black bear, are equal to
four; a mode of reckoning which has very little connexion with the real
value of these different furs in the European market. Neither has any
attention been paid to the original cost of European articles, in fixing
the tariff by which they are sold to the Indians. A coarse butcher's
knife is one skin, a woollen blanket or a fathom of coarse cloth, eight,
and a fowling-piece fifteen. The Indians receive their principal outfit
of clothing and ammunition on credit in the autumn, to be repaid by
their winter hunts; the amount intrusted to each of the hunters, varying
with their reputations for industry and skill, from twenty to one
hundred and fifty skins. The Indians are generally anxious to pay off
the debt thus incurred, but their good intentions are often frustrated
by the arts of the rival traders. Each of the Companies keeps men
constantly employed travelling over the country during the winter, to
collect the furs from the different bands of hunters as fast as they are
procured. The poor Indian endeavours to behave honestly, and when he has
gathered a few skins sends notice to the post from whence he procured
his supplies, but if discovered in the mean time by the opposite party,
he is seldom proof against the temptation to which he is exposed.
However firm he may be in his denials at first, his resolutions are
enfeebled by the sight of a little rum, and when he has tasted the
intoxicating beverage, they vanish like smoke, and he brings forth his
store of furs, which he has carefully concealed from the scrutinizing
eyes of his visitors. This mode of carrying on the trade not only causes
the amount of furs, collected by either of the two Companies, to depend
more upon the activity of their agents, the knowledge they possess of
the motions of the Indians, and the quantity of rum they carry, than
upon the liberality of the credits they give, but is also productive of
an increasing deterioration of the character of the Indians, and will
probably, ultimately prove destructive to the fur trade itself. Indeed
the evil has already, in part, recoiled upon the traders; for the
Indians, long deceived, have become deceivers in their turn, and not
unfrequently after having incurred a heavy debt at one post, move off to
another, to play the same game. In some cases the rival posts have
entered into a mutual agreement, to trade only with the Indians they
have respectively fitted out; but such treaties, being s