ABSTRACT

The sudden appearance of white people among primitives who had previously never seen any, is an event likely to throw light upon important characteristics peculiar to the mentality of undeveloped races. The shock of the encounter must have been all the more violent since, as a rule, they were living in a "closed world", without any idea that its walls might be scaled. This chapter relates the story told by an aged native of British Columbia. It is somewhat long, but it gives a vivid impression of the natives' first encounter with white men. The encounters when the Indians had "saved their face", and the successive "deaths" occasioned by the display of the weapons, utensils, and food of the white men, did not last long. All these new experiences, all these astonishing persons and things are almost immediately classified in their minds, accustomed as they are to imagine the occult powers.