274 INDIANS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 



Recollecting that these changes are as ceaselessly working upon 

 ourselves, we cannot but marvel at the strong cohesiveness of 

 race that has kept him so little unaltered. Give him back his well 

 stored forest and stream and one generation would obliterate his 

 whole civilization. 



It is generally said our Indians are changing from mixed blood. 

 No doubt there is some truth in this, as the white names continu- 

 ally occurring amongst them prove ; but as far as my own 

 researches, principally amongst the western families, have 

 reached, I think this is only by illicit intercourse, — the child taking 

 the name of its father. I never saw but one Indian with a white 

 wife, and I have only known two white men living amongst them. 

 One of them was married. I saw one negro, whose half-breed 

 child showed so many signs of unconformability of races ; and a& 

 I have never met her afterwards, or but a single trace of her descend- 

 ants since, I think the cast has died out. The Indians themselves 

 remarked it. " Me tink," said old Molly to me, " Indian squaws 

 with wool, nasty, nasty." 



The Biologist would have been equally disgusted, but would 

 not have failed to note the Mongolian and Caucasian were more 

 nearly allied than the negro. 



These remarks are based upon the Nova Scotia Indian, as we 

 know from the statement of the late Colonel Chearnley, Indian 

 Commissioner, that a race of half-breeds between the French and 

 Indians of Cape Breton, were rivalling both parents in stature and 

 habits. Yet it must be confessed that a lighter colour, a tendency 

 to fatness, especially in the women, and a smoothness of contour 

 as regards form, and a loss of that so pleasant scanty tongue (the 

 words dropping out bo unwillingly), is stealing amongst them* 



* These observations are made principally from the idle groups of men, women and 

 children hanging around our country villages, or their own summer camp. Yet, it 

 is but fair to the Indian to say that, seen in the forest or in the hunting grounds, all 

 the old instincts of his race start out, clothed though he may have been in skins, blue 

 hunting frock or grey trowsers, — his exact knowledge of localities, day or night, his 

 keen observations of all animal signs, and his power of forming rapid and true con- 

 clusions from them. Unlike white men, he never works lazily, although off work 

 none can excel him in it. He tracks his game with all his might, — eye, ear, foot, 

 touch, is strained to their utmost intensity. His pose, shooting porpoise from his frail 

 canoe, is a study for an artist. Such seemingly careless repose, such nice balancing, 



