Who move about from place to place, either with Indian
tribes, whose traffic they wish to monopolize, or with main
bodies of their own men, whom they employ in trading and
trapping. In the meantime, they detach bands, or "brigades" as
they are termed, of trappers in various directions, assigning to
each a portion of country as a hunting or trapping ground. In the
months of June and July, when there is an interval between the
hunting seasons, a general rendezvous is held, at some designated
place in the mountains, where the affairs of the past year are
settled by the resident partners, and the plans for the following
year arranged.
To this rendezvous repair the various brigades of trappers from
their widely separated hunting grounds, bringing in the products
of their year's campaign. Hither also repair the Indian tribes
accustomed to traffic their peltries with the company. Bands of
free trappers resort hither also, to sell the furs they have
collected; or to engage their services for the next hunting
season.
To this rendezvous the company sends annually a convoy of
supplies from its establishment on the Atlantic frontier, under
the guidance of some experienced partner or officer. On the
arrival of this convoy, the resident partner at the rendezvous
depends to set all his next year's machinery in motion.
Now as the rival companies keep a vigilant eye upon each other,
and are anxious to discover each other's plans and movements,
they generally contrive to hold their annual assemblages at no
great distance apart. An eager competition exists also between
their respective convoys of supplies, which shall first reach its
place of rendezvous. For this purpose, they set off with the
first appearance of grass on the Atlantic frontier and push with
all diligence for the mountains. The company that can first open
its tempting supplies of coffee, tobacco, ammunition, scarlet
cloth, blankets, bright shawls, and glittering trinkets has the
greatest chance to get all the peltries and furs of the Indians
and free trappers, and to engage their services for the next
season. It is able, also, to fit out and dispatch its own
trappers the soonest, so as to get the start of its competitors,
and to have the first dash into the hunting and trapping grounds.
A new species of strategy has sprung out of this hunting and
trapping competition. The constant study of the rival bands is to
forestall and outwit each other; to supplant each other in the
good will and custom of the Indian tribes; to cross each other's
plans; to mislead each other as to routes; in a word, next to his
own advantage, the study of the Indian trader is the disadvantage
of his competitor.
The influx of this wandering trade has had its effects on the
habits of the mountain tribes. They have found the trapping of
the beaver their most profitable species of hunting; and the
traffic with the white man has opened to them sources of luxury
of which they previously had no idea. The introduction of
firearms has rendered them more successful hunters, but at the
same time, more formidable foes; some of them, incorrigibly
savage and warlike in their nature, have found the expeditions of
the fur traders grand objects of profitable adventure. To waylay
and harass a band of trappers with their pack-horses, when
embarrassed in the rugged defiles of the mountains, has become as
favorite an exploit with these Indians as the plunder of a
caravan to the Arab of the desert. The Crows and Blackfeet, who
were such terrors in the path of the early adventurers to
Astoria, still continue their predatory habits, but seem to have
brought them to greater system. They know the routes and resorts
of the trappers; where to waylay them on their journeys; where to
find them in the hunting seasons, and where to hover about them
in winter quarters. The life of a trapper, therefore, is a
perpetual state militant, and he must sleep with his weapons in
his hands.
A new order of trappers and traders, also, has grown out of this
system of things. In the old times of the great Northwest
Company, when the trade in furs was pursued chiefly about the
lakes and rivers, the expeditions were carried on in batteaux and
canoes. The voyageurs or boatmen were the rank and file in the
service of the trader, and even the hardy "men of the north,"
those great rufflers and game birds, were fain to be paddled from
point to point of their migrations.
A totally different class has now sprung up: - "the Mountaineers,"
the traders and trappers that scale the vast mountain chains, and
pursue their hazardous vocations amidst their wild recesses. They
move from place to place on horseback. The equestrian exercises,
therefore, in which they are engaged, the nature of the countries
they traverse, vast plains and mountains, pure and exhilarating
in atmospheric qualities, seem to make them physically and
mentally a more lively and mercurial race than the fur traders
and trappers of former days, the self-vaunting "men of the
north." A man who bestrides a horse must be essentially different
from a man who cowers in a canoe. We find them, accordingly,
hardy, lithe, vigorous, and active; extravagant in word, and
thought, and deed; heedless of hardship; daring of danger;
prodigal of the present, and thoughtless of the future.
A difference is to be perceived even between these mountain
hunters and those of the lower regions along the waters of the
Missouri. The latter, generally French creoles, live comfortably
in cabins and log-huts, well sheltered from the inclemencies of
the seasons. They are within the reach of frequent supplies from
the settlements; their life is comparatively free from danger,
and from most of the vicissitudes of the upper wilderness.
