In a “civilized” land, with the law wide awake, unscrupulous competitors have to be satisfied with slower methods of ruining each other. In the wild west of our fathers’ time the voice of civilization was feeble, and law was laughed at. The passion of gain was free to indulge its natural tendency to crime. Parties of rival traders, meeting in solitudes where no witnesses were to be feared, fought out their differences with gun and hatchet.
All the trickery of war was brought into play as well as its violence. At some points both companies had trading posts, and the rival traders now and then entertained each other in quite a neighborly way. Once the Hudson’s Bay men, having discovered that an Indian hunting party had just returned to its camp forty miles [a]First Colony Started] away, invited the Nor’-westers to a dance, and kept them revelling while four Hudson’s Bay sledges dashed away over the snow and bought up the whole of the catch. Next day the Nor’-westers heard of the same hunting party and made the same long journey, hoping to do a big trade, but came back, of course, empty-handed and full of wrath.
In a Swift Current
On the Winter Highway
Lord Selkirk,
Father of Western Settlement
