THE LURE OF THE BEAVER 



601 



beaver and one pot for a summer beaver." Monsieur 

 the Governor of Montreal ordered this tavern closed 

 but the order was not obeyed. 



About 1761 the trader, Alexander Henry, spent 



who .... paid greater prices than if a competition 



had subsisted. A competition on the other hand afflicts 



the Indians with a variety of evils in a different form. 



"The following were the prices of goods at Fort des 



Prairies : 



Beaver Skins 



A gun 20 



A Stroud blanket 10 



A white blanket 8 



An axe of one pound weight 3 



Half a pint of gunpowder 1 



Ten balls 1 



but, the principal profit accrued from the sale of knives, 

 beads, flints, steels, awls and other small articles. 



"Tobacco, when sold, fetched one beaver skin per 

 foot of Spencer's twist, and rum, not very strong, two 

 beaver skins per bottle ; but a great proportion of 

 these commodities was disposed of in presents. 



"The quantity of furs brought into the fort was 

 very great. From twenty to thirty Indians arrived 

 daily, laden with packs of beaver skins." 



The meat which Henry refers to was not beaver 

 meat, but dried and smoked buffalo meat. Although 

 beaver meat is good eating and was freely used by 

 both Indians and Whites in the fur country, I have 

 rarely found it mentioned as an article of trade, while 

 the meat of buffalo, deer, elk and moose was a com- 

 mon article of trade. For curing the meat, the beaver 

 was too small an animal. 



In places where there was no competition, it is 

 claimed that traders made a profit of 2000%. Father 

 Charles Lemant writes that about 1625 the French 

 Trading Company exported from Quebec 12,000 to 

 22,000 skins annually. The Company paid 4 1-3 livres 



A FAT BEAVER TRAPPED 



The trap was placed near the top of his house and he was caught as he 

 was entering it. He has been shipped to the state game farm of Wiscon- 

 sin and is prospering there now. 



some time at Mackinac in the present State of Michi- 

 gan. From this place, which was for many years an 

 important point in the fur trade, he relates the follow- 

 ing incident: 



"The Jesuit father killed an ox which he sold 

 by the quarter. He took for 

 the meat the same weight in 

 beaver skins. Beaver skins 

 were worth a dollar a pound. 

 Money is very little used at 

 Mackinac, all trade being car- 

 ried on in furs. A pound of 

 beaver skins is worth sixty 

 cents in trade." 



In 1776 the same trader vis- 

 ited the Assiniboins at Fort des 

 Prairies in the Saskatchewan 

 country, and a few paragraphs 

 from his journal give interest- 

 ing glimpses of the trade in 

 beaver skins in the far west. 



"Four different interests," 

 he writes, "were struggling for 

 the Indian trade of the Saskat- 

 chewan, but fortunately they 

 had this year agreed to join 

 their stock, and when the sea- 

 son was over to divide the skins 

 and meat. This arrangement 

 was beneficial to the merchants beaver on the dam 



but not directly to the Indians T*" animal swam down the stream and climbed on top of the dam just as the photographer took the 



picture. It is exceedingly difficult to get such a photograph in the beaver's native haunts. 



