Young Alaskans in the Far North - Emerson Hough (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📗

“If you get a chance to trade any of these Huskies out of one of their pipes, do it, boys,” said he, “especially if you can get one of the old bluestone pipe bowls. Pay as much as five dollars for it—which would be ten ‘skins’ up here. I don’t suppose you could find one for a hundred dollars anywhere in the museums of our country, for they are very rare. I have my eye on one, and I hope before we get out of this northern country to close a trade for it, but the old fellow is mighty stiff.”

“You say that five dollars is ten ‘skins’ up here, Uncle Dick,” commented Rob. “At Fort Smith and Fort Simpson a ‘skin’ was only thirty cents—three to the dollar.”

“That custom varies at the different posts,” was Uncle Dick’s reply. “Of course you understand that a ‘skin’ is not a skin at all, but simply a unit of value. Sometimes a trader will give an Indian a bowlful of bullets representing the total value in ‘skins’ of the fur which he has brought in. Each one of those bullets will be a ‘skin.’ The Indian doesn’t know anything about dollars or cents, and indeed very little of value at all. You have to show him everything in an objective way. So when the Indian wants to trade for white men’s goods, he asks for his particular bowl of bullets—which, child-like, he has left with the trader himself. The traders are, however, honest. They never cheat the Indian, in that way at least. So the trader hands down the bowl of bullets. The Indian sees what he wants on the shelves behind the counter, and the trader holds up as many fingers as the value is in ‘skins.’ The Indian picks out that many bullets from his bowl and hands them to the trader, and the trader hands him his goods.

“You can see, therefore, that the Indian’s bowlful of bullets in this country would not buy him as much fur as he would have gotten farther down the river. At the same time, this is farther north, and the freight charges are necessarily high. Perhaps there is just a little in the fact that competition of the independents is not as keen here as it is farther to the south!

“But whatever be the price of a ‘skin,’” Uncle Dick went on, somewhat ruefully, “these Huskies take it out of us cheechackos when we come in. We passed the last of the Slavies at Fort Good Hope. Now we are among the Loucheux. But these Huskies run over the Loucheux as if they were not there.”

There was plenty of time given to the passengers at this landing to visit the boats and encampments of the natives, so that our young investigators were able to obtain considerable information about the methods of the country.

They went aboard one whale-boat and discovered that its owner, a stalwart Husky, had brought in a hundred marten and a hundred mink, and half as many white-foxes and lynx. He explained that he was going to buy another whale-boat of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and that he had to pay yet seventy marten, besides all this other fur, in order to get his boat, which would be delivered to him next year. The boys figured that he was paying about twenty-five hundred dollars for an ordinary whale-boat, perhaps thirty years old, and, inquiring as to the cost of such a boat along the coast, found that it rarely was more than about three or four hundred dollars new!

“Well,” said Rob, “I can begin to see how there’s money in this fur business, after all. A sack of flour brings twenty-five dollars here. A cup of flour sells for one ‘skin,’ or fifty cents. These people, Huskies and all, know the value of matches, and they jolly well have to pay for them. I’ve been figuring, and I find out that the traders make about five thousand per cent. profit on the matches they sell in the northern country. Everything else is in proportion.”

Uncle Dick grinned at them as they bent over their books or notes. “Well,” he said, “you remind me of the methods of old Whiteman, a trader out in the western country where I used to live. People used to kick on what he charged for needles and thread, and he always pointed out to them that the freight in that western country was very heavy indeed. I suppose that’s the answer of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the high cost of living among the Eskimos.”

“How much farther north are we going, Uncle Dick?” asked Rob, suddenly. “I mean, how soon do we leave the steamboat?”

“Quicker than you will like,” said he. “This is the next to the last stop that we’ll make. On ahead eighty miles is good old Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, and that is as far as we go. From this time on you can make the memorandum on your photographs and your notes in your diary that you are working under the Midnight Sun and north of the Arctic Circle!”

“I didn’t think we would ever be here!” said John, drawing a long breath. “My, hasn’t it been easy, and hasn’t it been quick? I can hardly realize that we have got this far away from home in so little a while.”

“Yes,” said Rob, “when we were back there loafing around on the portages and in some of the more important stops I began to think we were going to be stranded up here in the winter-time. Well, maybe we’ll get through yet, Uncle Dick. What do you think?”

“Maybe so,” replied Uncle Dick. “And now, if you’ve got your pictures all fixed up, I think you’d better turn in. You’ve got to remember that you sleep by the clock up here, and not by the sun.”

“

Look!” cried Rob to his two companions as they stood on the far deck of the steamboat. “Look yonder!”

He was pointing on ahead through the low-hanging mist and drizzling rain which had marked the last few hours of their last day of steamboat travel.

“What is it?” demanded Jesse, also crowding toward the bow.

“I know. It’s the Rockies!” cried John. “Uncle Dick told me that those mountains were the most northerly spur of the Rocky Mountains. It’s where they go farthest north. So, fellows, we’ve been somewhere, haven’t we? Uncle Dick was right—this is the greatest trip we’ve had, as sure as you’re born.”

“But look yonder on ahead,” resumed Jesse. “What river is that we’re turning into now?”

The booming whistle of the great steamer had called his attention to the fact that they were now altering their course. The Mackenzie River was entering the narrow mouth of a swift stream against which it took all their power to make any headway at all.

Along the banks of this river the trees seemed to be growing taller and stronger, whether willows or spruces that lined the banks, and the shores themselves were bolder.

“Call Uncle Dick,” said Rob. “He’s writing in his room. He knows all about this, I expect.”

So they called Uncle Dick and asked him about the new river.

“Yes,” said he, “this is the Peel River. It comes down out of the Rockies, as you see. You are now pretty near to the upper end of the whole entire Rocky Mountain system. We are going to cross the most northerly part of the Rockies, and the lowest pass—it is only about a thousand feet above sea-level, and only about a hundred miles south of the Arctic Sea itself.

“This river here, the Peel,” he continued, “no doubt offered the old traders a better building-site for a post than the big river would have done below the mouth. The Mackenzie wanders on down for a hundred miles through its delta. Of course the natives trap all through this country for a hundred miles or more, but they tell me the site of Fort McPherson is a favorite one with them, and they all know it. Pretty soon we’ll be there.”

It was about 3.15 of that same day, according to Rob’s diary, when at last the steamboat, after gallantly bucking the stiff current of the Peel River for some hours, pulled in at the foot of a high bank at the summit of which there was located the most northerly of all the Hudson’s Bay posts, and the one with least competition to-day—old Fort McPherson of venerable history.

On the narrow beach at the foot of the hill lay an encampment of Eskimos, their huts rudely built of hides, pieces of wall tents, and canvas stretched over tepee-like frames. Several of their whale-boats, well rigged and well cared for, lay moored to the bank. All along the beach prowled the gaunt dogs which belonged to the Eskimos, and yet other young dogs were tied to stakes so that they might not escape.

These stalwart savages, twenty or thirty of them, came now and joined the motley throng which crowded down to the boat landing. Here might be seen the grizzled old post trader who had been here for forty years, and near to him the red uniforms of a pair of Mounted Policemen who were waiting for this boat to take them back to civilization. A few others of the mounted force, one or two nondescripts, and a scattered and respectful fringe of Loucheux Indians who held back at the rear went to make up the strange throng who greeted the last and only boat of the year.

It was a great event for these far-northern dwellers when the steamer came. A great event it was, too, for these young adventurers who had gone north with the brigade, who now had seen that brigade dwindle and scatter over more than fifteen hundred miles of unknown country; and who now saw the remnant of the brigade proper, one steamboat and a scow, come to anchor here at the farthest north of the fur trade of this continent!

The boys were quickly on shore, running around with their cameras among the savages. They found the Huskies, as they always were called, a much more imposing tribe than any of the Indians they had seen. The men were taller and more robust, more fearless and self-respecting, even arrogant in their deportment. The women were a strapping lot. Some of them wore the blue line tattoo on the lower lip, showing them to be married women; others, young girls not uncomely to look upon. All were clad in the fur garments of the North, even though it now was summer-time, the date of their arrival being July 8th. Over the fur garments most of them wore a dirty cotton covering, supposedly to keep their fur garments clean. The women usually slipped their arms out of the sleeves of their loose, chemise-like jackets, so that with their double coverings it was sometimes difficult to tell where they kept their hands.

To the surprise of the boys, the Eskimos insisted on receiving money or presents of some kind before they would allow themselves to be photographed. They were willing to trade, but, as their Uncle Dick had warned them, they proved to be most avaricious traders. A “labret” of ivory or even of wood they valued at four or five dollars—or asked so much as that at first. A bone-handled drill, made of a piece of seal rib with a nail for a point to the drill, was priced accordingly. A pair of mukluks, or native seal boots, was difficult to find at all, while as for the furs with which their boats were crowded they professed indifference whether or