Anglo-Indian

“ To all offices, below that of the Governor of the Province, natives are eligible. As Judges of the High Court and as Members of the legislative bodies not a few Indians are found; as they are also in the Indian Civil Service which was so long exclusively filled by Anglo-Indians. It hardly appears how England can hold that great land to herself, as a member of her empire, with fewer of her own citizens than are now found at the helm. ”

“ To associate at the same time with Arabs and Anglo-Indians, who are ready to take offence when it is least intended, who expect servility as their due, and whose morgue of colour induces them to treat all skins a shade darker than their own as “niggers,” is even more difficult than to avoid a rupture when placed between two friends who have quarrelled with each other. Moreover, in this case, the difficulty was exaggerated by the Anglo-Indian’s complete ignorance of Eastern manners and customs, and of any Oriental language beyond, at least, a few words of the debased Anglo-Indian jargon. ”

“ Such is the environment in which many English officers live and labour for years; and this is the side of Anglo-Indian existence that is unknown to, and consequently unappreciated by, the rapid tourist, who runs by railway from one town to another during the bright cold winter months, is delighted with the climate and the country, takes note of the deficiencies or peculiarities of Anglo-Indians, and has a very short memory for their hospitality. ”

“ Wherever the English went always the aborigines disappeared before them. The story is the same in New Zealand and Australia as it is in North America, and it would be the same in India, only for the teeming millions that live in that peninsula, for whom Anglo-Saxon civilization has never meant an uplift in any sense of the word, but rather the contrary. The white man's burden has been to carry the Indian, instilling into him all the vices, until no longer he could cling to his shifty master and was shaken off to destruction. ”

“ I am satisfied that among the red men of the mountains and the forest you can find as many good, honest persons as among the Anglo-Saxon race. The Indian faithfully follows the traditions and customs of his race. He has been taught to steal and to shed the blood of his enemies, and the most expert in these inhuman practices is considered a great chief or a great brave. ”

“ History is required to pass a less censorious judgment on the moral character of those of the colonists who settled north of the latitudes of the West Indies. The great Anglo-Saxon stock, which spread along the shores of the North Atlantic, carried with it notions of liberty and justice, which shielded the aboriginal tribes from the curse of slavery. They treated them as having a just right to the occupancy of the soil, and formed treaties with them. ”

“ Besides the climate, which is so greatly in your favour, you have another great advantage in the tractability and good conduct of the Indian population. (Applause.) I believe I have seen the Indians of almost every tribe throughout the Dominion, and nowhere can you find any who are so trustworthy in regard to conduct— (hear, hear) —so willing to assist the white settlers by their labour, so independent and anxious to learn the secret of the white man's power. ”

“ As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. ”

“ It is very remarkable indeed, that in the upper country, notwithstanding that presents to such a very large amount are distributed amongst the Indians through the hands of the English inhabitants, and that their natural rights are as much respected by them as they possibly can be, yet an Indian, even at this day, will always go to the house of a poor French farmer in preference to that of an Englishman. ”

“ I agreed with them that no North American Indian would use that mode of getting his living, but that there were Indians in different parts of the world, and that these were from the East Indies, a country many thousands of miles from here; that these people were Indians from that country, and were of a tribe called Lascars; that many of them were employed by the captains of English ships to help to navigate their vessels from that country to this; and that in London they often come to want, and are glad to sweep the streets and beg, as the means of living, instead of starving to death. ”

“ The English much oftener suggest the Indian type than the Americans do, and there is much less extravagance in imagining, baseless as the notion would be, that England is turning Indian than in supposing that America shows such a tendency. In America I never saw a markedly Indian type without Indian blood, but I have seen it in England again and again ”

“ I am not wise enough to be able to guess what the upshot of this great but hitherto impracticable idea will be, but whatever the upshot may be, every true Indian hopes and trusts that India too will be admitted into this noble federation with England on the same terms, or as nearly the same terms with the other colonies as possible, and that the day is not far distant when she too will have at least a voice and a hand in the management of her own affairs. Every true-hearted Englishman desires this as much as Indians themselves. ”

“ And here I may state, parenthetically, that we have not been fighting, really speaking, with regard to the position of the Indians in the Colony, but we have been simply fighting for the principle. The object of our agitation is not to swamp the Colony with Indians or to have the status of the Indian in the Colony of Natal defined, but to have the Imperial question decided once for all, namely: ‘What status will the Indians outside British India have?’ That was the principle we have been striving to determine. ”

“ No Indians are left in our part of the world; but here and there a family shows marked traces of Indian blood, as old Sile Taylor, beyond Watson’s Hill, a frowsy and hospitable patriarch, whose little black eyes twinkle with a kind of foxy kindliness. Though none dwell here, Indians come two or three 117 times a year from the State Reservation, with snow-shoes, moccasins, and sweet-grass baskets to sell. ”

“ The Indian gives to the white man all he needs, and aids him in obtaining from the wide stretch of land over which he roams all the wealth that it can afford. Practically one part of the Dominion is handed over to the Red Man and to the half-breeds, for there is an Indian frontier which as yet has not been much encroached upon by any large migration of whites. ”

“ The younger Indians of this tribe are considerably advanced in civilization. The intelligence which Young Boy displayed to me is an evidence that the Indians are fast becoming civilized in the British possessions as well as in the United States. For several years peace and good order have prevailed among all the northern tribes. It will not be long before the Indians will be self-supporting. The effect of the march of civilization on the most warlike tribes even indicates that Indian wars are a thing of the past. ”

“ The Indians were greatly encouraged in their warlike feeling, by the intercourse they constantly maintained with the British Indian Department. The British Fur Company also by her traders, had correspondence with the leading men of all these Western and North-western tribes, and this intercourse resulted in holding the Indians more firmly, in alliance with the English. The desire they entertained for dominion on this continent, led them to encourage the Indians, in their effort to hold in check the settlements of the United States, that were pushing their way westward. ”

“ Verdict on the "poor Indian":—"Wiped out with an India-rubber shoe."
And then, in future generations, the tradition of Indian blood among Canadian families of dark complexion, along these ridges, will be about as vague as that of Spanish descent in the case of certain tribes of fishermen on the western coast of Ireland. From the assimilation already going on, however, it may be argued that the physical character of the Indian will be gradually merged and lost in that of the French colonist. ”

“ We advise you to bring all the River Indians under your Subjection to live near Albany, to be ready on all Occasions.
Send to New-England, tell them what has happened to you. They will undoubtedly awake and lend us their helping Hand. It is their Interest, as much as ours, to push the War to a speedy Conclusion. Be not discouraged, the French are not so numerous as some People talk. ”

“ The number of their Indians is much less, and their unoccupied territory much larger. They have still what may be called an Indian frontier—the white men on one side of the line and the Indians on the other, with vast hunting-grounds visited only by the trapper and fur-trader. Their agricultural settlements advance with far less rapidity than ours. There is far less opportunity for encroachment. ”

“ The antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French in their part of the continent, and to which reference will be made later. In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian, whereas in the French colonies, as generally in all Colonial countries that had the Roman imperial tradition and the Roman Catholic religion, the half-breed was assimilated to the European group. ”

“ The Proclamation announced the intention of the English Government to take exclusive control of Indian relations and Western settlement. "For the present," all territory west of the Alleghanies, from the new provinces of Florida on the south to Canada on the north, was to be "reserved to the Indians." Governors were forbidden to grant land there. Those who had already settled within reserved territory were required to remove forthwith; and every Indian trader was bound to give security for observing such rules as the Imperial Government might establish. ”

“ But after making all due allowances for these conditions, it still remains difficult to understand how so great a number of languages have become established amongst a comparatively small population. At no time, since the discovery of America, have the total numbers of Indians within the regions now forming the United States, exceeded five hundred thousand men, women and children. In 1829, it was estimated that the Indian population slightly exceeded three hundred and thirteen thousand. ”

“ England, as has been observed on a previous page, had now an opportunity which she wasted or trifled with, so as to turn against her the fiercest and most disastrous and the most concentrated struggle against their destiny which the Indian tribes had ever been goaded into making since their first collision with the white man. The effect in the diplomacy of the courts of the cession by France to Britain of Canada and the Ohio Valley was to transfer all the Indian tribes of those vast regions to British sway. The Indians became as much subjects of the British Crown as were the white colonists. ”

“ The French were driven from their American possessions and control over the Indians, and peace followed. The Indians, English, and Americans can not harmonize; they never have, and they never will; hence, it becomes a question of vast moment, not only to the Indian race, but to the American people, as to the propriety and expediency of allowing the English nation or British or foreign subjects to further exercise any influence among our American Indians. ”

“ Shortly afterwards he went to some of the inhabitants, and said to them. When white man’s child die—Indian man be sorry—he help bury him—when my child die—no one speak to me—I make his grave alone—I can’t no live here.—He gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. ”

“ The fact is, however, that this condition of things is one unavoidably growing out of the clashing of adverse interests—the Indians being anxious to check, we to extend our dominion and power as a people; and the causes existing now, were in being nearly a century ago, and will, in all probability, continue until all vestige of Indian existence shall have passed utterly away. ”

“ Comer's Diary, which has never been published, but which the writer of this work has examined in manuscript, shows a condition of society far from exemplary, and it also shows that persons whose position ought to have been respectable, sometimes took Indians either as wives or in a less honorable relation. There is, perhaps, more Indian blood in New England than is generally supposed, and the earlier inhabitants of that section were probably less exclusive toward the aborigines than is assumed in conventional history. ”

“ Already this is true of many Indians, and the day is not far distant—I venture to prophesy that it is within the next twenty years—when, if these influences continue, the Indian will be so thoroughly absorbed among his white brethren that as a separate race he will be lost to sight, and the Indian question will be a question no more. ”