“Stone things,” said John. “What are they?”
“What they call ‘labrets,’” said his uncle, taking up one of the little articles. “They make them out of stone, don’t you see?—with a groove in the middle. If you will look close at some of these Eskimo women, or even men, you will find that they have a hole through their lower lip, and some of them wear this little ‘labret.’ Here also are some made out of walrus ivory.”
“Well, now I know what it was I saw that tall Husky had in his face awhile ago,” said John. “Something was sticking through his lower lip, and I know now it was the glass stopper of a bottle of Worcester sauce.”
Uncle Dick laughed. “Correct!” said he. “I saw the same fellow, and, now that you mention it, I gave him three dollars for that glass stopper from the bottle! I don’t suppose any one will believe the story, but it’s true.
“If you get a chance to trade any of these Huskies out of one of their pipes, do it, boys,” said he, “especially if you can get one of the old bluestone pipe bowls. Pay as much as five dollars for it—which would be ten ‘skins’ up here. I don’t suppose you could find one for a hundred dollars anywhere in the museums of our country, for they are very rare. I have my eye on one, and I hope before we get out of this northern country to close a trade for it, but the old fellow is mighty stiff.”
“You say that five dollars is ten ‘skins’ up here, Uncle Dick,” commented Rob. “At Fort Smith and Fort Simpson a ‘skin’ was only thirty cents—three to the dollar.”
“That custom varies at the different posts,” was Uncle Dick’s reply. “Of course you understand that a ‘skin’ is not a skin at all, but simply a unit of value. Sometimes a trader will give an Indian a bowlful of bullets representing the total value in ‘skins’ of the fur which he has brought in. Each one of those bullets will be a ‘skin.’ The Indian doesn’t know anything about dollars or cents, and indeed very little of value at all. You have to show him everything in an objective way. So when the Indian wants to trade for white men’s goods, he asks for his particular bowl of bullets—which, child-like, he has left with the trader himself. The traders are, however, honest. They never cheat the Indian, in that way at least. So the trader hands down the bowl of bullets. The Indian sees what he wants on the shelves behind the counter, and the trader holds up as many fingers as the value is in ‘skins.’ The Indian picks out that many bullets from his bowl and hands them to the trader, and the trader hands him his goods.
“You can see, therefore, that the Indian’s bowlful of bullets in this country would not buy him as much fur as he would have gotten farther down the river. At the same time, this is farther north, and the freight charges are necessarily high. Perhaps there is just a little in the fact that competition of the independents is not as keen here as it is farther to the south!
“But whatever be the price of a ‘skin,’” Uncle Dick went on, somewhat ruefully, “these Huskies take it out of us cheechackos when we come in. We passed the last of the Slavies at Fort Good Hope. Now we are among the Loucheux. But these Huskies run over the Loucheux as if they were not there.”