Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/510

490 of wild-cats and the tongues of women, it makes me so fierce and so foolish.”

After the savages, on their visit to the trading-post, had recovered — not without a sense of shame and humiliation — from the drinking-riot, they were ready for business, tempted by the sight of the goods in the store, — guns, ammunition, clothes, various commodities, and bright calicoes, ribbons, trinkets, and gewgaws for their squaws. But the first transaction required a payment of their debts, for they were generally a year behindhand, having on their previous visit taken up goods on credit. Generally, too, they were honest debtors, bringing with them enough beyond their obligations to insure a credit in excess of their surplus for another season. The liquor was hidden away during these transactions, and efforts were made to prevent the draft upon what they might carry off with them till they had gone some distance from the trading-station. How diligently the savages followed the work of trapping beaver alone for the Company may be inferred from the fact, that, in the year 1788, more than 127,000 skins were shipped to London. The barter business at the posts was transacted by the aid of small marked sticks, defining values. These were given to the Indians according to the matter in their packs, and then received back again, at the same rate, for the goods which they might select from the store-house. The unit of value was the beaver skin, other peltries being estimated by fractions or multiples of it. The packs of goods which were to be transferred into the wilderness and those which were brought out of it were generally each of them a hundred pounds in weight, with reference to one or two of them being slung over the back in crossing portages or carrying-places between the water-runs.

Some of these commercial transits were made when the streams were open; others in the depths of winter, when the frozen surface of snow in the wilderness and of lakes and streams gave a zest and rapidity to the journey.