Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/357

Rh which gave him his ill-omened influence was Prime Minister of Manitoba.

Is there not some reason to believe that the seemingly episodic phenomenon which we have been contemplating is exceptional in degree rather than in kind; and that, much oftener than has been vulgarly supposed, in the advance westward of the American pioneer, he has made the dusky belle of the wigwam the partner in his toils and the mother of his children? For several reasons, some of them obvious enough, records of such unions are not easily obtainable. In census returns, one origin only is given. A person may choose to be set down as of European or Indian extraction, but he can not have paternity and maternity both specified; and, as to any remoter pedigree, the inquirer is left entirely in the dark. It is only in those rare cases where a half-breed has obtained prominence or notoriety, and comes to have his biography written, that the student of ethnology is enabled to add another to his repertory of instances. But, if the inquirer had only leisure and means enough to visit the border-lands of promise, he would be almost sure to glean facts that would surprise the incredulous. Miss Theodora R. Jenness, in telling her experience of a brief stay in the Indian Territory, makes frequent mention of mixed marriages and of the offspring thence resulting. Of well-behaved whites who wandered thither in search of fortune, she writes, "If a man goes there unmarried, he is apt to find a help-meet in an Indian maiden, there being many among the Cherokees and Choctaws who, for beauty and intelligence, compare favorably with any ladies in the States." She describes the upshot of a law passed in one of the Indian councils requiring all single white men to leave the colony, as "a lively skirmish after wives by bachelors and widowers whose business interests required them to remain." That the ladies who were, like Barkis, willing, were not unworthy of their suitors. Miss Jenness is quite assured. The fair Choctaw, who explained the ruse to her, she characterizes as "a sprightly lady, whose charming face and perfect grace would render her an ornament in any society of Boston or New York." In the distribution of cultivated lands among the Cherokees we find fifteen hundred acres allotted to the full-bloods, three thousand to those of mixed blood, and twelve thousand to the whites; but from these figures we can only conjecture the relative number of each category. It is evident, however, that the half-breeds are an appreciable element in the community. Among them allusion is made to the grand-niece of a commodore and niece of a senator, to whom Miss Jenness was introduced by "a blue-eyed Indian girl who taught languages, philosophy, and the higher mathematics," but had forgotten the use of her mother-tongue. The names of Ross, Adair, and Boudinot among the Cherokees, and of McIntosh, Grayson, Porter, and Stidham, among the Creeks, prepare us for the announcement that