WHAT THE TRAPPER STANDS FOR 279 



would destroy his next year s hunt. He does not kill 

 the mother while she is with the young. He kills the 

 grown males which it can he safely said have killed 

 more of each other than man has killed in all the 

 history of trapping. Wherever regions have heen 

 hunted by the pot-hunter, whether the sportsman for 

 amusement or the settler supplying his larder, game 

 has been exterminated. This is illustrated by all the 

 stretch of country between the Platte and the Sas 

 katchewan. Wherever regions have been hunted only 

 by the trapper, game is as plentiful as it has ever been. 

 This is illustrated by the forests of the Rockies, by 

 the No-Man s Land south of Hudson Bay and by the 

 Arctics. Wherever the trapper has come destroying 

 grisly and coyote and wolverine, the prong horn and 

 mountain-sheep and mountain-goat and wapiti and 

 moose have increased. 



But the trapper stands for something more than a 

 game warden, something more than the most merciful 

 of destroyers. He destroys animal life a life which is 

 red in tooth and claw with murder and rapine and 

 cruelty in order that Innnan life may be preserved, 

 may be rendered independent of the elemental powers 

 that wage war against it. 



It is a war as old as the human race, this struggle 

 of man against the elements, a struggle alike reflected 

 in Viking song of warriors conquering the sea, and in 

 the Scandinavian myth of pursuing Fenris wolf, and 

 in the Finnish epic of the man-hero wresting secrets 

 of life-bread from the earth, and in Indian folk-lore 

 of a Hiawatha hunting beast and treacherous wind. 

 It is a war in w r hich the trapper stands forth as a con 

 queror, a creature sprung of earth, trampling all the 



