256 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



a week's journey from the fort, all the half-breed guides who add 

 to the instinct of native craft the reasoning of the white, all the 

 Indian hunters ranging river-course and mountain have come by 

 snow-shoes and dog train to spend festive days at the fort. A 

 great jangling of bells announces the huskies (dog trains) scampering 

 over the crusted snow-drifts. A babel of barks and curses follows, 

 for the huskies celebrate their arrival by tangling themselves up 

 in their harness and enjoying a free fight. 



Dogs unharnessed, in troop the trappers to the banquet-hall, 

 flinging packs of tightly roped peltries down promiscuously, to be 

 sorted next day. One Indian enters just as he has left the hunting- 

 field, clad from head to heel in white caribou with the antlers left 

 on the capote as a decoy. His squaw has togged out for the occasion 

 in a comical medley of brass bracelets and finger-rings, with a 

 bear's claw necklace and ermine ruff which no city connoisseur 

 could possibly mistake for rabbit. If a daughter yet remain un- 

 appropriated she will display the gayest attire — red flannel galore, 

 red shawl, red scarf, with perhaps an apron of white fox skin and 

 moccasins garnished in colored grasses. The braves outdo even 

 a vain young squaw. Whole fox, mink or otter skins have been 

 braided to the end of their hair, and hang down in two plaits to the 

 floor. Whitest of buckskin has been ornamented with brightest 

 of beads, and over all hangs the gaudiest of blankets, it may be a 

 musk-ox-skin with the feats of the warrior set forth in rude draw- 

 ings on the smooth side. 



Children and old people, too, come to the feast, for the Indian's 

 stomach is the magnet that draws his soul. Grotesque little 

 figures the children are, with men's trousers shambling past their 

 heels, rabbit-skin coats with the fur turned in, and on top of all 

 some old stove-pipe hat or discarded busby coming half-way down 

 to the urchin's neck. The old people have more resemblance to 

 parchment on gnarled sticks than to human beings. They shiver 

 under dirty blankets with every sort of cast-off rag tied about their 

 limbs, hobbling lame from frozen feet or rheumatism, mumbling 



