmixed blessing for the Indian. The transition from the old order of things to the new was in the main too abrupt and radical, and the race has suffered accordingly, notwithstanding the benevolent care of the Government. Nowhere is this shown more clearly than in the high death-rate and the consequent diminution of their numbers. The whole native population of the Province to-day numbers scarcely 25,000; and though we have no definite knowledge of the extent of thepopulation when we first occupied the country, the estimates of the early settlers, the traditions of the Indians themselves, and the number of deserted and abandoned villages, that, in the memory of those now living...