The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Throughout the old provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and the Maritime Provinces, where the aborigines are mostly congregated on reserves, under the charge of Government officers of the Indian Department, they appear, with few exceptions, to have passed the critical stage of transition from a nomadic state to that of assimilation to the habits of settled industry of the Whites.

The native tribes of the old provinces of the Dominion, though bearing a variety of names, may all be classed under the two essentially distinct groups of Algonkins and Iroquois. Under the former head properly rank the Micmacs, and other tribes of Prince Edward’s Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and the Chippeways, including Ottawas, Mississagas, Pottawattomies, etc., of Ontario. Under the other head have to be placed not only the Six Nations—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras,—but also the Wyandots, or Hurons, both of Upper and Lower Canada; though among the one were found the faithful allies of the English, while the other adhered persistently to the French; and to the deadly enmity between them was due the expulsion of the Hurons from their ancient territory on the Georgian Bay, and the extermination of all but an insignificant remnant, including the refugees on the St. Charles river, below Quebec.

The Canadian census of 1871 includes the aborigines in the enumeration of the population of the Dominion, and states the grand total of the Indians of the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, at 23,035.

That the Indian population, gathered on their own reserved lands under the care of Government superintendents, is not diminishing in numbers, appears to be universally admitted. But as, at the same time, the pure race is being largely replaced by younger generations of mixed blood, the results cannot be looked upon as encouraging the hope of perpetuating the native Indian race under such exceptional conditions; nor can it be overlooked that the increase is partly begot by the addition of a foreign element. At best the results point rather to such a process of absorption as appears to be the inevitable result wherever a race, alike inferior in numbers and in progressive energy, escapes extirpation at the hands of the intruders.

In the boyhood of the older generation of Toronto, hundreds of Indians, including those of the old Mississaga tribe, were to be seen about the streets. Now, at rare intervals, two or three squaws, in round hats, blue blankets, and Indian leggings, attract attention less by their features than their dress; for in complexion they are nearly as white as those of pure European descent. The same is the case on all the oldest Indian reserves. The Hurons of Lorette, whose forefathers were brought to Lower Canada after the massacre of their nation by the Iroquois in 1649, are reported to have considerably increased in numbers in the interval between 1844 and the last census. But while the Commissioners refer to them as a band of Indians “the most advanced in civilisation in the whole of Canada,” they add that “they have, by the intermixture of White blood, so far lost the original purity of race as scarcely to be considered as Indians.” In their case this admixture with the European race has been protracted through a period of upwards of two centuries, till they have lost their Indian language, and substituted for it a French patois. Were it not for their hereditary right to a share in certain Indian funds, which furnishes an inducement to perpetuate their descent from the Huron nation, they would long since have merged in the common stock. Yet the results would not thereby have been eradicated, but only lost sight of. Their baptismal registers and genealogical traditions supply the record of a practical, though undesigned, experiment as to the influence of hybridity on the perpetuation of the race, and show the mixed descendants of Huron and French blood still, after a lapse of upwards of two centuries, betraying no traces of a tendency towards infertility or extinction.

In the Maritime Provinces the Micmacs are the representatives of the aboriginal owners of the soil. Small encampments of them may be encountered in summer on the Lower St. Lawrence, busily engaged in the manufacture of staves, barrel-hoops, axe-handles, and baskets of various kinds, which they dispose of, with much shrewdness, to the traders of Quebec, and the smaller towns on the Gulf. So far as I have seen, the pure-blood Micmac has more of the dark-red, in contrast to the prevalent olive hue, than other Indians. But the Micmacs of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick reveal the same evidence of inevitable amalgamation with the predominant race as elsewhere. The Rev. S. T. Rand—a devoted missionary labouring among the Indians of Nova Scotia,—on being asked to obtain a photograph of a pure-blood representative of the tribe, had some difficulty in finding a single example, and stated that not one is to be found among the younger generation.

In the old provinces the Indians are in the minority; but the same process is apparent where little bands of pioneers leave the settled provinces and states to begin new clearings, or to engage in the adventurous life of hunters and trappers in the far West. The hunter finds a bride among the native women; and when at length the wild tribe recedes before the growing clearing and the diminished supplies of game, it not only leaves behind a half-breed population as the nucleus of the civilised community, but it also carries away with it a like element, increasingly affecting the ethnical character of the whole tribe.

The same circumstances have continued, in every frontier settlement, to involve the inevitable production of a race of half-breeds. Even the cruellest exterminations of hostile tribes have rarely been carried out so effectually as to preclude this. In New England, for example, after the desolating war of 1637, which resulted in the extinction of the Pequot tribe, Winthrop thus summarily records the policy of the victors: “We sent the male children to Bermuda by Mr. William Pierce, and the women and maid children are disposed about in the towns.” Such a female population could not grow up in a young colony, with the wonted preponderance of males, and leave no traces in subsequent generations.

Seeing, then, that the meeting of two types of humanity so essentially distinct as the European and the native Indian of America, has, for upwards of three centuries, led to the production of a hybrid race, it becomes an interesting question, what has been the ultimate result? Has the mixed breed proved infertile, and so disappeared; has it perpetuated a new and permanent type of intermediate characteristics; or has it been absorbed into the predominant European race without leaving traces of this foreign element? These questions are not without their significance even in reference to the policy in dealing with the Indian settlements in old centres of population; for the traces of this intermingling of the races of the Old and New World are neither limited to frontier settlements nor to Indian reserves.

Among Canadians of mixed blood there are men at the Bar and in the Legislature, in the Church, in the medical profession, holding rank in the army, in aldermanic and other civic offices, and engaged in active trade and commerce. A curious case was recently brought before the law courts in Ontario. A son of the chief of the Wyandot Indians settled in Western Canada, left the reserves of his tribe, engaged in business, and acquired a large amount of real estate and personal property. He won for himself, moreover, such general respect that he was elected Reeve of Anderdon by a considerable majority over a White candidate. Thereupon his rival applied to have him unseated, on the plea that a person of Indian blood was not a citizen in the eye of the law. Fortunately the judge took a common-sense view of the case, and decided that as he held a sufficient property-qualification within the county, the election was valid.