History of the Indians in British North America: Showing Their Condition and Management; Being a Report to the Hon. The Secretary of State (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from History of the Indians in British North America: Showing Their Condition and Management; Being a Report to the Hon. The Secretary of State

The same reverend gentlemen represent the two classes of traders as equally extortionate, and, as one of the remedies for such a state of things, propose that every spring and autumn a tariff of prices should be posted on a conspicuous place and that conformity to it be enforced.

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Excerpt from History of the Indians in British North America: Showing Their Condition and Management; Being a Report to the Hon. The Secretary of State

Undoubtedly the desire for education, and other favorable indications among the Indians, are, in a considerable degree, owing to the clergy who minister among them, and exercise their influence for the repression of intemperance and vice and the promotion of industry and good order. But moral influence alone would have proved unavailing. The government of their country has felt a just sense of the responsibility devolved upon it; has seen the necessity of treating the Indians temporarily as wards or minors; has assumed friendly and pains taking guardianship over them, and seems practically to have adopted the principle that whatever may have been the original stipulation in purchasing their lands, the proper measure of compensation is to place and maintain them in such a condition that they may, if possible, as the ultimate result of their own exertions, enjoy advantages at least equal to those of their former state.

Among the various Indian tribes of the Dominion are to be found some yet representing the original barbarism, while others are scarcely distinguishable from the European race, either in person or habits. In other characteristics they also present marked distinctions. Thus, in complying with my instructions to report as to their condition, I have found it necessary to describe, as briefly as possible, the chief nations or communities among them, as well as to state the laws and influences to which all of them are subjected.

The Six Nations.

Of all the tribes or hands of Indians in Canada, the confederation known as the "Six Nations of the Grand River," contains the largest population. Their historical celebrity began with the earliest explorations of the Hudson River, and their present advanced condition also invests them with peculiar interest. In 1868 their numbers were 2,796, and they annually increase. They consist of portions of the kindred nations of the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, who once inhabited the valleys on the rivers and lakes of Central New York, including the Mohawk and Genesee; and were so powerful a confederacy that they not only overran the region afterwards known as Upper Canada, but carried their wars far and wide into the western prairies. Their young men tested their bravery and endurance by expeditions against tribes occupying remote southern regions, and particularly against the Cherokees, whom they esteemed as foemen especially worthy of their best efforts.

To the five nations already enumerated have been added the Tuscaroras, who, although at an early period they migrated to North Carolina, are shown by tradition and language to be of the same original stock, and, when driven from their southern hunting grounds were admitted into the confederacy, which from that time ceased to be "the Five," and was called the "Six Nations."

These Indians, now residing on the Grand River, are the representatives and descendants of those aborigines of whom De Witt Clinton said that they were peculiarly and extraordinarily distinguished by "great attainments in polity, in negotiation, in eloquence, and in war."

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