114. FORT EDMONTON, NORTH SASKATCHEWAN.
These forts are always situated on the borders of a lake or river, both for facility of transport and for the purpose of catching fish, particularly the species of Coregonus, or white-fish, which, from its importance to all the natives of Rupert’s Land between the great Canada lakes and the Arctic Sea, the Crees call Attihawmeg, or the “reindeer of the waters.” In many of the trading-posts it forms the chief food of the white residents; and it is asserted that though deprived of bread and vegetables, a man may live upon it for months or even years without tiring. According to Sir John Richardson, no fish in any country or sea excels the white-fish in flavor and wholesomeness, and it is the most beneficial article of diet to the Red Indians near the Arctic Circle, being obtained with more certainty than the reindeer, and with less change of abode in summer and winter.
Each of the principal forts is the seat of a chief factor, or general administrator of a district, and of a chief trader, who transacts the business with the Indians.
Besides these principal functionaries—out of whom the governor is chosen—the Company employed, in 1860, 5 surgeons, 87 clerks, 67 postmasters, 1200 permanent servants, and 500 voyageurs, besides temporary employés of different ranks, so that the total number of persons in its pay was at least 3000. Besides this little army of immediate dependents, the whole male Indian population of its vast territory, amounting to about 100,000 hunters and trappers, may be considered as actively employed in the service of the Company. Armed vessels, both sailing and steam, are employed on the north-west coast to carry on the fur-trade with the warlike natives of that distant region. More than twenty years ago this trade alone gave employment to about 1000 men, occupying 21 permanent establishments, or engaged in navigating five armed sailing vessels and one armed steamer, varying from 100 to 300 tons in burden.
115. TRADER’S CAMP.
The influence of the Company over its savage dependents may justly be called beneficial. Both from motives of humanity and self-interest, every effort is made to civilize them. No expense is spared to preserve them from the want into which their improvidence too often plunges them; and the example of an inflexible straightforwardness serves to gain their confidence. This moral preponderance, and the admiration of the Indian for the superior knowledge and arts of the Europeans, explain how a mere handful of white men, scattered over an enormous territory, not only lead a life of perfect security, but exercise an almost absolute power over a native population outnumbering them at least several hundred times. The Indians have in course of time acquired many new wants, and have thus become more and more dependent on the white traders. The savage hunter is no longer the free, self-dependent man, who, without any foreign assistance, was able to make and manufacture, with his own hands, all the weapons and articles needed for his maintenance. Without English firearms and fishing-gear, without iron-ware and woollen blankets, he could no longer exist, and the unfortunate tribe on which the Company should close its stores would soon perish for want. “History,” says Professor Hind, “does not furnish another example of an association of private individuals exerting a powerful influence over so large an extent of the earth’s surface, and administering their affairs with such consummate skill and unwavering devotion to the original objects of their incorporation.”
The standard of exchange in all mercantile transactions with the natives is a beaver skin, the relative value of which, as originally established by the traders, differs considerably from the present worth of the articles represented by it; but the Indians are averse to change. They 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.
The furs which, in the course of the year, are accumulated in the various forts or trading-stations, are transported in the short time during which the rivers and lakes are navigable, and in the manner described at the beginning of the chapter, to York Factory, or Moose Factory, on Hudson’s Bay, to Montreal or Vancouver, and shipped from thence mostly to London. From the more distant posts in the interior, the transport often requires several seasons; for travelling is necessarily very slow when rapids and portages continually interrupt navigation, and the long winter puts a stop to all intercourse whatever.
The goods from Europe, consisting (besides those mentioned above) of printed cotton or silk handkerchiefs, or neck-cloths, of beads, and the universal favorite tobacco, require at least as much time to find their way into the distant interior; and thus the Company is not seldom obliged to wait for four, five, or six years before it receives its returns for the articles sent from London. It must, however, be confessed, that it amply repays itself for the tediousness of delay, for Dr. Armstrong was told by the Esquimaux of Cape Bathurst—a tribe in the habit of trading with the Indians from the Mackenzie, who are in direct communication with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s agents—that for three silver-fox skins—which sometimes fetch as high a price as twenty-five or thirty guineas apiece at the annual sale of the Company—they had got from the traders cooking utensils which might be worth eight shillings and sixpence!