Sitting by the camp fire I have often watched the immobile countenance of the savage, (if such a name is applicable), and refrained from making any suggestion as I wondered what was passing through his mind; whether his thoughts were simply of the earth earthy, or whether there was enjoyment in the contemplation of higher things. Does nature, of which he is a child, furnish him with her richer gifts? If so, then he should seldom be without enjoyment, for certainly his life is spent close to her very heart.
Without pretending to answer these questions I am not unwilling to reaffirm what I have said before, that in the uncivilised man we have just as great a divergence of character as we have in civilised society.
That some among them take pleasure in and are appreciative of the beautiful in nature is certain, and few there are who do not enjoy melody, whether expressed in the semi-religious chants or the more melodious songs of the feathered creation.
I must refer to one other characteristic which seems common to the North American Indian irrespective of the tribe to which he may belong, and that is his superiority over most civilised nations in his good humour. It is very rare indeed to find any quarrelling among them, and rarer still is such a thing as fighting among individuals unless they are under the influence of spirits.
SECTION X
HALF BREEDS
The term “Half breed” is applied throughout Western Canada in a general and indifferent way to the individual in whose veins there is an admixture of Indian and European blood. In some cases the proportion may be very largely that of the native race and in others quite the reverse; but in each case the individual is quite content to be classed under the general name.
In the early days the country along the Red River and the Assiniboine in the Province of Manitoba was divided into parishes, in some of which the inhabitants were almost all Scotch in others English and in others still French, and from each of these races in alliance with the native red men sprang the Scotch, English or French half breeds all having certain similar characteristics combined in their several cases with others as different as the several nationalities referred to.
The Frenchman coming principally from the Province of Quebec, where his ancestors had already during two centuries become inured to forest life, more readily adopted the life of the wigwam, and his children became frequently Indians in many respects, while the English and Scotch settler coming direct from the old land made a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to bring up the children of his native wife as Scotchmen or Englishmen. In nothing is this difference more noticeable than in the speech of these different inheritors of Indian blood. Even to-day in the parish of Kildonan, below Winnipeg, where there are many descendants of the union of the Scotchman with native Indian women you will hear a strange dialect, but still with sufficient similarity to that spoken in certain shires in old Scotia to indicate its origin. The terms “boy” and “whatever,” the latter peculiarly characteristic of the Highlands of Scotland, are here used with great freedom, no matter what the age or station of the party so addressed may be.
On one occasion the Bishop of Saskatchewan who was somewhat irreverently-called “Saskatchewan Jack” had in his employ a half breed boy as his valet. I am not aware that this individual ever dared, at least in his Lordship’s presence, to use the latter term, but in the most reverential tone he invariably addressed him as “boy My Lord.”
On one occasion I had in my employ one of these Scottish half breeds whose constant reiteration of the word “whatever” became wearisome, and I asked him why he employed it so frequently. To which he replied “We use the word because we could not express ourselves without it whatever.” Then rather piqued at my criticism he asked “Is it not a correct word, whatever?” I said that it was correct in certain cases but unnecessary in nine out of ten where he used it. To this he replied that if it was a correct word he could see no objection to using it “whatever!” This ended the conversation for the time.