THE FRENCH HALF-BREEDS OF THE NORTHWEST. 311 



Iii the forest, among the Hurons or Ottawas, he gave himself up to 

 the ease and abandon of his adopted-home life, and let loose the cur- 

 rent of his lower instincts. Divested of all the proprieties of his former 

 civilized life, painted and tattooed, with feathered hat and beaded gar- 

 ments, he gaily danced with the braves or gravely smoked the calumet 

 at the conned of the tribe. 



The first admixture of French with Indian blood was the natural re- 

 sult of the bush-rangers' mode of life; admitted to all the privileges of 

 members of the tribes, they courted the facile dusky beauties and won 

 them either as wives or concubines. They visited th£ natives of Sault 

 Ste. Marie as early as 1654, had made a rendezvous of Mackinac before 

 the establishment of the mission in 1071, and had a stockade at Detroit 

 long before Du Shut fortified it in 1686. In all their migrations a 

 cordial welcome was always extended them by the Indians of the lakes 

 and of the Illinois country, and their first mixed-blood offspring can be 

 traced baric to about the middle of the seventeenth century. 



We have strong evidences that, before the. conquest, the French had 

 explored the Northwest, along the Saskatchawan and the Missouri, as 

 far as the Rocky Mountains. They had important trading posts in the 

 Winnipeg Basin and on the Upper Mississippi. After their downfall, 

 shunning their conquerors, they emigrated from Canada, in large num- 

 bers, to the distant Western settlements, and were thus thrown into 

 still more intimate relations with the Indians. Then was organized the 

 famous British Northwest Company, which enrolled under its Hag all 

 the Canadians who had served at the various posts on the frontiers. It 

 occupied the regions hitherto held by the French and, later, extended 

 its operations even beyond the Rocky Mountains. When it became ab- 

 sorbed by its more powerful rival, the Hudson Bay Company, in 1821, 

 the Canadians continued to be the most numerous and valuable servants 

 of the new organization. They were likewise a very important element 

 in the formation and management of the various American fur compa- 

 nies. It may be safely stated that, at the end of the first quarter of the 

 present century. French engages were found at all the posts of the British 

 and American fur companies from Lake Superior to Vancouver's Island, 

 and from the Great Slave Lake to the Lower .Missouri. 



Whenever they became independent they generally formed settlements 

 in the neighborhood of the companies' posts. The Lake Winnipeg Basin, 

 first discovered and colonized by Dela Verendrye, in 1743, and, after the 

 conquest, the center of the operations of the Northwest and 1 liaison 

 Bay Companies, has always contained a large population of French 

 Canadians and half-breeds. Before Lord Selkirk began his settlement 

 on Red River, in 1811, they had considerable villages at Pembina and 

 Fort Rouge. Inter Fort Carry. From Winnipeg they spread most along 

 the great arteries of trade and travel the Assiniboin and Saskatchawan 

 Rivers. On the Pacific coast their principal colonies were at Fort Van- 

 couver, Walla Walla, and other points on the Columbia. 



