to 1754. After the conquest of Canada by England, the fur-trade ceased for some years; but in 1766 the Montrealers began to push northwestward, and from that time their agents, mostly French-Canadians, mingled freely with the Indians—the consequence being the growth of a half-breed community. There was a considerable population, known by their chosen designation of Bois Brulés (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 their surnames being Scotch or English. But it is from the years immediately following the establishment of the Red River Colony that the bulk of the English-speaking half-breeds date their first appearance. In the year 1814 they numbered two hundred. In 1870 the Manitoba half-breeds and métis (as those of British and French origin may be distinguished) were estimated at ten thousand. 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 six thousand 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 two hundred buffalo-skin tents and two thousand horses.[1] Dr. Wilson considers the rise in this way of an independent tribe of half-breeds as "one of the most remarkable phenomena connected with the grand ethnological experiment which has been in progress on the North American Continent for the last three centuries."The half-breeds, who were given to the chase, have been credited with courage, discipline, and self-control. Those of French paternity are said to be more lively and frank, and physically stronger; those of British origin, the more stable and industrious. The Rev. Professor Bryce, of Winnipeg, says that "like all savage races, the Bois Brulés are fickle. They must be appealed to by flattery, by threats, or by working upon their animosities or well-known dislikes, if they would be led in any particular direction"[2]—and the truth of this characterization was painfully exemplified in the recent rebellion under Riel, no less than in the sanguinary conflict into which they were seduced in 1816. Now that the force of circumstances has subjected them to the restraints of civilization, the likelihood is that they will eventually become merged in the dominant race. Some of them have proved themselves well able to compete with white rivals for the prizes of life. A few of them have achieved success, not only in business and the professions, but in the more trying arena of politics; and, at the very time when the unfortunate Riel was expiating his crimes on the scaffold, a more worthy sharer in the blood
