and the Saskatchewan a singular race of half-breeds,
with a unique semi-civilization of their own. It was with these
half-breeds, and not, as in the United States, with the Indians, that
the settlers of northwestern Canada had their main difficulties.

In what now forms the United States, taking the country as a whole,
the foes who had to be met and overcome were very much more
formidable. The ground had to be not only settled but conquered,
sometimes at the expense of the natives, often at the expense of rival
European races. As already pointed out the Indians themselves formed
one of the main factors in deciding the fate of the continent. They
were never able in the end to avert the white conquest, but they could
often delay its advance for a long spell of years. The Iroquois, for
instance, held their own against all comers for two centuries. Many
other tribes stayed for a time the oncoming white flood, or even drove
it back; in Maine the settlers were for a hundred years confined to a
narrow strip of sea-coast. Against the Spaniards, there were even here
and there Indian nations who definitely recovered the ground they had
lost.

When the whites first landed, the superiority and, above all, the
novelty of their arms gave them a very great advantage. But the
Indians soon became accustomed to the new-comers' weapons and style of
warfare. By the time the English had consolidated the Atlantic
colonies under their rule, the Indians had become what they have
remained ever since, the most formidable savage foes ever encountered
by colonists of European stock. Relatively to their numbers, they have
shown themselves far more to be dreaded than the Zulus or even the
Maoris.

Their presence has caused the process of settlement to go on at
unequal rates of speed in different places; the flood has been hemmed
in at one point, or has been forced to flow round an island of native
population at another. Had the Indians been as helpless as the native
Australians were, the continent of North America would have had an
altogether different history. It would not only have been settled far
more rapidly, but also on very different lines. Not only have the red
men themselves kept back the settlements, but they have also had a
very great effect upon the outcome of the struggles between the
different intrusive European peoples. Had the original inhabitants of
the Mississippi valley been as numerous and unwarlike as the Aztecs,
de Soto wo