OUTFITTING INDIANS. 29 



boast for where we have no opposition the In- 

 dians' and our interests are identical, and the 

 company's agent at such posts has the Indians' 

 welfare at heart. 



On the frontier we are obliged by other buy- 

 ers and circumstances over which we have no 

 control to take common out of season skins. 

 As the Indians find sale for skins of any kind, 

 they hunt actually ten months out of tne 

 twelve. At our interior posts, where our word 

 is law, we appoint the 25th of October to begin 

 hunting and the 25th of May to finish; except 

 for bears, and these they are allowed to hunt 

 up to the 10th of June. What a sad sight it is 

 for an officer coining from some interior district 

 to a frontier post, where he left well-clothed 

 contented Indians to find those swindled by the 

 unprincipled traders, in rags, drunken and the 

 seeds of consumption marked in their faces. 



