INDIANS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN, 275 



Whether from cross-breeding or the ceaseless efforts of new 

 circumstances, the grey loose trowsers, heavy boots, cook-stove and 

 dry bed, will rapidly accelerate all these changes. It seems now by 

 the census returns, they have a slight increase ; yet the fewness of 

 children amongst them too surely proves a doomed race. From 

 the many returns of now nearly one hundred years, and my own 

 observations, to allow three children to one family is a very high 

 estimate. In some counties two, or two and one-half, was nearer 

 the truth. The very early marriages of thirteen or fourteen years 

 may conduce to this, as though many die in infancy, fewer are born 

 than amongst the whites. 



The race between change of habit and existence, will end in exist- 

 ence, marking the score. They will die out as Mic-Macs. They 

 have ceased to be forest hunters. No Indian lives, by the chase, 

 and although they are now generally spread over the Province, the 

 shores of the great Bay of Fundy will be their last haunt. The 

 attractions of porpoise-hunting, the only chase left them, and the 

 St. Francis Xavier reserve, the one settlement of Nova Scotia still 

 in existence, will keep them lingering around the Digby Gut. 

 Here they will lazily plant their barren fields, hunt porpoise, shoot 

 gulls, and make woodenware and baskets, fading away, the victims 

 of altered circumstances, as their congeners, the cariboo and the 

 moose, have done before them. 



It is evident that the time has long passed to consider them as 

 a nation, in approaching them for their good. The sooner all 

 national feeling, language and traditions are gone the better. They 

 must be approached as individual men and women, taught English, 

 to write, and to speak it. The English boot and trowsers have done 

 much for them. A few years ago many most sincere persons gave 

 large sums of money to civilize them. Their money and work were 

 all wasted, if not injuring the race they sincerely sought to benefit. 



followed by such rapid actions, like the recoil of a steel spring, is what no white man 

 may learn, — is hereditary. These powers remain in some individuals still, but the 

 individuals are fewer. But few hunt, and of the Indians collectively, it may now be 

 •aid they do not live by the chase. Basket making and woodenware, a little planting 

 of potatoes, selling porpoise oil, sometimes moose-meat, and a few furs, with occasional 

 hiring at stream driving, afford a miserable living to those who need ©nly food and; 

 othing, paying neither rent nor taxes. 



