244 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



wooings of all her tribe's warriors. In vain Johnston sued for her 

 hand. Old Wabogish bade the white man go sell his Irish estates 

 and prove his devotion by buying as vast estates in America. 

 Johnston took the old chief at his word, and married the haughty 

 princess of the Lake. When the War of 1812 set all the tribes by 

 the ears, Johnston and his wife had as thrilling adventures as ever 

 Colter knew among the Blackfeet. - 



Many a free trapper, and partner of the fur companies as well, 

 secured his own safety by marrying the daughter of a chief, as 

 Johnston had. These were not the lightly-come, lightly-go affairs 

 of the vagrant adventurer. If the husband had not cast off civiliza- 

 tion like a garment, the wife had to put it on like a garment ; and not 

 an ill-fitting garment either, when one considers that the convents 

 of the quiet nuns dotted the wilderness like oases in a desert almost 

 contemporaneous with the fur trade. If the trapper had not sunk 

 to the level of the savages, the little daughter of the chief was 

 educated by the nuns for her new position. I recall several cases 

 where the child was sent across the Atlantic to an English governess 

 so that the equality would be literal and not a sentimental fiction. 

 And yet, on no subject has the western fur trader received more 

 persistent and unjust condemnation. The heroism that culmi- 

 nated in the union of Pocahontas with a noted Virginian won 

 applause, and almost similar circumstances dictated the union of 

 fur traders with the daughters of Indian chiefs ; but because the 

 fur trader has not posed as a sentimentalist, he has become more 

 or less of a target for the index finger of the Pharisee. 1 



1 Would not such critics think twice before passing judgment if they recalled that General 

 Parker was a full-blood Indian; that if Johnston had not married Wabogish's daughter and 

 if Johnston's daughter had not preferred to marry Schoolcraft instead of going to her rela- 

 tives of the Irish nobility, Longfellow would have written no Hiawatha? Would they not 

 hesitate before slurring men like Premier Norquay of Manitoba and the famous MacKenzies, 

 those princes of fur trade from St. Louis to the Arctic, and David Thompson, the great ex- 

 plorer ? Do they forget that Lord Strathcona, one of the foremost peers of Britain, is related 

 to the proudest race of plain-rangers that ever scoured the West, the Bois-Brules ? The 

 writer knows the West from only fifteen years of life and travel there ; yet with that imperfect 

 knowledge cannot recall a single fur post without some tradition of an unfamed Pocahontas. 



