Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/104

 interest, to render the natives comfortable. It is when they are well-clothed, and amply provided with ammunition, that they are best able to exert themselves in collecting furs and provisions. But, so far is it from the Company's wish to acquire an undue influence over them, by loading them with debts, that repeated attempts have been made to reduce the trade to a simple barter. In order to effect an object so beneficial to the natives themselves, the arrears of the Chipewyans have been twice cancelled since the junction of the two Companies in 1821; but the generous experiment has signally failed. The improvidence of the Indian character is an unsurmountable obstacle to its success, and in the Chipewyans is aggravated by a custom which the whites have not yet been able wholly to eradicate. On the death of a relative, they destroy guns, blankets, kettles, everything, in short, they possess, concluding the havoc by tearing their lodges to pieces. When these transports of grief have subsided, they must have recourse to the nearest establishment for a fresh supply of necessaries, and thus their debts are renewed. The debts of the deceased are, in every case, lost to the Company. The Indian debt system is, in reality, equivalent to the practice, in many civilised countries, of making advances to hired servants