434 HYBRIDITY AND ABSORPTION 



that they may, if possible, as the ultimate result of their exertions^, 

 enjoy advantages at least equal to those of their former state." 



In tracing this satisfactory state of things to its source, the Com- 

 missioners of the United States fail to notice one important element 

 in the management of Indian aifaii-s in Canada, viz., that the Indian 

 Department is wholly unaffected by political changes. Its officers' 

 and agents hold their appointments permanently, and so become 

 identified with their Indian wards, instead of being tempted — as in 

 the case of the Indian agents of the United States, — to regard their 

 appointment as a temporary one, to be turned to 'account mainly for 

 their own aggrandisement. But it cannot be overlooked that hitherto 

 the Canadian Government has had to deal with the Indian tribes 

 within its borders under greatly more favourable circumstances than 

 those in which the G-overnment of the United States has stood in 

 relation to its wild native tribes ; and only now, with the extension 

 of the Dominion, and the union of the vast territories of the North- 

 west, and of the Pacific shores, under a common rule, is the Canadian 

 Government called to cope with difficulties in some degree analogous 

 to those which the United States has had to encounter in relation to 

 the wild savage tribes of the unsettled, or partially occupied, terri- 

 tories in the west and south. 



The great North-west, with its warlike Chippewas, Crees, Sioux, 

 and Blackfeet; and beyond the Rocky Mountains its Babeens, Clalams, 

 Newatees, Chinooks, Cowlitz, and numerous other native tribes : had 

 till recently been under the control of the all-powerful fur-trading Com- 

 pany of Hudson's Bay. The interests of the fur-traders stimulated 

 them to fair and honourable dealing with the native tribes ; and 

 while they had no motive to encourage the Indians to abandon their 

 nomadic life for the civilised habits of a settled people, or even to 

 interpose in the wars which varied the monotony of the Indians' wild 

 hunter-life, they had so thoroughly won the confidence of the natives, 

 that tribes at open enmity with each other were ready to repose equal 

 confidence in the Hudson's Bay factors. 



The late Paul Kane, author of " Wanderings of an Artist among 

 the Indians of North America," informed me that when travelling 

 beyond the Rocky Mountains he found no difficulty in transmitting 

 his correspondence home, even when among the rudest Flathead 

 savages. His packet, entrusted to one of the tribe, was accompanied 

 with a small gift of tobacco, and the request to have it foi-warded to 



