2 6o THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



the streams solid. In recent years there have been few beaver- 

 skins, a closed season of several years giving the little rodents a 

 chance to multiply. By treaty the Indian may hunt all creatures 

 of the chase as long as "the sun rises and the rivers flow"; but 

 the fur trader can enforce a closed season by refusing to barter 

 for the pelts. Of muskrat skins, hundreds of thousands are carried 

 to the forts every season. The little haycock houses of musk- 

 rats offer the trapper easy prey when frost freezes the sloughs, 

 shutting off retreat below, and heavy snowfall has not yet hidden 

 the little creatures' winter home. 



The trading is done in several ways. Among the Eskimos, 

 whose arithmetical powers seldom exceed a few units, the trader 

 holds up his hand with one, two, three fingers raised, signifying 

 that he offers for the skin before him equivalents in value to one, 

 two, three prime beaver. If satisfied, the Indian passes over the 

 furs and the trader gives flannel, beads, powder, knives, tea or 

 tobacco to the value of the beaver-skins indicated by the raised 

 fingers. If the Indian demands more, hunter and trader wrangle 

 in pantomime till compromise is effected. 



But always beaver-skin is the unit of coin. Beaver are the Indian's 

 dollars and cents, his shillings and pence, his tokens of currency. 



South of the Arctics, where native intelligence is of higher 

 grade, the beaver values are represented by goose-quills, small 

 sticks, bits of shell, or, most common of all, discs of lead, tea- 

 chests melted down, stamped on one side with the company arms, 

 on the other with the figures I, 2, i, i, representing so much value 

 in beaver. 



First of all, then, furs in the pack must be sorted, silver fox 

 worth many hundred dollars separated from cross fox and blue and 

 white worth more each year, according to quality, and from common 

 red fox worth less. Twenty years ago it was no unusual thing 

 for the Hudson's Bay Company to send to England yearly 10,000 

 cross fox-skins, 7000 blue, 100,000 red, half a dozen silver. Few 

 wolf-skins are in the trapper's pack unless particularly fine speci- 



