OF THE BED INDIAN RACE. 465 



iiave profited "by the change. I know of several who have bought 

 farms in onr neighbourhood, and are now living in comfort. Others 

 have emigrated to the States, where they have almost all prospered, 

 and where several of them have raised themselves to honourable 

 positions." Wherever the Indian has been left to his own resources, 

 accoi'ding to the report of this friendly but impartial observer, 

 he is seen to thrive. "But here," he says — i. e., on the Indian 

 Reserve — " we see nothing of the kind. Nevertheless, I observe a 

 large number of young men, clever, intelligent and gifted with 

 remarkable talents." Of these Abenakis of St. Francis there is not 

 a pure-blood Indian among them. They are already, physically as 

 well as morally, in the transitional stage ; and, to all appearance, 

 ^.bundantly prepared for the final process of emancipation, and for 

 casting in their lot with the rest of the community. 



By such a process the native race will unquestionably disappear as 

 such ; but it will not perish, like the wild races, extirpated by disease, 

 dissipation, or deliberate massacre. It will be taken up, by absorp- 

 tion, into the common stock, just as the specific nationality of English, 

 Scotch, German, or French, is merged in the Anglo- American or Cana- 

 dian people. It is the same process by which the world's old historic 

 and unhistoric races were, ia earlier centuries, blended into elements 

 out of which younger nations have sprung. The statistics of the 

 most civilized and long-settled Indian tribes of Canada and the United 

 States give no indication that the intermixture of red and white blood — 

 though to a considerable extent carried out under unfavourable cir- 

 'Cumstances, — leads to degeneracy or sterility. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan 

 — well known for his valuable researches into the tribal systems of 

 relationship and consanguinity, — ^in replying to inquiries I had sub- 

 mitted to him relative to the extent of hybridity traceable in the 

 United States, remarks, as the result of peculiarly favourable oppor- 

 tunities of observation, that the native races "have taken up enough 

 white blood in past generations, through the traders and frontier men, 

 since 1700, to lighten their colour from one-sixth to one-fourth." He 

 thus entertains the belief that even remote tribes have imdergone con- 

 siderable modification by this means ; and this entirely accords with 

 what has been shown in relation to the Half-breeds of Manitoba and 

 the North- West. Mr. Morgan has enjoyed peculiarly favourable 

 opportunities of observing the frontier wild tribes ia the Territories 

 *0f the United States ; . and he confirms, by his own experience, the 



