North-West Frontier Province

“ Biluches.—When the frontier was separated off the Biluch district of Dera Ghází Khán with its strong tribal organization under chiefs or tumandárs was left in the Panjáb. The Biluches are a frank, manly, truthful [Pg 105] race, free from fanaticism and ready as a rule to follow their chiefs. They are fine horsemen. Unfortunately it is difficult to get them to enlist.
Patháns.—Both politically and numerically the Patháns are the predominant tribe in the N.W.F. Province, and are of importance in parts of the Panjáb districts of Attock and Mianwálí. ”

“ The transfer of the rich prairie lands of the great North-West from the care of Hudson Bay factors and trappers, the organisation of it into the Province of Manitoba, and the territories already in preparation for new provinces, under the government of their own legislatures, has necessarily brought to an end the condition of things so favourable to friendly relations between the White and Red races. ”

“ The ground is uneven but fertile. The natives irrigate their estates, and produce tobacco, coffee, sugar cane, and wheat. Manufactures consist in fabrics of abaca and canonegro, of which boat cables are made. The interior of the island, covered with thick forests, is almost unexplored, being inhabited by a few savages.
The Province of Western Negros is situated on Negros Island, it is bounded on the north by the Visayas Sea, on the west by the Paragua Sea, and on the south and east by the Province of Eastern Negros. The area is 1,929 square miles, and the population 226,995. ”

“ The District Mohtasib, on his removal from office under sub-section (8) , may, within 30 days of the order, appeal in the High Court.
(10) When a District Mohtasib has been removed on the ground of corruption, he shall not be eligible, for a period of four years from the date of his removal, to be appointed in any Government Department or to become a member of the Parliament or a Provincial Assembly or a Local Government. ”

“ Prior to the days of the cowboy and the range, the settler and irrigation, the State and the Province, an ebb and flow of Indians, traders, trappers, wolfers, buffalo-hunters, whiskey smugglers, missionaries, prospectors, United States soldiery and newly organized North West Mounted Police crossed and recrossed the international boundary between the American Northwest and what was then known as the "Whoop Up Country." This heterogeneous flotsam and jetsam held some of the material from which Montana evolved its later statehood. ”

“ Delegation of Powers to District Mohtasib.—The Provincial Mohtasib shall, in the prescribed manner, be competent to delegate his power to a District Mohtasib in writing.
9. Appointment of staff and terms of employment— (1) Government shall determine the terms and conditions of service and pay and allowances in respect of the staff members of the Mohtasib.
(2) A district Mohtasib shall take oath of office before the Provincial Mohtasib in the form set forth in schedule ‘B’. ”

“ First were the Maritime Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English, aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thousand miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. ”

“ The relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the rest of the United States is an important element in the significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains ”

“ But when the arid lands and the mineral resources of the Far West were reached, no conquest was possible by the old individual pioneer methods. Here expensive irrigation works must be constructed, coöperative activity was demanded in utilization of the water supply, capital beyond the reach of the small farmer was required. In a word, the physiographic province itself decreed that the destiny of this new frontier should be social rather than individual.
Magnitude of social achievement is the watchword of the democracy since the Civil War. ”

“ Eventually, the Indians were made to comprehend the extent of land they were really entitled to, but the Governor intimated that the land was for all, and that he would divide the band into three, each with a Chief and councillors, and that he would give each band a portion of the whole number of acres, proportionate to their numbers--the Bear at the Round Plain, the White Mud Indians at their place of residence, and the Yellow Quill band wherever they might select, in unoccupied territory. After long consultations among themselves the Indians accepted the proposal. ”

“ The ideals of equality, freedom of opportunity, faith in the common man are deep rooted in all the Middle West. The frontier stage, through which each portion passed, left abiding traces on the older, as well as on the newer, areas of the province. Nor were these ideals limited to the native American settlers: Germans and Scandinavians who poured into the Middle West sought the country with like hopes and like faith. These facts must be remembered in estimating the effects of the economic transformation of the province upon its democracy. ”

“ In all our troubles no army has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios's movement will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental Province should stand alone. ”

“ I think that the establishment of law and order in the Saskatchewan District, as early as possible, is of most vital importance to the future of the country and the interest of Canada, and also the making of some treaty or settlement with the Indians who inhabit the Saskatchewan District. ”

“ The changes since the war are of more social importance, in many respects, than those in the years commonly referred to as the formative period. As a result, the Northwest finds herself again between contending forces, sharing the interests of East and West, as once before those of North and South, and forced to give her voice on issues of equal significance for the destiny of the republic. ”

“ The Colony is now prosperous, the laws respected, the natives in the settled districts submissive, and in the North they supply labor for the pastoral settlements and the pearl fishery, and are probably progressing towards civilization by their residence among the settlers. In other districts they are decreasing in number, and lingering out a poor and degraded existence.
There is no trustworthy estimate of the number of the aboriginal inhabitants of West Australia. In the settled districts they may average one to ten of the white population. ”

“ The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and communications of the country have been greatly developed during the last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sāgar and Nerbudda territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the distant Government of the North-Western Provinces. Sir Richard Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central Provinces with extraordinary energy and success. ”

“ In the old provinces of Canada from which I came we have many Indians, they are growing in numbers and are as a rule happy and prosperous; for a hundred years red and white hands have been clasped together in peace. ”

“ The best thing Australia can do with the Northern Territory is to combine its administration with that of New Guinea, under the Crown Colony system of Government, and permit the introduction of native labour from New Guinea—at any rate for domestic service or work on the plantations. ”

“ And yet in important historical ideals—in the process of expansion, in the persistence of agricultural interests, in impulsiveness, in imperialistic ways of looking at the American destiny, in hero-worship, in the newness of its present social structure—the Old Northwest has much in common with the South and the Far West.
Behind her is the old pioneer past of simple democratic conditions, and freedom of opportunity for all men. Before her is a superb industrial development, the brilliancy of success as evinced in a vast population, aggregate wealth, and sectional power. ”

“ It has not been thought important to establish regular governments in all the provinces, so called. Such governments are established only in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland. The Canadas consist of Upper and Lower, or Canada West and Canada East, and embrace the principal amount of the population and productive resources of that whole northern world. ”

“ The region, by reason of extra expense for fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more expensive to live in than, say, Ontario.
The province of Manitoba is an interesting political and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of the conflicts between the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwestern Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who began to come in in 1812. ”

“ Although the boundary between the upper austral and the transition provinces is indefinite, it is easily to be seen, from the geographical distribution of cities, agricultural population, manufactories, colleges, and other institutions of learning, etc., that the climate of the province under review is on the whole the one in which the greatest intellectual advance has been made and the one which holds out the greatest promise for the future. ”

“ The Superintendent also reported that in the Manitoba superintendency "a general desire to be taught farming, building and other civilized arts exists, and some of the Indians in Treaty Number Three, living in the vicinity of Fort Francis, are said to evince enterprise and progress in their farming operations." ”

“ It may be a better thing to live in Manitoba than in North Dakota, or to live in North Dakota than in Manitoba; but worse than almost any conceivable place of residence would be a status which might change in the future, so that one could not tell say five years ahead in what country he was going to live. A frontier is not merely a line drawn on a map or demarcated on the ground; a frontier means a nexus of customs, of laws, of traditions and of innumerable other things that directly affect the daily life and conduct of every inhabitant. ”

“ As it is evident, on account of the climate, that as the natural resources of New Guinea can only be developed by means of coloured labour, the distribution of the natives, both as to population and disposition, is perhaps of paramount importance. With the exception of some portions of the North-East Coast, almost the entire littoral of the Protected Territory is inhabited. In the West and North-West, from the Fly River to Hall Sound, the natives are very numerous, the tribes are large, and a higher stage of tribal development is reached than elsewhere. ”

“ At the beginning of this century the Province was almost a vast wilderness, with open spaces here and there, cleared by the settler’s axe. Even as late as 1812, at the time of the American war, we had only just begun to emerge, as it were, from the dark towering forests that were intersected by only the Indian{81} footpaths. It is almost astounding when one stops to consider that even within the memory of those now living our Province has been made. Our cities have been built, our canals dug, our forests subdued and Ontario made a garden, all well nigh within the compass of a man’s lifetime. ”

“ This is the garden region of the Canadian Northwest for wheat-growing and cattle-grazing, and it stretches in almost 486 limitless expanse a fertile empire far northward to Edmonton and Prince Albert, with branch railways leading up there, the rich black soils testifying the wealth in the land. At Regina is the capital of the Northwest Territory, three hundred and fifty-seven miles west of Winnipeg, the headquarters of the Canadian "North West Mounted Police," a superb body of one thousand picked men who control the Indians and maintain order in the Northwest Territory. ”

“ By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.
Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. ”