machete in removing the vegetable growths that conceal many of the records of America's history.
The Contact of the Aborigines with Foreign Peoples.—The chief interest of the ethnologist concerning the American aborigines relates to their condition before the introduction of European ideas and customs. This external influence has been far-reaching and cumulative in its effects, and to-day there is not a tribe in North America that stands where it would have stood but for its coming. Among some of the Eskimo tribes, and in the case also of certain Indian communities in central Alaska and northern Canada, there have been but slight modifications even in dress, utensils, etc., by reason of contact with the white man. The Pueblo Indians have been resistant to change, but although still grinding their blue corn in primitive stone hand-mills, and dressed nearly as the first Spanish visitors found their ancestors in the same villages, there has been a slowly progressing revolution in the undercurrent of their thought, ideas, religion, customs, etc. Whether this change is for the better or the worse depends on the point of view. In attempting to judge of it from the Indian's side, the only possible conclusion seems to be that the coming of the white man has been a curse.
The reception of Europeans by the Indian, although in many instances kindly, has, in the main, been but an outward show of friendship, concealing suspicion, fear, and jealousy. That this distrust was well founded is abundantly proved by history. Since the slaughter and enslavement of the aborigines of the West Indies and of the southern portion of the continent by Spaniards, through all the bloody conflicts of the English and French with the Indians of the Atlantic and Mississippi regions, to near the close of the nineteenth century, almost constant war, marauding, murder, rapine, and jealousy have accompanied the contact of the aborigines and the whites. Although the Indians succeeded in retarding the spread of civilization, they were not strong enough to permanently check it. In the United States and Canada they have been, to a great extent, dispossessed of their hunting-grounds by so-called treaties, or by formal purchase,
and placed on reservations. In Mexico the struggle is still in active progress, but there and in Central America and the West Indies the contact of the two races has in part assumed a different phase, and one less visibly detrimental to the Indian. In the countries now held by people of Spanish descent, and in fact throughout Latin America, as it is termed, amalgamation has, to a great extent, caused the disappearance of the Indian race in its purity. North of the indefinite boundary where the Spanish language is largely spoken much less admixture of the two races has occurred than farther south, and the half-breed is classed as an Indian. While to the north of Mexico it is possible to trace the post-Columbian histories of the Indian tribes with an approach to completeness and to state their present census, and note the results of the attempts that have been made to civilize them, to the south of the Mexican boundary such a task is seemingly hopeless.
In Alaska the Indians still roam at large with no other restraint than that arising from the adjustment reached through intertribal relations, with slight modifications due to the widely scattered settlements of white men. No attempt has been made by the United States Government to place them on reservations, and this will probably not occur, as the white man does not wish their lands for agricultural purposes. Displacement by contact seems to express the change now in progress.
In Canada the present condition of the Indians varies with locality. In the southeastern part, including the maritime provinces, they have been greatly changed from their native condition, and to a large extent gathered on reservations or have settled on land of their own and become self-sustaining. In the Labrador region and throughout the Rocky Mountains they still roam at will, and depend mainly on hunting and fishing for a livelihood. On the Pacific coast, the Haidas, etc., of British Columbia—and the same is true of their neighbours, the Tlingits of southeastern Alaska—have become interested as labourers in the commercial fisheries, principally the salmon industry.
The Canadian Government has purchased extensive
tracts of land from the Indians, and the purchase money, together with the returns from the sale of relinquished lands, etc., amounting in 1900 to $3,893,623, is held in trust for their benefit. The interest on this sum, together with appropriations made by the Government for the support, education, etc., of the Indians, amounted during the year 1900 to $1,309,127. The total—in part estimated—Indian population of Canada is about 99,000, and those classed as resident Indians number 77,450. The last-named during the year 1900 cultivated 108,850 acres of land; owned 83,019 head of cattle, horses, sheep, etc.; cut 68,395 tons of hay; gathered 471,596 bushels of potatoes and other root crops, besides an output of $1,639,398 worth of fish, furs, etc. During the same year 9,634 Indian children attended industrial schools. This is certainly a creditable report and one encouraging to the hope that all the Indians in Canada will in the course of a few generations become civilized, in spite of the fact that the Indians outside of the reservations and beyond the limits of the treaty lands still roam at large and to a great extent are in a deplorable condition.
In the treatment of the aborigines within her borders Canada has to a marked degree been both humane and just. Her policy in this connection is largely an inheritance from that of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose success in trade depended on maintaining friendly relations with the native peoples. The work of the factors of "the Great Company" scattered throughout Canada and carried on continuously for more than two centuries did much to prepare the aborigines for civil government. Owing largely, also, to the efficiency of the mounted police of Canada much less trouble has been experienced in the management of the Indians of that country than has been the case in the adjacent portion of the United States. In any comparison, however, of the relation of the Canadian and United States governments to the aborigines within their respective borders account needs to be taken of the widely different conditions on the opposite sides of the boundary line between them. Not only are the Indians of Canada about one-third as numerous as in the United States, while the area of each country is about the
same, but owing to a less dense white population to the north of the international boundary, far less demand has there arisen for their lands for agricultural, mining, and other purposes than in the United States.