230 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

original life as muskets and ammunition, axes and knives, kettles and fryingpans,
blankets and clothing, canvas to make tents and cheap cotton prints to convert
into dresses, besides tea and sugar and the indispensable tobacco. Of late
yeats, competition has also forced the traders to supply food stuffs, such as
flour in small quantities, bacon and beans, rice, and the like.

We read of the Tatars that “ils sont tous comme des enfants. Quand
ils arrivent dans les endroits de commerce, ils ont envie de tout ce qu’ils
voient. Ordinairement ils n’ont pas d’argent, mais...on leur donne les mar-
chandises a crédit”’1. This is true to the letter of the Dénés. If there is in the
world a man who needs a good dose of patience, it is the Indian trader. A
single person will waste hours in asking for and looking over all kinds of
atticles, soliciting the advice of his friends when this is not spontaneously
proffered—a rare occurence if there is any bystander of his race, and the Indian
hardly ever goes alone to trade. Then comes the bargaining, and the bickering
at the price of the merchandise or the value put on his own furs. For the
Déné is a keen observer, and he has so long been treated as a child that,
not only does he now want full value for his goods and a low quotation for
the wares of the trader, but, remembering the incredibly low prices paid him
for furs in by-gone days, he is ever tempted to see an attempt at imposition
in any statement to the effect that, as a result of the fluctuations of the market,
peltries have decreased in value,

From the foregoing the reader will understand that, even in those
so-called trading posts, no business transaction goes on but bartering. The
Indian hands in his furs, and the trader gives goods in exchange. Useless
to point out the fact that this furnishes the latter with splendid opportunities
for realizing handsome profits, inasmuch as he may gain both on the goods
he sells by overestimating them, and the peltries he buys by undervaluation.
That he does, or did, so with a vengeance the following quotations will
amply show.

In June 1742, this was the tariff on Hudson Bay: — A pound of gun-
powder sold for four beavers; a fathom of twisted tobacco, for seven; a pound
of shots, for one; a yard of coarse cloth, for fifteen; a blanket, for twelve;
two fish-hooks, for one; a gun, for twenty-five; an axe, for four; a shirt, for
seven, and a gallon of brandy, for four 2.

Just think of it: two fish-hooks for a beaver skin, or, at the present
valuation of furs, about four dollars for an object whose original cost may
have been a quarter of a cent! No wonder, then, if Arthur Dobbs, from whom
I borrow the above quotations, cannot help remarking by way of comment
that, even under the circumstances and with standards different from those of
our days, everything was then sold “at a monstrous profit, even to 2000 per

' Souvenirs d'un Voyage, vol. I, p. 202.
* Dobbs, “An Account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay”, p. 43.