10 



A General History of the Fur Trade. 



These, however, were but partial advantages, and could 

 not prevent the people of Canada from seeing the improper 

 conduct of son^g of their associates, which rendered it dan- 

 gerous to remain any longer among the natives. Most of 

 them who passed the winter at the Saskatchiwine, got to the 

 Eagle hills, where, in the spring of the year 1780, a few 

 days previous to their intended departure, a large band 

 of Indians being engaged in drinking about their houses, 

 one of the traders, to ease himself of the troublesome im- 

 portunities of a native, gave him a dose of laudanum in a 

 glass of grog, which effectually prevented him from giving 

 further trouble to any one, by setting him asleep forever. 

 This accident produced a fray, in which one of the traders, 

 and several of the men,were killed,while the rest had no other 

 means to save themselves but by a precipitate flight, aban- 

 doning a considerable quantity of goods, and near half the 

 furs which they had collected during the winter and the 

 spring. 



About the same time, two of the establishments on the 

 Assiniboin river, were attacked with less justice, when 

 several white men, and a greater number of Indians were 

 killed. In short, it appeared, that the natives had formed 

 a resolution to extirpate the traders ; and, without entering 

 into any further reasonings on the subject, it appears to be 

 incontrovertible, that the irregularity pursued in carrying 

 on the trade has brought it into its present forlorn situation : 

 and nothing but the greatest calamity that could have befallen 

 the natives, saved the traders from destruction : this was 

 the small pox, which spread its destructive and desolating 

 power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The 

 fatal infection spread around with a baneful rapidity which 

 no flight could escape, and with a fatal effect that nothing 

 could resist. It destroyed with its pestilential breath whole 

 families and tribes ; and the horrid scene presented to those 

 who had the melancholy and afflicting opportunity of be- 

 holding it, a combination of the dead, the dying, and such 

 as, to avoid the horrid fate of their friends around them, 

 prepared to disappoint the plague of its prey, by terminating 

 their own existence. 



The habits and lives of those devoted people, which pro- 

 vided not to-day for the w T ants of to-morrow, must have 

 heightened the pains of such an affliction, by leaving them 

 not only without remedy, but even without alleviation. 

 Nought was left them but to submit in agony and despair. 



