THE INTERMINGLING OF RACES. 339 



the Irishman or Frenchman, on emigrating to America, becomes, in a 

 generation or two, amalgamated with the general stock."* Nor is it 

 on the frontier settlements alone that he has observed the evidences 

 of such interfusion. " I have recognized," he says, " the semi-Indian 

 features in the gay assemblies at a Canadian Governor's reception, 

 in the halls of the Legislature, among the undergraduates of Canadian 

 universities, and mingling in selectest social circles." Dr. Wilson 

 says, moreover, that " in Lower Canada half-breeds, and men and wom- 

 men of partial Indian blood, are constantly met with in all ranks of 

 life," and cites with approval the opinion that "in the neighborhood 

 of Quebec, in the Ottawa Valley, and to a great extent about Mont- 

 real, there is hardly among the original settlers a family in the lower 

 ranks, and not many in the higher, who have not some traces of In- 

 dian blood." 



M. Benjamin Suite, on the contrary, indignantly denies that the 

 early Canadians intermarried (except in rare instances) with the In- 

 dian tribes. f On this point, Abbe Tanguay, than whom no one should 

 be better fitted to pronounce judgment on such a question, makes the 

 following remarks : " For many years the proportion of women to the 

 male immigrants was extremely small. The Carignan regiment alone 

 added fifteen hundred to the population. Did those young soldiers 

 marry native women, and are w r e to reckon the latter among our an- 

 cestors ? Some of the colonists did certainly marry native girls, but 

 those girls had been educated and civilized in the institutions of the 

 Hotel-Dieu and the Ursuhnes. We can cite several of the most re- 

 spectable families in Canada who number among their progenitors the 

 sons of the forest, and who should be proud to do so. Among others 

 may be mentioned that of the late Commander Jacques Viger, one of 

 whose ancestors was a daughter of Arontio, the disciple of Father 

 Breboeuf, and like him a martyr to the faith. Nevertheless, we must 

 regard such alliances as exceptional. " \ 



In the foregoing quotation Abbe Tanguay indicates the cause to 

 which, in frontier settlements, the union of whites and squaws is mainly 

 to be attributed— the dearth of white women. It was under the stress 

 of such a famine that the half-breed population of the Canadian North- 

 west, which has of late been so much before the world, grew to its 

 present proportions. Its history carries us back to near the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century. Arthur Dobbs, whose account of the coun- 

 tries adjacent to Hudson Bay was published in 1744, obtained his in- 

 formation almost wholly from a half-breed trader called La France — 

 a proof that the metis was not unknown a century and a half ago. 

 The explorations of the Verandryes, father and sons, lasted from 1T31 



* " Prehistoric Man," vol. ii, pp. 250-253. 

 f " Histoire des Canadiens-Francais," vol. i, p. 154. 



% " Les Families Canadiennes," in " Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada," 

 vol. i, section i, p. 43. 



