ny 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 entrusted 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 meantime 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 scrutinising 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
seldom rigidly adhered to, prove a fertile subject for disputes and the
differences have been more than once decided by force of arms. To carry
on the contest the two Companies are o