THE HALF-BREED. 11 



France and England g-ave rise to conflicting claims of discovery and possession, the former 

 basing an alleged prior right on the assertion that Jean Bourdon, a French navigator, had 

 entered Hudson Bay in 1656. Similarly opposing pretensions were subsequently made by 

 the fur companies as to the opening up of the interior. The explorations of the Verandryes, 

 father and sons, lasted from 1*731 to 1'752. After the Concj[uest of Canada, the fur trade 

 ceased for several years ; but in 1*766 Montrealers began to push northward. Others subse- 

 quently maintained that it was not tiiri774, when they and the Hudson's Bay Company's 

 agents met at Fort Cumberland on the Saskatchewan, that the latter reached the interior 

 of the country. It was shown, on the other hand, that Henry Kelsey, a Hudson's Bay 

 Bay Company man, had got as far as the plain country west and south of Lake Winnipeg 

 as early as 1691, or forty years before the Verandrye family began their great enterprises. 

 The North-West Company, formed by the association of all the merchants engaged in the 

 fur trade, was formally established in 1*783-4. Some years later a rival company was 

 started, but both these united in 1*78*7. In 1*798 there was a secession and another off-shoot 

 from the North- West Company in 1805 was called the X. Y. Company. In 1821, after the 

 Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies had been almost ruined by troubles of one kind 

 or another, an understanding was reached and the two bodies were henceforth known by 

 the name of the older. No doubt, from the first arrival of Europeans in the Northwest, 

 there had, as already intimated, been less or more intermarriage or other alliances between 

 them and the natives. At any rate, from the time that the Montreal traders began 

 their enterprise in 1*766, their agents, mostly French Canadians, mingled freely with 

 the Indians, and the consequence was the growth of a half-breed population. When 

 the Earl of Selkirk began his colonization in 1811, there was a considerable community 

 of them, known by their own chosen designation of Bois-Brulês, though then, as 

 later, they often assumed the ambitious name of the " New Nation." That the Bois- 

 Brulés were not all of French origin, may be inferred from some of their names which are 

 Scotch (or English). But the English-speaking half-breeds proper date their first appear- 

 ance from the years immediately following the establishment of Lord Selkirk's Red River 

 Colony. In the latter year, making allowance for subseqvient migrations, they numbered 

 about 200. By 18Y0 the half-breeds and métis of Manitoba, as we may distinguish those 

 of British and French origin, numbered about 10,000. Besides them there was a tribe of 

 métis hunters, numbering at one time 6,000, and a metis population of uncertain number 

 scattered through the Northwest, not to speak of the large population of half-breeds 

 among the Indian bands living on reservations in the older provinces. 



The original new-comers under Lord Selkirk's auspices were Orkney Islanders, but 

 they were subsequently increased by English, Scotch, and French Canadians. Here, how- 

 ever, as in the more remote Hudson's Bay Company forts and trading posts, the white 

 immigration consisted chiefly of young men, and the natural consequence has been the 

 growth of a half-breed population, distinct in manners, habits and allegiance, from both 

 the whites and the Indians. Dr. AVilson considers the rise in this way of an indepen. 

 dant tribe of half-breeds as " one of the most remarkable phenomena connected with 

 the grand ethnological experiment which has been in progress on the North American 

 continent for the last three centuries." Noting the difference of character between those 

 of French and those of British paternity, he considers the former more lively and fi-auk, 

 but also less stable and industrious. They are large and robust, with great power of en- 



