760 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol. xxvm. 



which seems to work equally well under circumstances widely different. In the 

 back settlements of Canada, as on the stormy shores of Labrador, among the warring 

 tribes of tlie plains, or in t lie frozen regions of the far north, it seems to be alike suc- 

 cessful. An organization so perfect can only be traced to the agency of superior man- 

 agement, and L am of tlie opinion that the success of the United Companies is as 

 much due to the high talent of the officers who have the direction of their affairs as 

 to other circumstances to which it is more frequently attributed, and there can be no 

 doubt that the same judgment, care, and economy, brought to bear on any pursuit 

 w^ould meet with a very marked measure of success. 



In courses of u speech delivered in Wiiinipeg- in October, 1881, the 

 Mar(|iiis of Lome, then g-overnor-general of Canada and now Duke 

 of Aroyll. s:iid: 



Let me ad\ert ft)r t>ne moment to some of the causes which have enabled settlers 

 in this vast noithwest country to enjoy in such peace the fruits of their industry. 

 Chief among these nuist be reckoned the policy of kindness and justice which was 

 inaugurated b)' the Hudson's Bay Company in their treatment of the Indians. 

 There is one of the causes in which a traders's association has upheld the maxim 

 "Honesty is the best policy," even when you are dealing with savages. The wis- 

 dom and righteousness of their dealing on enlightened principles, which are fully 

 followed out by their servants to-day, gave the cue to the Canadian government. 

 The Dominion to-day, through her Indian officers and her mounted constabulary, is 

 showing herself the inheritress of those traditions. She has l>een fortunate in organ- 

 izing the mounted police force, a corps of whose services it would be impossible to 

 speak too highly. 



At tlie same |)la(e a few years earlier the late Marquis of Dufferin 

 expressed himself as follows: 



There is no doubt that a great deal of the good feeling existing among the red men 

 and ourselves is due to the influence and interposition of that invaluable class of 

 men, the half-breed settler and pioneer of Manitoba, who, combining, as they do, 

 the hardihood, the endurance, and love of enterprise generated by the strain of 

 Indian blood in tlicir veins with the civilization, the institutions, and the intellectual 

 power deriveil fi-oni their fathers, have preached the gospel of peace and good will 

 and mutual respect with equally beneficent results to the Indian chieftain in his 

 lodge and tlie British settler in his shanty. They have been the ambassadors 

 between the East and the West, the interpreters of civilization, with its exigencies, 

 to the dwellers on the prairie, as well as the exponents to the white men of the 

 consideration justly due to the susceptibilities, the sensitive self-respect, the preju- 

 dices, the innate sense of justice of the Indian race. In fact, they have done for the 

 colony wliat would otherwise have been left unaccomplished and have introduced 

 between the white population and the red man a traditional feeling of amity and 

 friendship which, but for them, it might have been impossible to establish. Nor 

 can I pass by the humane, kindly, and considerate attention which has distinguished 

 the Hudson's Bay Company in its dealings with the native population. But though 

 giving credit to these fortunate influences among the causes that are conducing to 

 produce and pre!cr\e the happy result, the place of honor must be adjudged to that 

 honorable and generous i»olicy which has been preserved by successive governments 

 of Canada toward the Indian, which at this moment is being superintended and car- 

 ried out by your ])i-esent lieutenant-governor, under which the extinction of the 

 Indian title upon liberal terms has invariaJ)ly been recognized as a necessary 

 prelimiiKiry to the occupation of a single scjuare yard of native territory. 



