442 HYBRIDITY AND ABSORPTION 



undesigned, experiment as to the influence of hybridity on the per- 

 petuation of the race ; and show the raixed descendants of Huron 

 and French blood still, after a lapse of uj)wards of two centuries, 

 betraying no traces of a tendency towards infertility or extinction. 



In the Maritime Provinces the Micmacs are the representatives of 

 the aboriginal owners of the soil. Small encampments of them may ■ 

 be encountered in summer on the lower St. Lawrence, busily engaged 

 in the manufacture of staves, barrel-hoops, axe-handles, and baskets 

 of variovxs kinds, which they dispose of, with much shrewdness, to 

 the traders of Quebec, and the smaller towns on the Gulf. So far as 

 I have seen, the pure blood Micmac has more of the dark red, iii 

 contrast to the prevalent olive hue, than other Indians. But the 

 Micmacs of Nova Scotia and 'New Brunswick reveal the same evidence 

 of inevitable amalgamation with the predominant race as elsewhere. 

 Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, recently applied to the Rev. S. T. Band — 

 a devoted missionary labouring among the Indians of Nova Scotia, — 

 to obtain for him a photograph of a pure blood representative of the 

 tribe. He had some diflficulty in finding a single example, and states 

 that not one is to be found among the yoxmger generation. 



In the old Provinces here referred to, the Indians are in the 

 minority; but the same process is apparent where little bands of 

 pioneers leave the settled Provinces and States to begia new clearings, 

 or to engage in the adventurous life of hunters and trappers, in the 

 Far West. The hunter finds a bride among the native women ; and 

 when at length the wild tribe recedes before the growing clearing 

 and the diminished supplies of game, it not only leaves behind a 

 Half-breed population as the nucleus of the civilized community ; but 

 it also carries away with it a like element, increasingly afiecting the 

 ethnical character of the whole tribe, so long as it is perpetuated' 

 throiigh younger generations. 



The same circumstances have continued, in every frontier settle- 

 ment, to involve the inevitable production of a race of Half-breeds, 

 Even the cruellest exterminations of hostile tribes have rarely been 

 carried out so efiectvially as to preclude this. In New England, for 

 example, after the desolating war of 1637, which resulted in the 

 extinction of the Pequot tribe, Winthrop thus summarily records the 

 policy of the victors: "We sent the male children to Bermuda by 

 Mr. William Pierce, and the women and maid children are disposed 

 about in the towns." Such a female population could not grow up in 



