350 
During the century and a half of their contact with Europeans 
all these west coast tribes have undergone less intermixture, indeed, 
but a far greater decline than the tribes of eastern Canada who have 
been subjected to similar influences for four centuries. For the 
Europeans who took possession of the Pacific coast were farther 
advanced in civilization than the piimitive farmers and fur trappers 
who had settled in the east. Machinery and rapid transportation 
were ushering in a new age that the Indians could not comprehend 
and in which they found no place. Their complex social organiza- 
tion, so different from that of any European country, broke down 
completely. The grades in their society had no significance for the 
invading whites, and the potlatches that helped to give these grades 
stability fell under the ban of the law. Slavery was abolished, and 
the new individualism that gave even the ex-slave an equal oppor- 
tunity with the noble destroyerl the balance and order in the 
“houses” and clans. Heversion to the old conditions was impos- 
sible, and whither the new would lead no one could foresee. The 
Indians can still provide cheap labour in the fish canneries, but there 
they compete with more industrious and efficient labourers from China 
anri Japan. The reserves to which they are confined contain fertile 
tracts of land, but Indians untrained to agriculture cannot rival either 
Europeans or Chinese in the cultivation of the soil or the marketing 
of their products. Socially they are outcasts, economically they are 
inefficient and an encumbrance. Their old world has fallen in ruins, 
ami, helpless in the face of a catastrophe they cannot understand, 
they vainly seek refuge in its shattererl foundations. The end of this 
century, it seems safe to predict, will see very few survivors. 
