No. 3.] G. M. DAWSON INDIANS OF CANADA. 157 



given of the habits of life of the Indians, and nature of the 

 country, that it was by no means without reason that the 

 British Columbia Government objected to the crude application 

 of the rule found to work well in the East, to the very different 

 and variously situated n:itives of the West Coast; that, while 

 reserves even on the 80 acre basis would be barely sufficient in 

 some parts of the interior, where large areas are required for 

 stock ranges, it would be useless and foolish to reserve great 

 tracts of arable laod for the coist tribes, who are by nature 

 fishermen, and could under no circumstances be induced to cul- 

 tivate the soil on any but a very limited scale. The policy 

 obviously best for the natives of British Columbia, is to aid them 

 in following those paths which they have taken already ; to assist 

 the tribes of the interior to become successful stock-raisers and 

 farmeri?, by granting them suitable reserves and grazing privi- 

 leges ; to encourage those of the coast in fishing and becoming 

 seamen, instructing them in improved modes of preserving their 

 fish, and of preparing it for sale to others. If the sites of 

 their villages and fishing stations are secure to them, they will 

 require little more in the way of reserves. To grant to each 

 family 80 acres of good land, it would be necessary to move 

 many tribes far from their traditional haunts, and to this they 

 would only submit under compulsion. In reviewing the state of 

 the natives of the West Coast, it would appear that, though in 

 many instances the British Columbia government seems to have 

 transgressed the limits of strict justice toward them, and has 

 departed from the precedent elsewhere established, in refusing to 

 acknowledge the right of the Indian to the soil ; that he, thrown 

 more on his own resources, mins-lino- amons: the whites with an 

 equality of rights before the law, and exempt from the inter- 

 ference which has elsewhere distinctly retarded the progress of 

 the savage towards civilization and independence, has worked 

 out in a measure his own temporal salvation, has passed the cri- 

 tical stage of first contact with the whites, and in many cases 

 bids fair, at no distant date, to form an important constituent of 

 the civilized population of the country, and this even before the 

 native has been largely mingled with foreign blood. 



It is often said that the ultimate fate of the Red Man of North 

 America is absorption and extinction : just as European animals 

 introduced into Australia and other regions, frequently drive 

 those native of the country from their haunts, and may even 



