He Has, Generally, Two Or Three Horses, To
Carry Himself And His Baggage And Peltries.
Two trappers
commonly go together, for the purposes of mutual assistance and
support; a larger party could not easily escape the eyes of the
Indians.
It is a service of peril, and even more so at present
than formerly, for the Indians, since they have got into the
habit of trafficking peltries with the traders, have learned the
value of the beaver, and look upon the trappers as poachers, who
are filching the riches from their streams, and interfering with
their market. They make no hesitation, therefore, to murder the
solitary trapper, and thus destroy a competitor, while they
possess themselves of his spoils. It is with regret we add, too,
that this hostility has in many cases been instigated by traders,
desirous of injuring their rivals, but who have themselves often
reaped the fruits of the mischief they have sown.
When two trappers undertake any considerable stream, their mode
of proceeding is, to hide their horses in some lonely glen, where
they can graze unobserved. They then build a small hut, dig out
a canoe from a cotton-wood tree, and in this poke along shore
silently, in the evening, and set their traps. These they revisit
in the same silent way at daybreak. When they take any beaver
they bring it home, skin it, stretch the skins on sticks to dry,
and feast upon the flesh. The body, hung up before the fire,
turns by its own weight, and is roasted in a superior style; the
tail is the trapper s tidbit; it is cut off, put on the end of a
stick, and toasted, and is considered even a greater dainty than
the tongue or the marrow-bone of a buffalo.
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