Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/182

170 The facts related by Mr. Wilson concerning the crossing of the whites with the red Indians and the native races of the North are very instructive. Half-breeds of the local races have associated with Europeans, and been accepted as on terms of equality for a long time. The case has been regarded, however, as exceptional, and it has been believed that ultimately the Indians would be represented only by the relics buried with them in their tombs. Another belief is now gaining ground, that the Indian is not disappearing, but that a mixed race, full of vigor, is being developed faster than superficial observations have enabled us to perceive, and that the indigenous ethnological element is a factor of the population which is destined to exercise a permanent influence upon the Europeo-American race. The official reports show that the Indians have borne the test of endurance everywhere that they have been put upon reservations, as well as everywhere that they have been permitted to associate on equal terms with whites. Sufficient account has not been taken of the fact that the Indian population which thus gives so good an account of itself is not of pure blood. In the territory of the Hudson Bay Company alliances have been formed between both Scotch immigrants and Canadian French and the Indian women. The difference in paternity is revealed in the offspring, but in both cases the half-breeds are a large race and robust, have greater powers of endurance than the pure Indians, and are intellectually their superiors. Dr. Kane and Dr. Rae have noticed that the half-breeds of Greenland and Labrador are superior in every way to the pure Esquimaux. In these remote regions the mixed race may become fixed and endure; but, where contact with the white race is more constant and is renewed more frequently, the pure Indian blood will continue to diminish, and will at last disappear, not by extinction, but by absorption. Numerous facts may be adduced to show that this is taking place among the Sioux, among the Cherokees, and among the Indians of Canada. After several crossings the descendants at last pass for whites, and are lost from the account of the Indians, though still transmitting Indian blood. A Huron chief at Jeune-Lorette, Canada, had four children, three daughters and a son. Two of the daughters married French-Canadians, and the other daughter an Irishman; the son married a Scotch-Canadian woman. The children of the three daughters pass for Europeans, and only those of the son for Indians or half-breeds, although they are all mixed in an equal degree. The same is likely to take place in innumerable cases. Moreover, the white men select the most promising Indian girls, so that the Indians, by this process, give up their best stock to swell the account of the white race.

In the United States and Canada the numerical preponderance and constant influx of Europeans have, if we may use the term, masked the mixed race; but, in the border regions and the Northwest and in the Hudson Bay Company's territory, the local race and the settlers