PREFACE

If interbreeding between white and red peoples can be considered a general fact in Canada, if no part of the Dominion has completely escaped it, the provinces of the West offer the most numerous and the most striking examples Not only do the Métis form a distinct group in the heterogenous society of this country that has hardly emerged from the frontier period, but they also have their own history within this setting. They are the survivors of a race which for a long period had its own special customs and an economy partially resembling that of the primitive tribes from which it had emerged, well adapted to the natural resources of the West; a race whose personality was repeatedly made manifest during the evolution of those territories which were so rapidly converted from the exclusive exploitation of furs to the development of the primary resources they concealed. Even more than the Indians, who today are detached from their original patterns of organization and removed from their former ideals of life, the Metis have suffered, through the pressure of a new economy on their way of existence, a total disaggregation as a people. Nevertheless, this situation does not justify us in applying a uniformly negative verdict to them all, or in failing to appreciate the originality of their history and their past economy. Their personality reflects the influence of an environment which today is largely effaced, where the presence of primitive races, the existence of violent natural forces, to which man was closely subjected, and the distance from any nucleus of civilization dominated the attitudes and shaped the way of life of its inhabitants. Condemned, m regions difficult of access, to a long period of isolation, the Métis group was able to develop there without interference and to create for itself traditions and aspirations unknown to the hybrid groups that emerged in other parts of Canadian territory.

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