454 HYBBIDITY AND ABSORPTION 



Again, the Indian Agent directs attention to the wide diversity in 

 habits, or condition, of different Indian tribes. The Portage Indians 

 are hunters, living in buffalo-skin lodges on the prairies ; the St. 

 Peter Indians form permanent settlements, not only of birch-bark 

 wigwams, but many of them have built log-houses for themselves. 

 Even among the tribes already settling down to steady agricultural 

 labour, such as the Saulteux and Swampies of Manitoba, a very great 

 difference, both in sentiments and customs, prevails. 



But the work of settlement and incipient civilization proceeds 

 apace. Thirty-four Indian families from one tribe in Pembina are 

 reported by the Agent as demanding their allocation of farms ; the 

 chiefs and head men of other tribes are in negotiation for farming 

 implements, stock, etc. ; and some of their demands curiously illustrate 

 the form in which the new life thus opening up to them presents its 

 most tempting aspects. Hoes, axes, and other indispensable imple- 

 ments have been readily granted to them. Ploughs, harrows, and 

 oxen are in request, and have been conceded or promised where the 

 Government Agent is satisfied that they will be turned to good 

 account. But in special demand is "a bull and cow for each chief, 

 and a boar for each reserve." "There was another promise," says 

 Mr. Molyneux St. John, in writing to the Indian Superintendent, 

 " a promise the Indians never omit to mention — that they should be 

 supplied with a male and female of each animal used by a farmer." 



But besides the proper agricultural requisites of oxen, ploughs, 

 breeding-stock, seed, and farming iitensils generally, every chief 

 demands a distinguishing dress for himself and two of his braves ; 

 and, above all — with an appreciation of the essential symbol of 

 civilized respectability which cannot fail to gratify one foremost 

 English philosopher, — the treaty signed at the Lower Fort on the 3rd 

 of August, 1871, has since been supplemented by a memorandum, 

 guaranteeing "for each chief, except Yellow Quill, a buggy," — in 

 other words, a gig, Carlyle's famed symbol of respectability ! 



Mr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, and other searchers after an initial 

 civilization, are puzzled at times to determine wherein its essential 

 essence shall be assumed to consist. But when the chiefs of wild tribes 

 of the ISTorth-west mount their gigs, it is not to be doubted that a 

 new order of things has begun there. Here, then, we see the inaugu- 

 ration of a condition of things which must lead to the settlement of 

 a numerous native population alongside of the White colonists of the 



