54 CEEES. 



It is from among the Eythinyuwuk that most 

 of the servants of the Fur Companies, who have 

 married native women, have selected their wives ; 

 few of them having chosen Chepewyan females, and 

 no one, I believe, an Eskimo maiden. From these 

 marriages a large half-breed population has arisen, 

 which will ere long work a change in the fur trade, 

 and in the condition of the whole native popula- 

 tion. In character, the half-breeds vary according 

 to their paternity ; the descendants of the Orkney 

 labourers, in the employ of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, being generally steady, provident agri- 

 culturists of the Protestant faith; while the children 

 of the Roman Catholic Canadian voyagers have 

 much of the levity and thoughtlessness of their 

 fathers, combined with that inability to resist 

 temptation, which is common to the two races from 

 whence they are sprung. Most of the half-breeds 

 have been settled by the Hudson's Bay Company 

 in the colony of Osnaboya, which extends for fifty 

 miles along the banks of the Red River of Lake 

 Winipeg. Of the six thousand souls, to which the 

 mixed population of this settlement is said to 

 amount, three fifths are stated by Mr. Simpson to 

 be Roman Catholics ; while the valuable property 

 is mostly in the hands of the remaining two fifths, 

 who own sixteen out of eighteen wind and water 

 mills, erected within the precincts of the colony. 



