GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 271 



And who are the subjects living under this Mosaic paternalism ? 



Stunted Eskimos of the Far North, creatures as amphibious as 

 the seals whose coats they wear, with the lustreless eyes of dwarfed 

 intelligence and the agility of seal flippers as they whisk double- 

 bladed paddles from side to side of the darting kyacks ; wander- 

 ing Montagnais from the domed hills of Labrador, lonely and 

 sad and silent as the naked desolation of their rugged land ; Ojibways 

 soft-voiced as the forest glooms in that vast land of spruce tangle 

 north of the Great Lakes ; Crees and Sioux from the plains, cunning 

 with the stealth of creatures that have hunted and been hunted 

 on the shelterless prairie ; Blackfeet and Crows, game birds of the 

 foothills that have harried all other tribes for tribute, keen-eyed 

 as the eagles on the mountains behind them, glorying in war as 

 the finest kind of hunting; mountain tribes — Stonies, Kootenais, 

 Shoshonies — splendid types of manhood because only the fittest 

 can survive the hardships of the mountains ; coast Indians, Chinook 

 and Chilcoot — low and lazy because the great rivers feed them 

 with salmon and they have no need to work. 



Over these lawless Arabs of the New World wilderness the 

 Hudson's Bay Company has ruled for two and a half centuries 

 with smaller loss of life in the aggregate than the railways of the 

 United States cause in a single year. 



Hunters have been lost in the wilds. White trappers have 

 been assassinated by Indians. Forts have been wiped out of 

 existence. Ten, twenty, thirty traders have been massacred at 

 different times. But, then, the loss of life on railways totals up 

 to thousands in a single year. 



When fighting rivals long ago, it is true that the Hudson's Bay 

 Company recognized neither human nor divine law. Grant the 

 charge and weigh it against the benefits of the company's rule. 

 When Hearne visited Chippewyans two centuries ago he found the 

 Indians in a state uncontaminated by the trader ; and that state will 

 give the ordinary reader cold shivers of horror at the details of 

 massacre and degradation. Every visitor since had reported the 



