Nations in Ontario, numbering three thousand four hundred and thirty. Sir John A. Macdonald, Minister of the Interior of the Dominion, in his last report to the Marquis of Lome, the Governor-General, sounds the note of warning intimated on a former page, when the Canadians, by the progress of their Pacific Railway, will be brought into relations with the savages more like those which our own Government and people have encountered. He writes: —
“It will be necessary, at an early day, to give serious consideration
to the many circumstances which indicate that erelong a larger
force of police would be required to preserve law and order in the
Northwest. Altercations between white men and Indians are
becoming more frequent, and the influx of settlers consequent upon
the rapid construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway will
demand additional precautions for the maintenance of peace and order
in the territories and friendly relations between the white and the
red man.”[1]
We suppose these “Northwest mounted police” are
armed; but they are not called soldiers. The “Census
Return of Resident and Nomadic Indians in the Dominion
of Canada” presents a total of 107,722. The number of
acres of “Indian lands” sold in the year ending June,
1881, to new settlers, was 33,293, at the price of $52,787.
The area of such lands unsold is estimated at 539,433
acres. The number of Indians on the reserves, when
counted in the Northwest Territories, was 11,459; the
number of “absentees” from reserves was 11,577.
33
- ↑ Annual Report of the Department of the Interior, for the Year ended 30th June, 1881. Ottawa.
