NORTHERN OCEAN 199 



chissel and a few arrow-heads of copper, for a half-worn 1771. 

 hatchet; but when they barter furrs with our Indians, the-""^" 

 established rule is to give ten times the price for every thing 

 they purchase that is given for them at the Company's 

 Factory. Thus, a hatchet that is bought at the Factory for 

 one beaver-skin, or one cat-skin, or three ordinary martins' 

 skins, is sold to [177] those people at the advanced price of 

 one thousand per cent. ; they also pay in proportion, for 

 knives, and every other smaller piece of iron-work. For a 

 small brass kettle of two pounds, or two pounds and a half 

 weight, they pay sixty martins, or twenty beaver in other kinds 

 of furrs,* If the kettles are not bruised, or ill-used in any 

 other respect, the Northern traders have the conscience at 

 times to exact something more. It is at this extravagant 

 price that all the Copper and Dog-ribbed Indians, who 

 traffic with our yearly traders, supply themselves with iron- 

 work, &c. 



From those two tribes our Northern Indians used formerly 

 to purchase most of the furrs they brought to the Company's 

 Factory ; for their own country produced very few of those 

 articles, and being, at that time, at war with the Southern 

 Indians, they were prevented from penetrating far enough 

 backwards to meet with many animals of the furr kind ; so that 

 deer-skins, and [178] such furrs as they could extort from the 

 Copper and Dog-ribbed Indians, composed the whole of their 

 trade ; which, on an average of many years, and indeed till 



* What is meant by Beaver in other kind of furrs, must be understood as 

 follows : For the easier trading with the Indians, as well as for the more 

 correctly keeping their accounts, the Hudson's Bay Company have made a 

 full-grown beaver-skin the standard by which they rate all other furrs, accord- 

 ing to their respective values. Thus in several species of furrs, one skin is 

 valued at the rate of four beaver-skins ; some at three, and others at two ; 

 whereas those of an inferior quality are rated at one ; and those of still less 

 value considered so inferior to that of a beaver, that from six to twenty of their 

 skins are only valued as equal to one beaver skin in the way of trade, and do 

 not fetch one-fourth of the price at the London market. In this manner the 

 term " Made Beaver" is to be understood. 



