YIII 



The Indians were not long in finding out that peltries 

 were a ready means of getting the guns and calico and 

 fire-water of the white man, and the white trapper was 

 not many years alone in the business. The Indian trap- 

 per whom Remington's clever eye and hand have depicted 

 may be a Cree or perhaps a Blackfoot, whom one was 

 apt to run across in the Selkirk Mountains or elsewhere 

 on the plains of the -British Territory, or well up north in 

 the Rockies, somewhat antedating the outbreak of the 

 Civil War. He was tributary to the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany, whose badge he wore in his blanket coat of English 

 manufacture, which he had got in trade. AVherever you 

 met this coat, you might place its wearer. He had bear- 

 skin leggings, with surface cleverly seared into ornament- 

 al patterns, and for the rest the usual Indian outfit. He 

 rode a pony which had nothing to distinguish it from the 

 plains pony, except that in winter its coat grew to so re- 

 markable a length as almost to conceal the identity of the 

 animal. Unless you saw it in motion you might take it 

 for a huge species of bear — with a tail. 



Such long coats are not uncommon among any breed 

 of horses. We are wont to imagine that the Arabian 

 always has a bright, glossy coat ; but during the chill 

 rainy season of the regions north of the Arabian desert — 

 and it can be as bleak and cold on those treeless wastes as 

 heart can desire — the Arabian puts on a coat all but as 

 long and rough as a sheep. Unlike the Indian's pony, he 



