Indian education in British Columbia. ...

• Main Author: Peterson, Lester Ray
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2012
• Subjects: Bering Sea
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0106039; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0106039

Most anthropologists agree today that the Indians of America came to this continent by way of the Bering Sea somewhere between fifteen and eight thousand years ago. During their years of occupancy of the northwest, they developed a culture adapted to its economy. They perfected neither writing nor formal education, but asserted their heraldry and transmitted their legends and traditions orally. Europeans, in search of a westward route to the orient, reached the American northwest late in the eighteenth century. They introduced into the native way of life a modicum of European artifacts, but also, particularly along the coast, began the destruction of the aboriginal culture through disease, liquor, and creation of unnatural villages about trading posts. Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries began to arrive toward the middle of the nineteenth century. They worked to counteract the influence of the fur-traders but, in their efforts at evangelism, helped to precipitate disintegration of the native way of ...