CANADIAN INDIANS.
The general account of our intercourse with the North American Indians, as distinct from missionary efforts, may be given in the words of a converted Chippeway chief, in a letter to Lord Goderich: "We were once very numerous, and owned all Upper Canada, and lived by hunting and fishing; but the white men who came to trade with us taught our fathers to drink the fire-waters, which has made our people poor and sick, and has killed many tribes, till we have become very small."[1]
It is a curious fact, noticed in the evidence, that, some years ago, the Indians practised agriculture, and were able to bring corn to our settlements, then suffering from famine; but we, by driving them back and introducing the fur trade, have rendered them so completely a wandering people, that they have very much lost any disposition which they might once have felt to settle. All writers on the Indian race have spoken of them, in their native barbarism, as a noble people; but those who live among civilised men, upon reservations in our own territory, are now represented as "reduced to a state which resembles that of gipsies in this country." Those who live in villages among the whites "are a very degraded race, and look more like dram-drinkers than people it would be possible to get to do any work."
To enter, however, into a few more particulars.—The Indians of New Brunswick are described by Sir H. Douglass, in 1825, as "dwindled in numbers," and in a "wretched condition."
Those of Nova Scotia, the Micmacs (by Sir J. Kempt), as disinclined to settle, and in the habit of bartering their furs, "unhappily, for rum."[2]
General Darling's statement as to the Indians of the Canadas, drawn up in 1828, speaks of the interposition of the government being urgently called for in behalf of the helpless individuals whose landed possessions, where they have any assigned to them, are daily plundered by their designing and more enlightened white brethren.[3]
Of the Algonquins and Nipissings, General Darling writes, "Their situation is becoming alarming, by the rapid settlement and improvement of the lands on the banks of the Ottawa, on which they were placed by the government in the year 1763, and which tract they have naturally considered as their own. The result of the present state of