HYBRIDITY AND ABSORPTION OP THE RED INDIAN RACE. 433 



But, apart from the invariable accompaniments of savage life, there 

 is nothing repellant in the ethnical characteristics of the American 

 aborigines ; and even in border States, where the Indian savage is 

 regarded with mingled aversion and contempt, the civilized Half-breed 

 is admitted to an equality which neither wealth nor culture can secure 

 for the Mulatto. This is even more apparent in British America, 

 where the Negro long enjoyed a political equality with the White un- 

 known even in the Free States. There, also, from whatever cause, the 

 relations between the aborigines and the colonists have been greatly 

 more satisfactory than any that have prevailed either in Spanish 

 America or the United States ; and one notable result has been, not 

 only the partial preservation of the native race, but the growth of a 

 remarkable Half-breed population, under circumstances of special 

 interest to the ethnologist. 



The favourable results of the policy of the British American Gov- 

 ernment, in its dealings with the Indian tribes, attracted the atten- 

 tion of the Congress of the United States in recent years ; and in 

 1870 a commission was appointed "to inquire into, and repoi-t upon, 

 the treatment of the Indians within the Dominion of Canada, their 

 present condition, and the means employed to bring them into habits 

 of civilization." In the report resulting from this it is stated, " It 

 is now an established fact that the Indians of Canada have passed 

 through the most critical era of transition from barbarism to civiliza- 

 tion ; and the assimilation of their habits to those of the White race 

 is so far from threatening their gradual extinction, that it is produc- 

 ing results directly opposite. The official reports of the Government, 

 published in 1869 and many previous years, furnish cautious but 

 deliberate and concurrent testimony to beneficial progress in the 

 modes of life of the Indians of Ontario and Quebec. One of the 

 most positive indications on this point is their numerical increase 

 during the last quarter of a century." 



In the same report this tribute is paid to the administration of 

 Indian affairs in Canada : " The Government has felt a just sense 

 of the responsibility devolved upon it; has seen the necessity of 

 treating the Indians temporarily as wards, or minors j has assumed 

 a. friendly and painstaking guardianship over them ; and seems prac- 

 tically to have adopted the principle that whatever may have been 

 the original stipulation in purchasiiig their lands, the proper measure 

 of compensation is to place and maintain them in such a condition 



