ilAlVIMALS OF NORTHERN CANADA 277 



such peace the fruits of their industry. Chief among these must 

 be reckoned the policy of kindness and justice which was inaug- 

 urated by the Hudson's Bay Company In their treatment of the 

 Indians. There is one of the causes In which a traders' association 

 has upheld the maxim " Honesty is the best policy," even when 

 you are dealing with savages. The wisdom and righteousness of 

 their dealing on enlightened principles, which are fully followed 

 out by their servants to-day, gave the cue to the Canadian Govern- 

 ment. The Dominion to-day, through her Indian officers and her 

 mounted constabulary, is showing herself the inheritress of those 

 traditions. She has been fortunate in organizing the Mounted 

 Police force, a corps of whose services it would be impossible to 

 speak too highly. 



At the same place, a few years earlier, the late Marquis 

 of DufFerin expressed himself as follows: 



There is no doubt that a great deal of the good feeling existing 

 among the red men and ourselves is due to the influence and inter- 

 position of that invaluable class of men, the half-breed settler and 

 pioneer of Manitoba, who, combining as they do the hardihood, the 

 endurance and love of enterprise generated by the strain of Indian 

 blood in their veins, with the civilization, the institutions, and the 

 intellectual power derived from their fathers, have preached the 

 gospel of peace and good-will and mutual respect, with equally 

 beneficent results to the Indian chieftain in his lodge and the British 

 settler In his shanty. They have been the ambassadors between 

 the East and the "West, the interpreters of civilization, with Its 

 exigencies, to the dwellers on the prairie, as well as the exponents 

 to the white men of the consideration justly due to the suscepti- 

 bilities, the sensitive self-respect, the prejudices, the innate sense 

 of justice of the Indian race. In fact, they have done for the 

 colony what would otherwise have been left unaccomplished, and 

 have introduced between the white population and the red man a 

 traditional feeling of amity and friendship which, but for them. 

 It might have been Impossible to establish. Nor can I pass by the 

 humane, kindly and considerate attention which has distinguished 

 the Hudson's Bay Company in its dealings with the native popu- 

 lation. But though giving credit to these fortunate Influences 

 among the causes that are conducing to produce and preserve the 

 happy result, the place of honour must be adjudged to that honour- 

 able and generous policy which has been preserved by successive 

 Governments of Canada toward the Indian, which at this moment 

 Is being superintended and carried out by your present Lieutenant- 



