Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/314

294 abandon of their once civilized visitors. The French thus from the first won an influence over their savage intimates which the English never in the slightest degree attained, nor even seem to have desired to win. I have noticed many slight but most significant tokens of the fact, that, when in some occasionally critical emergencies it was quite important for the English to conciliate or draw into action with them any one conspicuous individual, party, or tribe of the Indians, the work was set about in a blundering, dictatory, or harsh way, which would seem likely to defeat the object aimed for. “Brothers,” or “Children,” was the term constantly on the lips of the French in addressing the natives. I do not find the words as ever employed by the Puritan fathers of New England. The French priests were always more than willing to unite a Frenchman and an Indian woman in Christian wedlock. I cannot conceive that John Eliot would have approved or sanctioned the relation between one of his own countrymen and the most pious woman among his native converts. The few lingering remnants of the old tribes in New England are all of them of blood mixed from the African. Not many, if indeed any, specimens of this mixture could be found among the half-breeds of the North and the West. Had it ever been desirable or likely that the solution of the problem of two races on this continent should have been sought or found in their assimilation, the French would have been the most likely medium for securing the result. They had, indeed, made considerable progress towards it, and many every way respectable and flourishing families in Canada and the Red River region attest its degree of success.

If ever, in any case under the stress of circumstances and exigencies, the French felt a distrust or dread of the Indians, or were watchful of their craft and treachery, they took pains to conceal all tokens of the sort. When strolling Indians or chiefs on business errands visited the French trading-posts or forts, they were made much of;