THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 203 



as surely he knows if he cornr? its any crime that same 

 unbending, fearless white man will pursue and pur 

 sue and pursue guilt to the death. One case is on rec 

 ord of a trader thrashing an Indian within an inch 

 of his life for impudence to officers two or three years 

 before. Of course, the vendetta may cut both ways, 

 the Indian treasuring vengeance in his heart till he can 

 wreak it. That is an added reason why the white man s 

 justice must be unimpeachable. &quot; Pro pelle cutem&quot; 

 says the motto of the company arms. Without flip 

 pancy it might be said &quot; Ay eye for an eye and a tooth 

 for a tooth,&quot; as well as &quot; A skin for a skin &quot; which ex 

 plains the freedom from crime among northern Indians. 



And who are the subjects living under this Mosaic 

 paternalism ? 



Stunted Eskimo of the Far North, creatures as am 

 phibious 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; wandering 

 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 ; Blackf eet and Crows, 

 game birds of the foothills that have harried all other 

 tribes for tribute, keen-eyed as the eagles on the moun 

 tains behind them, glorying in war as the finest kind 

 of hunting; mountain tribes Stonies, Kootenais, Sho*- 

 shonies splendid types of manhood because only the 

 fittest can survive the hardships of the mountains; 



