where in
1847 Fort Yukon was established by Mr. A.H. Murray for the Hudson's Bay
Company.

"With reference to the tales told him by the Indians of bad people
outside of their country, I may say that Mackenzie tells pretty much the
same story of the Indians on the Mackenzie when he discovered and
explored that river in 1789. He had the advantage of having Indians
along with him whose language was radically the same as that of the
people he was coming among, and his statements are more explicit and
detailed. Everywhere he came in contact with them they manifested,
first, dread of himself and party, and when friendship and confidence
were established they nearly always tried to detain him by representing
the people in the direction he was going as unnaturally bloodthirsty and
cruel, sometimes asserting the existence of monsters with supernatural
powers, as at Manitou Island, a few miles below the present Fort Good
Hope, and the people on a very large river far to the west of the
Mackenzie, probably the Yukon, they described to him as monsters in
size, power and cruelty.

"In our own time, after the intercourse that there has been between them
and the whites, more than a suspicion of such unknown, cruel people
lurks in the minds of many of the Indians. It would be futile for me to
try to ascribe an origin for these fears, my knowledge of their language
and idiosyncrasies being so limited.

"Nothing more was ever done in the vicinity of Fort Selkirk[7] by the
Hudson's Bay Company after these events, and in 1869 the Company was
ordered by Capt. Charles W. Raymond, who represented the United States
Government, to evacuate the post at Fort Yukon, he having found that it
was west of the 141st meridian. The post was occupied by the Company,
however, for some time after the receipt of this order, and until
Rampart House was built, which was intended to be on British territory,
and to take the trade previously done at Fort Yukon.

[Footnote 7: This is now a winter port for steamboats of the North
American Transportation and Trading Company, plying the Yukon and its
tributaries. There is also a trading post here owned by Harper & Ladue.]

"Under present conditions the Company cannot very well compete with the
Alaska Commercial Company, whose agents do the only trade in the
district,[8] and they appear to have abandoned--for the present at
least--all attempt to do any trade nearer to it than Rampart House to
which point, notwit