JOHN COLTER — FREE TRAPPER 243 



the Sioux. Fisher and Fraser and Woods knew the Upper Missouri 

 before 1806; and Brugiere had been on the Columbia many years 

 before the Astorians came in 181 1. 



One crime the free trappers may be charged with — a reckless 

 waste of precious furs. The great companies always encouraged 

 the Indians not to hunt more game than they needed for the season's 

 support. And no Indian hunter, uncorrupted by white men, 

 would molest game while the mothers were with their young. 

 Famine had taught them the punishment that follows reckless 

 hunting. But the free trappers were here to-day and away to- 

 morrow, like a Chinaman, to take all they could get regardless of re- 

 sults ; and the results were the rapid extinction of fur-bearing game. 



Always there were more free trappers in the United States 

 than in Canada. Before the union of Hudson's Bay and Nor' 

 Wester in Canada, all classes of trappers were absorbed by one 

 of the two great companies. After the union, when the monopoly 

 enjoyed by the Hudson's Bay did not permit it literally to drive a 

 free trapper out, it could always "freeze" him out by withholding 

 supplies in its great white northern wildernesses, or by refusing 

 to give him transport. When the monopoly passed away in 1871, 

 free trappers pressed north from the Missouri, where their methods 

 had exterminated game, and carried on the same ruthless warfare 

 on the Saskatchewan. North of the Saskatchewan, where very 

 remoteness barred strangers out, the Hudson's Bay Company still 

 held undisputed sway ; and Lord Strathcona, the governor of the 

 company, was able to say a few years ago, "the fur trade is quite 

 as large as ever it was." 



Among free hunters, Canada had only one commanding figure 

 — John Johnston of the Soo, who settled at La Pointe on Lake 

 Superior in 1792, formed league with Wabogish, "the White Fisher," 

 and became the most famous trader of the Lakes. His life, too, 

 was almost as eventful as Colter's. A member of the Irish nobility, 

 some secret which he never chose to reveal drove him to the wilds. 

 Wabogish, the "White Fisher," had a daughter who refused the 



