320 ANTHROPOLOGY. 



excellent pemmican. Their fall and winter trade averages from seventy- 

 live to one hundred robes per family, each robe selling at from $o to $5. 

 Pemmican, a peculiar half-breed produce, is made as follows: The 

 lean meat of the buffalo is cut into thin slices; these are dried in the 

 sun. then pounded and compressed into a rawhide sack. An equal 

 amountof not fat is poured upon the meat and the sack is closed. Some- 

 times the berries of the amelanchier are added to the mass. Each sack 

 weighs from 100 to 150 pounds. The food thus prepared is tasteful, 

 wholesome, and keeps many months. 



VI. 



CHARACTER AND HABITS. 



Iii intellect, as in physique, the metis occupies a middle ground be- 

 tween the races from which he is issued. Combining many of the facul- 

 ties of both white and Indian, yet identified with neither, he is, in most 

 respects, a member of a distinct class of our population. 



Wherever I have met him, he has always appeared to me endowed 

 with many qualities of heart and of mind which readily develop and 

 ripen on contact with civilization. Even in the wilderness he bears 

 within himself the germs of a higher life which make him aspire to a 

 belter state. Unfortunately many circumstances have hitherto been 

 adverse to his advancement. His paternal ancestors, from whom he 

 derives the better part of himself, were but too often indifferent and 

 careless parents, noted for greediness and licentiousness. On the other 

 hand, until a very recent period, he had never felt the gentle and refin- 

 ing influence of civilized woman, either inside or outside the family cir- 

 cle. Even to-day many metis in the remote Northwest are still strangers 

 to it. Schools have also been scarce at many of their settlements, and 

 attendance at them often difficult. Their present degree of cultivation 

 in Manitoba and on the Saskatchewan is mainly due to the missionaries 

 who since ISIS have been laboring among them with unremitting zeal. 



In the character of the metis, when not perverted by bad associations, 

 we discover a guileless nature, easily swayed; a clear, but not strong 

 moral sense; good purposes, but weak will. Fickle and impulsive, they 

 are mostly free from greed, egotism, and seem incapable of deliberate, 

 calculating fraud. 



They are kind hearted, genial, and sympathetic, practicing in all its 

 patriarchal fullness the virtue of hospitality. Generous even to a fault, 

 often prodigal, they cheerfully share all they have with friends or even 

 strangers, sometimes to the point of depriving themselves of necessities. 

 Such generosity is often indiscreet; it encourages a set of idlers and 

 drones who are a burden upon the community. Whenever destitute, 

 they ask from their neighbors as freely as they give. There is among 

 them ( Lves a sort of spontaneous freemasonry which unites them in the 

 bonds of good-fellowship, but without any prejudice to the claims of 



