OF THE RED INDIAN RACE. 435 



Fort Garry, or other Hudson's Bay fort. The messenger — Cowlitz, 

 Chinook, Nasquallie, or other Indian, — carried it to the frontier of 

 his own hunting-grounds, and then sold it for so much tobacco to 

 some Indian of another tribe ; by him it was passed on, by like pro- 

 cess of barter, till it crossed the Rocky Mountains into the territory 

 of the Blackfeet, the Crees, and so onward to its destination, in full 

 confidence that the officers of the Hudson's Bay Fort would sustain the 

 credit of the White Medicine-man (for so the painter was regarded), 

 and redeem the packet at its full value in tobacco or other equivalent. 

 The personal interests of the little, bands of European fur-traders 

 thus settled in the heart of a wilderness, and surrounded by savage 

 hunters, no less strongly prompted them to exclude the maddening 

 fire-water from the vast regions under their control. Guns and 

 ammunition, kettles, axes, knives, beads, and other trinkets, with the 

 no less prized tobacco, were abundantly provided for barter. Even 

 nails and the iron hoops of their barrels were traded with the 

 Indians, and displaced the primitive tomahawk and arrow-head of 

 flint or stone. Thus, curiously, the Stone-Period of a people still in 

 the most primitive stage of barbarism has been superseded by the use 

 of metals obtained solely by barter, and without any advance either 

 in the knowledge of metallurgy, or in the mastery of the arts which 

 lie at the foundation of all civilization. Long before the advent of 

 Europeans, the Chippewas along the shox'es of Lake Superior had 

 been familiar with the native copper which abounds there in the 

 condition of pure metal. But they knew it only as a kind of malle- 

 able stone ; nor have they even now learned the application of fire in 

 their simple metallurgic processes. The root of their names for iron 

 and copper is the same abstract term, wahhik, used only in compound 

 words, and apparently in the sense of rock or stone. Pewahbik is 

 iron, ozahwahhik, copper, literally the yellow stone. Thus they have 

 metahbik on the bare rock, oogedahhik on the top of a rock ; kishkah- 

 bikah, it is a precipice, &c. Silver appears to have been recognized 

 as a distinct metal, under the name shooneya ; but gold is only 

 ozahioah-shooneya, or yellow silver. But beyond the mere gathering 

 of the copper and silver, as they are found on the shores of Lake 

 Superior, in a condition of nearly pure metal, and hammering them 

 into implements and ornaments, they knew nothing of metallurgy ; 

 and it foi-med no pai-t of the Hudson's Bay traders' aim to advance him 

 beyond the stage of a savage hunter. It was incompatible with the 



