^9^ NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



in Canada and 200 in Newfoundland. Today according to Father 

 Pacifique and the last official census there are 4319 members of the 

 tribe, of whom only 230 live in Newfoundland and about 15 in the 

 United States. 



It is thus very evident that the tribe has been one of extraordi- 

 nary vitality and has perpetuated itself and even multiplied in the 

 face of much the same conditions which brought about the depopu- 

 lation of every other aboriginal people of this hemisphere. Some 

 ethnologist with the proper psychologicah equipment might well seek 

 out the causes of this phenomenon. Evidently somewhere in their 

 composition or their environment, by nature or by grace, there has 

 lain a resistant virtue which other tribes have missed, though both 

 by nature and grace, their lands have not greatly invited the white 

 man's lust. 



It is not that these Indians have increased by excessive mixture 

 with the whites. This tendency to intermarriage has never been 

 general among the people nor has it essentially modified their 

 physical t3'pe. On the other hand, one can not fail of being im- 

 pressed with the perfection of the physiognomy and the sturdiness 

 of the physique in all the better men of the tribe. Father Pacifique 

 says : 



" It is true there have been many crosses, legitima^te and illegiti- 

 mate, but in a few generations the type will be fully restored. I have 

 observed that the last children of mixed families are less white 

 than the first born. Moreover their attachment to their beautiful 

 language is a guaranty of cohesion and permanence." 



The learned father has here noted a Mendelian factor of ultimate 

 force in insuring a stable or aboriginal type from variation, and 

 which is quite sure, in the mixture of races, eventually to dominate 

 the secondary or derived type represented in this case by the whites. 

 The Micmacs, too, hold to their original soil. Too many of our 

 aborigines have been shifted about, the shuttlecock of the white 

 man's designs, and find themselves today far away from their old 

 hunting grounds. The Micmac country was the extreme orient of 

 the Algonquins, and in the historic confederacy of this Algic stock 

 which once covered half the continent, they were the " youngest 

 brother," their land Migmagig, the *' country of friendship." The 

 " elder brother " was the Abenaki to the south and west, while the 

 " father tribe " was the Ottawa, their land the " land of their 

 orisrin." 



