ENGLISH HALF-BREEDS.
As different as is the patient roadster from the wild mustang, is the English speaking half-breed from the Metis. So early as 1775 the traveller, Alexander Henry, found Orkney employees in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company at Cumberland House. The Orkney Islands furnished so many useful men to the company that in 1816, when the Bois-brulés came to attack the colony, though the colonists were mostly Highlanders, they were called "Les Orcanais." Since 1821 the same supply of employees to the company has continued and increased with occasionally an admixture of Caithness-shire and other Highlanders.
Accordingly the English-speaking half-breeds are almost entirely of Scotch descent. From Hudson's Bay to distant Yukon the steady-going Orkney men have come with their Indian wives and half-breed children and made the Red River their home. We have but to mention such well-known respectable names as Inkster, Fobister, Setter, Harper, Mowat, Omand, Flett, Linklater, Tait, Spence, Monkman, and others, to show how valuable an element of population the English half-breeds have been, though, of course, there are those bearing these names as well who are of pure Orkney blood.