JOHN COLTER-FREE TRAPPER 173 



of woods and streams, the white man was &quot; big knife 

 you/ in distinction to the red man carrying only primi 

 tive weapons. Very often the free trapper slipped away 

 from the fur post secretly, or at night ; for there were 

 questions of licenses which he disregarded, knowing 

 well that the buyer of his furs would not inform for 

 fear of losing the pelts. Also and more important in 

 counseling caution, the powerful fur companies had 

 spies on the watch to dog the free trapper to his hunt 

 ing-grounds; and rival hunters would not hesitate to 

 bribe the natives with a keg of rum for all the peltries 

 which the free trapper had already bought by advancing 

 provisions to Indian hunters. Indeed, rival hunters 

 have not hesitated to bribe the savages to pillage and 

 murder the free trapper; for there was no law in the 

 fur trading country, and no one to ask what became of 

 the free hunter who went alone into the wilderness and 

 never returned. 



Going out alone, or with only one partner, the free 

 hunter encumbered himself with few provisions. Two 

 dollars worth of tobacco would buy a thousand pounds 

 of &quot; jerked &quot; buffalo meat, and a few gaudy trinkets for 

 a squaw all the pemmican white men could use. 



Going by the river routes, four days out from St. 

 Louis brought the trapper into regions of danger. In 

 dian scouts hung on the watch among the sedge of the 

 river bank. One thin line of upcurling smoke, or a 

 piece of string babiche (leather cord, called by the In 

 dians assapapish) fluttering from a shrub, or little 

 sticks casually dropped on the river bank pointing one 

 way, all were signs that told of marauding bands. 

 Some birch tree was notched with an Indian cipher 

 a hunter had passed that way and claimed the bark for 



OFTSE 



UNIVERSITY 



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