OF THE RED INDIAN RACE. 461 



Territory, rendered the following returns to an officer appointed to 

 take the census : " Seven hundred Half-breeds, two hundred Indians, 

 six hundred and three carts, six hundred horses, two hundred oxen, 

 four hundred dogs, and one cat." This may illustrate the general 

 character of a people partaking of the nomade habits of the Indian, 

 and yet possessed of much movable property and real estate. They 

 are a hardy race, capable of enduring the greatest privations. They 

 have adopted the Roman Catholic faith, and specially covet the 

 presence of a priest with them when on their hunting expeditions. 

 Mass is then celebrated on the open prairie, and is regarded as 

 a guarantee of success in the hunting-field. On such expeditions, it 

 has to be borne in view, they are not tempted either by mere love of 

 the chase or by the prospect of a supply of game. Winter-hunting 

 furnishes to the trapper the valued peltries of the fur-bearing animals. 

 But on the summer and au.tumn buflfalo hunts depend the supply of 

 the pemmican, which long formed one of the main resources of the 

 whole Hudson's Bay population. The summer hunt keeps them 

 abroad on the prairie from about the 15 th of June to the end of 

 August, and smaller bands resume the hunt in the autumn. With 

 this as the favourite and engrossing work of the tribe, it is inevita- 

 ble that farming can be carried on only in the most desultory fashion. 

 Nevertheless, the severity of the winter compels them to make 

 provision for the numerous horses and oxen on which the summer 

 hunt depends. Thus habits of industxy and forthought are engen- 

 dered ; and as the inevitable tendency of the new condition of things 

 must be to bring buffalo-hunting to an end, the tribes of Half-breed 

 hunters will be gradually compelled to take their place as members of 

 the industrious farming and trading community. 



The isolation of Manitoba, though not likely to be long perpetu- 

 ated, is favourable to the transitional stage of this singular hybrid 

 race. They are mostly of Cree descent, so far as they are of Indian 

 blood ; but they manifest no inclination to associate with the native 

 tribes. The Sioux and Blackfeet they regard as their natural 

 enemies, and carry on warfare with them much after the fashion of 

 the Indian tribes that have acquired firearms and horses; but they 

 give proof of their "Christian" civilization by taking no scalps. In 

 the field, whether preparing for hunting or war, the supeiiority of the 

 Half-breeds is strikingly apparent. They then display a discipline, 

 tjourage and self-control, of which the "wild Sioux, Crees, or Blackfet t 



