Besides Human Foes, The Company Has Saved The Indian From Famine And
Plague.
Many a hunger-stricken tribe owes its continued existence
to the fatherly care of the Company, not simply general and
indiscriminate, but minute and personal, carried into the details
of their lives.
For instance, when bots so pestered the Caribou of
one region as to render their hides useless to the natives, the
Company brought in hides from a district where they still were
good.
The Chipewyans were each spring the victims of snow-blindness until
the Company brought and succeeded in popularizing their present
ugly but effectual and universal peaked hats. When their train-dogs
were running down in physique, the Company brought in a strain of
pure Huskies or Eskimo. When the Albany River Indians were starving
and unable to hunt, the Company gave the order for 5,000 lodge poles.
Then, not knowing how else to turn them to account, commissioned
the Indians to work them into a picket garden-fence. At all times
the native found a father in the Company, and it was the worst thing
that ever happened the region when the irresponsible free-traders
with their demoralizing methods were allowed to enter and traffic
where or how they pleased.
CHAPTER II
DOWN THE NOISY RIVER WITH THE VOYAGEURS
At Athabaska Landing, on May 18, 1907, 10.15 A. M., we boarded the
superb Peterborough canoe that I had christened the Ann Seton. The
Athabaska River was a-flood and clear of ice; 13 scows of freight,
with 60 half-breeds and Indians to man them, left at the same time,
and in spite of a strong headwind we drifted northward fully 31
miles an hour.
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