Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/507

Rh from north to south, and the French in 1731 were the first of white men to penetrate to the Rocky Mountains. So far as the natives were made parties to the struggles and rivalries of the different traders, the influence upon them was simply demoralizing. The keenest of the traders and of their employé's would endeavor near some carrying-place to intercept a band of savages with their peltries, on their route to the centre of their supplies, where they were under contract for credit given to make a return. Where other temptations offered to them failed, rum was generally found to serve the purpose. Those inner reaches of the continent, once wildernesses impenetrated except by savages, have cast the shadows of oblivion over many dismal tragedies of violence and suffering.

Edward Umfreville, who had been eleven years in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, and four years independently in the Canada fur-trade, published a volume in London, in 1790, on the state of the Company at that time. The book is judiciously and temperately written; but is very searching and severe in its strictures upon the management of the monopoly. He says that every one of its servants that has written upon it has censured or condemned it. When he was in its service in 1771, the Company employed two ships and a sloop, — all less than six hundred tons, — to bring merchandise and to take home peltry. Their crews being seventy-five, and there being only 315 employés resident, he thought this was a pitiful company for such a privilege and realm. In 1749 Arthur Dobbs and others had appealed to the House of Commons for an investigation, with a view to break the monopoly which restricted such a privilege, and to lay open the chartered territory to the trade of the nation at large. But the attempt was thwarted by the Company. Though the charter enjoined kindness to the Indians, and the reclaiming them to Christianity and civilization, Umfreville says the injunction was set at nought. The Company then really