Читать книгу A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. U.S. Interpreter at the Saut de Ste. Marie онлайн

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In former times, when the whole of the northwest of our continent was open to the competition of rival traders, all the evils and all the advantages of the system at present existing in the United States territories were felt to the remotest and least accessible of those dreary regions. The Indian could probably in all instances realize a higher price for his peltries than he can hope to do at present. The means of intoxicating himself and his family were always to be had at some rate, and the produce of his hunt was artfully divided and disposed of in the manner which seemed to promise him the greatest share of this deadly indulgence. During the times of active competition, it was found accordingly that the fur bearing animals, and the race of native hunters, were hastening with equal and rapid strides towards utter extinction. The effect of a competitionary trade, managed as it will always be, in districts for the most part or wholly without the jurisdiction of the governments of civilized countries, upon the animals whose skins constitute the sole object of the visits of the traders, must be obvious. The vagrant and migratory habits of the Indians would render it impossible for any individual, or any association of men, to interrupt or even to check the destruction of animals, wherever they could be found. The rival trader was ever at hand to take advantage of any forbearance a prudent foresight might dictate. Thus it will appear that districts where game had existed in the greatest abundance, were in the course of a few years so stripped that the inhabitants could avoid starvation only by migrating to some less exhausted region. Wherever the Indians went, the traders were sure to follow as the wolves and buzzards follow the buffalo. But in the state of things at present existing in the north, the traders are represented to have entire control of the motions of the Indians. The most valuable part of the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company is the forest country. With the Indians of the plains, who subsist almost entirely by hunting the buffalo, they concern themselves no further than to purchase such robes or other peltries as they may, on their visit to a post, offer for ready pay. The people of the plains having few possessions beside their horses, their bows and arrows, and their garments of skins, are so independent, and the animals they hunt of so little value to the traders, that they are left to pursue whatever course their own inclination may point out, and at present they never receive credits. With the forest Indians the case is quite different. Such is their urgent necessity for ammunition and guns, for traps, axes, woollen blankets, and other articles of foreign manufacture, that at the approach of winter, their situation is almost hopeless if they are deprived of the supplies they have so long been accustomed to receive. A consciousness of this dependance sufficed, even in times of competition, to some extent, but far more at present, to render them honest, and punctual in discharging the debts they had incurred. The practice of the traders now is, whenever they find the animals in any district becoming scarce, to withdraw their trading establishment, and by removing to some other part, make it necessary for the Indians to follow. Regions thus left at rest, are found to become, in a few years, in a great measure replenished with the fur-bearing animals. The two regulations by which the clerks and agents are forbid to purchase the skins of certain animals if killed before they have attained their full growth, and by which the use of traps, which destroy indiscriminately old and young, is interdicted, doubtless contribute essentially to the attainment of this important result. It cannot be otherwise, than that the moral condition of the hunter population in the north must be somewhat improved by the severe discipline which convenience and interest will equally prompt the Company possessing the monopoly to introduce and maintain; but whether this advantage will, in the event, counterbalance the effect of the rigid exactions to which the Indians may be compelled to submit, must be for time to determine.