LORD GLENELG: 1838
In a letter dated August 22, 1838, to the colonial Governor, Lord Glenelg seems, in the usual British way, to be asking for an accounting:
To comply with Lord Glenelg's request, the Lords of Trade commissioned a study late in 1838 to ascertain the social and economic conditions of the surviving Mi'kmaq. The results were shocking. It was found that they now numbered only 1,425, that a large number were living in various stages of starvation, and that their sole means of support was begging and what could be got from harvesting scarce wildlife and some fishing. The original Mi'kmaq population at the onset of European colonization, estimated by some to have been in the neighbourhood of 200,000, or perhaps considerably more, had been almost wiped out.
These findings did not spur the government on to ease the plight of the Mi'kmaq. Perhaps it was the government's intention to wait for another several years in the hope that the "Indian problem" in Nova Scotia would by then be solved for all time with the extinction of the People by starvation
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