THE SLAVES OP CANADA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13134, 24 March 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SLAVES OP CANADA.

TRADING IN INDIAN GIRLS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. Around Cape Mudge, in Northern British Columbia, slave trading flourishes while the British Government has been spending millions suppressing the traffic in human beings m other parts of the world. According to tHe Canadian Government the industry has been flourishing for many years, and 1 has now reached a deplorable stage. A report just received at Ottawa says:— At Cape Mudgo there is a family of halfbreeds, both men and girls, showing very little of the '' an blood in them. The elder brother recently gave a large potlach, at which he spent several thousand dollars, every dollar of which was made by the sale of young girls, and from this source he had become both powerful and rich. He has even gone so far that he h.i.s determined to replace the present chief, who, not being a slave trader, in spite of his position is very unpopular. Girls with white skins, thick brown hair braided down their backs. big, innocent childish eyes, a,re being sole to-day to the highest bidders, and havi been sold for years in the northern portion of British Columbia. The slave master* ill the Cape Miidge_,lndians ; the slaves are [ lute because their grandmothers were sold to white men, and when their grandmothers wandered back, deserted and abandoned, they brought baby girls with them, and the relatives of these abandoned creatures sold those baby girls when they grew up to young womanhood. In some cases they have been sold' for four and five consecutive generations, and in the present generation now owing up little trace can be found of Indian blood in their pink and whiti cheeks, blue eyes and light hair. The joys are left to shift for themselves, «u1 many of them have grown up to be slav< dealers in Cape Mudge. and have become lien and powerful by the barter in quarter, eighth, and sixteenth breed girls. Thev ' ia\e cieated a- market which is constantly growing, and the demand has become so great that it is reported that the Rock way Indians re embarking in the awful traffic. It has reached that point where gills Will lie sold before they reach womanhood unless the Government places soma restrictions on the sales.

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