Hence They
Derive Their Appellation Of Freemen, To Distinguish Them From The
Trappers Who Are Bound For A Number Of Years, And Receive Wages,
Or Hunt On Shares.
Having passed their early youth in the wilderness, separated
almost entirely from civilized man, and in frequent intercourse
with the Indians, they relapse, with a facility common to human
nature, into the habitudes of savage life.
Though no longer bound
by engagements to continue in the interior, they have become so
accustomed to the freedom of the forest and the prairie, that
they look back with repugnance upon the restraints of
civilization. Most of them intermarry with the natives, and, like
the latter, have often a plurality of wives. Wanderers of the
wilderness, according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the
migrations of animals, and the plenty or scarcity of game, they
lead a precarious and unsettled existence; exposed to sun and
storm, and all kinds of hardships, until they resemble Indians in
complexion as well as in tastes and habits. From time to time,
they bring the peltries they have collected to the trading houses
of the company in whose employ they have been brought up. Here
they traffic them away for such articles of merchandise or
ammunition as they may stand in need of. At the time when
Montreal was the great emporium of the fur trader, one of these
freemen of the wilderness would suddenly return, after an absence
of many years, among his old friends and comrades. He would be
greeted as one risen from the dead; and with the greater welcome,
as he returned flush of money.
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