The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Tradition still retains a hold upon the Hurons of Lorette, little as
remains to them of the character and lineaments of the red man. A
pitiable procession of their diluted "braves" may sometimes be seen in
the streets of Quebec, on such distinguished occasions as the Prince's
visit. But it is with a manifest consciousness of the ludicrous that
these industrials now do their little drama of the war-dance and the
oration and the council-smoke. That drama has degenerated into a very
feeble farce now, and the actors in it would be quite outdone in their
travesty by any average corps of "supes" at one of our theatres.
By-and-by all this will have died out, and the "Indian side" of the
stream at Lorette will be assimilated in all its features to the other.
The moccason is already typifying the decadence of aboriginal things
there. That article is now fitted with India-rubber soles for the Quebec
demand,--a continuation of the sole running in a low strip round the
edge of the foot. With the gradual widening of that strip, until the
moccason of the red man has been clean obliterated from things that are
by the India-rubber of the white, will the remnant of the Hurons have
passed away with things that were. 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.
The Hurons are described as having formerly been a people of large
stature, while those of the present day in Lower Canada are usually
rather undersized than otherwise, like their _habitant_ neighbors. As
a race, the latter are below the middle stature, although generally of
great bodily strength and endurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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