OF THE RED INDIAN RACE. 451 



a considerable population, with all the ordinary characteristics of a 

 frontier town, of whom few had not obvious traces of Indian blood 

 in their veins, from the immediate Metis, or Half-breed, to the slightly- 

 marked, remote descendant of Indian maternity, recognizable by the 

 abundant straight black hair, the square jaw, and a singular watery 

 glaze in the dark eye, not unlike that of an English gipsy. At all 

 White settlements on the frontiers, or in the vicinity of Indian 

 reserves, a similar mixed population is to be seen, emplo3^ed not only 

 as fishers, trappers, and lumberers, but engaged on equal terms with 

 the Whites in the trade and business of the place. In this condition 

 the population of every frontier settlement exists, and, but for the 

 enormous dialect emigration from Europe, must have largely affected 

 the Anglo-American race. For while, as the new settlements fill up 

 with a permanent population, the uncivilized Indians retire into the 

 forest, the civilized Half-breeds cast in their lot with the settlers. No 

 prejudice intex-feres with their enjoyment of a perfect social equality, 

 and they disappear at last, not by extinction, but by absorption. The 

 traces of Indian maternity are gradually effaced by the numerical 

 preponderance of the European race ; but the native element survives 

 in the mixed community, just as Australioid, Turanian, Iberian, or 

 other prehistoric races, still perpetuate their ethnical characteristics 

 in the Melanochroi of Western Europe. 



Everywhere colonization begins with a migration of males, and 

 by-and-by the cry comes from Australia, Tasmania, Canada, and else- 

 where, for female emigration. It is a state of things old as the 

 dispersion of the human race, and typified in such ancient legends as 

 the Roman Hape of the Sabines. The abstract of the United States 

 census of 1860 showed that the old settled states of New England 

 are affected even more than European counti'ies by this inevitable 

 source ' of dispai-ity of the sexes. In Massachusetts, at that date, 

 the females outnumbered the males by upwards of 37,000 ; while in 

 Indiana, on the contrary, they fell short of the males by 48,000. 



In the latter case, on a frontier state, where the services of the 

 Indian women must necessarily be turned to account in any attempt 

 at domestic life, intermixture between the native and intruding races 

 is mevitable; and the feeling with which it is regarded finds expres- 

 sion constantly throughout the genuine New World lyrics of Joaquin 

 Miller, with his " brown bride won from an Indian town :" 



" Where some were blonde and sonae were brown. 

 And all as brave as Sioux." 



