Jan. ii, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
49 
fund myself lying on the ground, at the same 
the hearing a sharp penetrating squeak. This 
s'.ieak was my salvation. It came from the 
jung one and the apprehensive mother heard 
i Probably thinking her offspring was in dan- 
gr she left me suddenly and made off in the 
c tance, snorting and trembling, with her young 
ce. Did that young one squeak out of mischie- 
I 
LITTLE more than fifty years ago there 
were scattered over the western half 
of the continent trading posts, some- 
i-s called forts, houses or posts, which were 
ljt the only settlements in the western country. 
Ise establishments were the permanent head- 
ufters of the various fur trading companies 
i were established for purposes of trade with 
] Indians, and to supply goods to the free 
<'pers who were engaged in the business of 
ijering fur. Of these forts there were prob- 
) not less than one hundred and fifty in the 
•fed States during the comparatively short 
n: that the trade existed, while in Canada 
• e were perhaps nearly twice as many, and 
aese last many are still occupied as trading 
>s. Some of those in the United States were 
se only for a year or two, others endured 
iifty years or more. Some, whose names are 
ttioned in the books of travelers, in the 
fies of fur traders or in the correspondence 
ie old fur trading companies, cannot now be 
etified. Over the sites of others the tower- 
f buildings of great cities now rear their 
nsing heights. Of others still, nothing is 
f save a stone chimney or two still standing 
ot or two above the ground in some sage 
; h bottom of a great river of the North, or 
vous joy, out of sympathy with me, or because 
of the unaccustomed spectacle? 
My companion then came back, and slowly 
picking myself up I perceived with joy that I 
was unhurt, except for an abrasion of the left 
wrist which was soon attended to. On the way 
home we managed to bag a fine hartebeest bull 
and there was great joy on our return to camp. 
again, a little hollow in such bottom marks the 
site of one. Along the course of the mighty 
Missouri, the river, eating out the bank on one 
side and building it up on another, has tumbled 
into the muddy current the soil where more than 
one such posts have stood. 
Each such fort has had its history, which—if 
we but knew it—would be well worth record¬ 
ing. To it came first a little band of hardy 
traders eager for furs and anxious to take ad¬ 
vantage of the desire of the simple savage for 
the beads and knives and needles and guns and 
ammunition which they brought to exchange 
with the Indians for the choice furs of beaver 
and marten or for the useful buffalo robes 
tanned by the industrious Indian women in 
great numbers. Logs were cut, store-houses 
erected and then buildings for quarters for the 
men. Soon came the Indians eager to trade, 
camping about the fort in their picturesque skin 
lodges, usually merry, laughing and pleasant, 
but sometimes scowling and threatening. Often, 
for years the trade went on in comfortable, 
peaceful fashion, or again a war party of young 
men approaching during the night ran off the 
horses of the traders, killed their cattle, and 
sometimes even attacked the fort. 
Primitive mail always longs for alcohol, and 
one of the cheapest articles of trade with the 
Indians was liquor. In the North, the Hudson’s 
Bay and the old Northwest Company consist¬ 
ently traded rum to the Indians, and the books 
of the old voyagers paint shocking pictures of 
the results of this trade to the savages. In the 
United States the law forbade the trading of 
liquor to Indians, but there were a thousand 
methods of evading that law and all of them 
were practiced. In the accounts of early days 
we read many stories of the methods employed 
to escape the search of baggage for whiskey 
and expressions of pride and satisfaction at the 
success of the various artifices employed. 
Whiskey was above all others the favorite article 
of trade. Though the efforts to prevent the 
bringing of liquor into the Indian country were 
so often fruitless, yet these efforts were so 
annoying to the fur traders that one of the most 
eminent of these made an effort to open a 
distillery at Fort Union on the Missouri River 
and there to manufacture liquor for this trade. 
This was the idea of Kenneth McKenzie, a 
famous trader of the early half of the last cen¬ 
tury. Fie went so far as to set up a distillery, 
and put it in operation and to take a cargo of 
corn up the river. He even distilled some liquor 
from the squaw corn grown by the Mandans, 
but complained of this because it yielded badly; 
yet said that it made a fine sweet liquor. How¬ 
ever, it was not very long before the United 
States authorities got after McKenzie, and the 
distillery project soon came to an end. 
Of the old-time forts, once so important in a 
country then without white inhabitants and now 
for the most part wholly forgotten, none now 
4 dd 4 d 
Ancient Landmarks 
! The orl 8 inal sketches which are printed with these articles were drawn by Mr. Alexander H. Murray, a native 
i p Ias 8° w . Scotland, a highly educated and accomplished man. Mr. Murray entered the service of the Hud- 
n’s Bay Co. in 1840, and spent all of his active life in its service. He retired in 1866 and spent the rest of his 
ys m hls own residence, near Lower Fort Garry, now in the Province of Manitoba, Canada. Lower Fort 
irry was his last charge before leaving the Hudson’s Bay Co. service. 
In 1866 Mr. Murray built Fort Yukon, in Alaska, and he and his company of men were the first whites the 
tives of that part of the country had seen. He was the first on the ground of that then new territory, and made 
any maps of the country, as well as doing a great deal of sketching, the latter chiefly for his own pleasure, 
nugh he did illustrate Sir John Richard’s “Journal of a Land Journey to Ruperts Land.’’ 
As chief factor, Mr. Murray had had charge of many forts all over the Saskatchewan and Athabasca dis- 
tjCts, as well as of trading posts around Hudson’s Bay. 
OSTRICHES AT ONE HUNDRED YARDS. 
