Self-preservation is the first law of nature and the dwellers of these far away Hudson's Bay posts knew of no greater calamity than that of being burnt out and they looked to it that as far as precaution went this should not occur.
CHAPTER VII.
ABOUT INDIANS.
The way in which the Hudson's Bay Company managed the Indians of Canada has ever been admired by the people of the outside world. Their fundamental rule and strict order to their servants was never to break faith with an Indian. As time went on the Indians began to realize fully that the company was in the country for their mutual benefit, not as aggressors, land grabbers or people to take away their vested rights.
It soon became known that any promise made to them by a Hudson's Bay officer was as good as fulfilled. On the other hand, when "No" was said it meant No every time and there was never any vacillating policy. "Just and Firm" was the motto in all the Company's dealings with the natives and while they were at all times prepared, as far as they could be, to meet any trouble, yet they never provoked enmity. To do so would have been antagonistic to their interests even if justice and humanity were put aside.
Each officer of the posts had the welfare of the Indians as much at heart as a father has for his own children. In sickness they attended them, in trading they advised them what goods would be most beneficial and lasting to their requirements and as far as they could in a pacific way they advised them when trouble arose between any members of the tribe.
In those days when the Company had the country under their exclusive sway, no cheap, shoddy goods were imported in the trading forts. Durability was looked for, not flashy finery. These came with the opening of the country and the advent of peddlers and unprincipled traders. We see the results of this today at any of the stations where our transcontinental train stops. Bands of the once well-conditioned, well-clothed, sober Indians are now replaced by ragged, emaciated, vice marked descendants of these, hanging around in idleness, an object lesson of what so-called civilization has brought them to. Except in some far back isolated posts, the Indian's word goes for nothing. They have lost the once binding obligation that their promise carried and the trader can no longer depend on them.
As the writer knew the pagan and uncivilized Indian some forty years ago he was truthful, sober, honest and moral. I won't say the white man has willfully made him otherwise than what he was, but as a fact he is. It has been a transformation in which the Indian has fallen to most of the white man's vices and adopted very few of his virtues. My experience has been over considerable of the country and amongst several tribes and my observation has told me that about the Mission centers (be the denomination what it may) is to be found the greatest debauchery and rascality in the Indian and that right at their very gates.
Prior to 1821 both the Hudson's Bay Company and that of the Northwest gave liquor to the Indians, but after the coalition of the two companies a wise policy was inaugurated and liquor was stopped thruout the vast country. The Company's people saw that liquor to the Indian was laying the seeds of illness and death and impoverishing his family, but the Company did not take away the grog (which had been given in most cases as a bonus on their hunt) without giving an equivalent in value and the cash value of liquor to each hunter entitled to any was given in the shape of any goods he chose from the trade shop. Even the servants who had heretofore received a Saturday night allowance of spirits, received in lieu thereof two pounds sterling per annum added to their wages.