In the old provinces the Indians are in the minority; but the same process is apparent where little bands of pioneers leave the settled provinces and states to begin new clearings, or to engage in the adventurous life of hunters and trappers in the far West. The hunter finds a bride among the native women; and when at length the wild tribe recedes before the growing clearing and the diminished supplies of game, it not only leaves behind a half-breed population as the nucleus of the civilised community, but it also carries away with it a like element, increasingly affecting the ethnical character of the whole tribe. The same circumstances have continued, in every frontier settlement, to involve the inevitable production of a race of half-breeds. Even the cruellest exterminations of hostile tribes have rarely been carried out so effectually as to preclude this. In New England, for example, after the desolating war of 1637, which resulted in the extinction of the Pequot tribe, Winthrop thus summarily records the policy of the victors: “We sent the male children to Bermuda by Mr. William Pierce, and the women and maid children are disposed about in the towns.” Such a female population could not grow up in a young colony, with the wonted preponderance of males, and leave no traces in subsequent generations. Seeing, then, that the meeting of two types of humanity so essentially distinct as the European and the native Indian of America, has, for upwards of three centuries, led to the production of a hybrid race, it becomes an interesting question, what has been the ultimate result? Has the mixed breed proved infertile, and so disappeared; has it perpetuated a new and permanent type of intermediate characteristics; or has it been absorbed into the predominant European race without leaving traces of this foreign element? These questions are not without their significance even in reference to the policy in dealing with the Indian settlements in old centres of population; for the traces of this intermingling of the races of the Old and New World are neither limited to frontier settlements nor to Indian reserves.