The Newfoundland fishermen and settlers hunted down the Red Indians as
if they were wild beasts, and killed them at sight. Now and again, a
few members of this unhappy race were carried home to England to be
exhibited at country fairs before a crowd of grinning yokels who paid a
penny apiece to look at the 'wild men.'

Living on the mainland, next to the red men of Newfoundland lay the
great race of the Algonquins, spread over a huge tract of country, from
the Atlantic coast to the head of the Great Lakes, and even farther
west. The Algonquins were divided into a great many tribes, some of
whose names are still familiar among the Indians of to-day. The Micmacs
of Nova Scotia, the Malecite of New Brunswick, the Naskapi of Quebec,
the Chippewa of Ontario, and the Crees of the prairie, are of this
stock. It is even held that the Algonquins are to be considered typical
specimens of the American race. They were of fine stature, and in
strength and muscular development were quite on a par with the races of
the Old World. Their skin was copper-coloured, their lips and noses
were thin, and their hair in nearly all cases was straight and black.
When the Europeans first saw the Algonquins they had already made some
advance towards industrial civilization. They built huts of woven
boughs, and for defence sometimes surrounded a group of huts with a
palisade of stakes set up on end. They had no agriculture in the true
sense, but they cultivated Indian corn and pumpkins in the openings of
the forests, and also the tobacco plant, with the virtues of which they
were well acquainted. They made for themselves heavy and clumsy pottery
and utensils of wood, they wove mats out of rushes for their houses,
and they made clothes from the skin of the deer, and head-dresses from
the bright feathers of birds. Of the metals they knew, at the time of
the discovery of America, hardly anything. They made some use of
copper, which they chipped and hammered into rude tools and weapons.
But they knew nothing of melting the metals, and their arrow-heads and
spear-points were made, for the most part, not of metals, but of stone.
Like other Indians, they showed great ingenuity in fashioning bark
canoes of wonderful lightness.

We must remember, however, that with nearly all the aborigines of
America, at least north of Mexico, the attempt to utilize the materials
and forces supplied by nature had made only slight and painful
progress. We are apt to think