134 J. 0. SCHULTZ ON THE INNUITS, ETC. 



often, sinks and is lost when thus killed in or near the water. They have not, as yet, wholly 

 lost their independence of all the white man's arts, and are the only remaining aboriginal 

 people on the continent who, if the white man ofto-da^' were to be swept away, as were the 

 first they saw in the eleventh century, would still be self-supporting and wholly independent 

 of outside aid, and it seemed as though, when the curtain was lifted by arctic explorers of 

 the latter half of the last and the first half of the present century, giving us glimpses of 

 their life in their icy homes, that in these frigid solitudes, alioriginal mail had at last found a 

 permanent resting place, but we have seen that this is not to be the case, and he must do 

 battle with intoxicants and the diseases which have decimated nearly all of his kind on the 

 continent, and die out without we can bring to him the blessings as well as the curses of 

 civilization and economize him in some way to the public and his own good, unaided by the 

 strong arm of the government this cannot be done. Intoxicants, arms of precision and its 

 ammunition he must not have ; and this restriction our government can and should efi:ect ; 

 the gospel must be preached to him to undo the evil already accomplished, and this end 

 reached, it may be asked, " What then ? " The answer is this, leave him to pursue his 

 avocations till the time comes to economize him as a hunter, a boatman or pilot, the best of 

 assistants to a northern explorer. We know not yet what mineral riches are encased in 

 these rocks within the arctic circle, but we kuow that when, if ever such riches are discov- 

 ered, there exists the coal on the arctic coasts of Canada and on her islands of the great 

 northern archipelago to reduce and transport it. We know that vessels of the size of the 

 United States war steamer "Thetis" can with safety reach a secure Canadian harbour near 

 the mouth of the Mackenzie ; Count Sain ville, an amateur explorer, tells us of another har- 

 bour within the mouth of that longest of Canadian rivers with navigation for crafts of less 

 draught, and uninterrupted navigation is known to exist for fourteen hundred miles south- 

 ward. So that when the time comes, as come it will, that we may use the arctic natives in 

 work pertaining to what may yet be a great commerce, it will be found that their powers of 

 resisting cold and skill on the element to which they are bred from their earliest youth, will 

 render them possibly a very important factor in the future development of arctic Canada. 



That much may be done to elevate them while interfering but little with their mode of 

 life is evident from the success of the Greenland missionaries and of the devoted brethren 

 and others on the Labrador coast, and all who know of them will hope for this Innuit 

 people — the most interesting, as they are certainly the most homogeneous and widely extended 

 of all of the aboriginal tribes of either continent — that all the safeguards which a govern- 

 ment can give will be thrown about so peculiarly situated a portion other aboriginal people, 

 and that the gospel may.be preached to these dwellers of the white north, whose future for 

 good or ill Providence has placed in our hands as wards of the Canadian people. 



