Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1887 — The Half-Breeds of Manitoba. [ARTICLE]

The Half-Breeds of Manitoba.

It was under the stress of such at 'FfiffiJile that the lialf-1 >re-e<l population of the Canadian Northwest, which has of late been so much before the world, grew to its present proportions. Its history carries us back to near the beginning of the eighteenth century. Arthur Dobbs, \vhoso' account *of the countries adjacent to Hudson Bay xvas published in 1744, obtained his information almost wholly from a half-breed trader called La France—a proof that the metis was not unknown a century and a half ago. The explorations of the Verandryes, father and sons, lasted from 1731 to 1754. After the conquest of Canada by England the fur trade ceased for some years; but in 1766 theMontrealers began to push northwestward, and from that time their agents, mostly French- Canadians, mingled freely with the Indians—the consequence being The growth of ahalf-breed community. . There w;as a considerable population known by their chosen designation of Bois Brules (for which they sometimes substituted the more ambitious style of “the new nation”), when Lord Selkirk began his scheme of colonization in 1811. That even then they were not all French is shown by some of t heir surnames being Scotch or English. But it is from the years immediately following tho establishment of the Bed Biver Colony that the bulk qf English-speaking half-breeds date their first appearance. In the year 1814 they numbered 200. In 1870 the Manitoba half-breeds and metis (as those of British and Freneh origin may be distinguished! were estimated at 10,000. Besides-them, there was a population of uncertain number scattered through the territories, and a tribe of half-breed hunters which one early explorer deemed to be 6,000 strong. In 1874 Dr. G- M. DawsOn. while engaged in the British North American Boundary Commission, came upon the camp of the latter body, consisting of 200 bu-ffalo-skin tents and 2,000 horses. Dr. Dawson considers the rise in this way Of an independent tribe of half-breeds as “oneofthe most remarkable phenomena connected with the grand ethnological experiment which has been in progress on the North-American Continent for the last three centuries.” Pbejttdice is the reason of fools.— Voltaire.