During the summer, the Company send out, under the direction of an experienced clerk, a number of strong, well-armed, mounted men, who convey the necessary goods and supplies, on pack-horses, to the trading stations, at a distance from the river; they always observe and enforce the required conditions of the Indians, and not unfrequently come to blows with them. These expeditions have to support themselves by the chase, consequently the men must be good hunters, as they subsist almost exclusively on what they procure by their guns. Besides the forts which I have so often named, the Company has also small winter posts, called log-houses, or block-houses, among the Indians, quickly erected, and as quickly abandoned: to these the Indians bring their furs, which are purchased, and sent, in the spring, to the trading posts. The American Fur Company has, at present, about twenty-three, large and small, trading posts. In the autumn and winter the Indian tribes generally approach nearer to these posts, to barter their skins; while in the spring and summer they devote themselves especially to catching beavers, for which they receive every encouragement from the merchants, who lend or advance them iron traps for the purpose.
The animals, whose skins are objects of this trade, and the annual average of the income derived from skins, may be pretty well ascertained from the following statement:
1. Beavers: about 25,000 skins. They are sold in packs of 100 lbs. weight each, put up separately, and tied together. There are, generally, about sixty large skins in a pack; if they are smaller, of course there are more skins. A large beaver skin weighs about two pounds—sometimes more. The usual price is four dollars a pound.[357]
190 2. Otters: 200 to 300 skins.
3. Buffalo cow skins: 40,000 to 50,000. Ten buffalo hides go to the pack.
4. Canadian weasel (Musetela Canadensis): 500 to 600.
5. Martin (pine or beech martin): about the same quantity.
6. Lynx; the northern lynx (Felis Canadensis): 1,000 to 2,000.
7. Lynx; the southern or wild cat (Felis rufa): ditto.
8. Red foxes (Canis fulvus): 2,000.