D. Communities of Fur Hunters.—Fur hunters are not importan from a business point of view, but they illustrate an interesting priori tive type which has now almost passed away. Few communities such intermittent relations with outsiders as do the fur hunters wh are the chief inhabitants of the northern fifth of North America and o a similar area in Asia.
Though many of the hunter's simple needs can be satisfied only by the outside world, the Canadian trapper, for example, usually comes into direct business relations with other people only twice a year. First, in the spring he markets his product by opening his pack and counting his pelts before the agent of the Hudson Bay Company or Revillon Brothers; second, in the fall he supplies as many of his wants as his credit will allow, and loads his canoe with enough flour, pork, tea, and tobacco to eke out the supply of fish he has caught and dried during the summer. Also he replenishes his traps and ammunition, and his simple supply of clothes. True to the Indian type of mind, his capacities do not lie in the direction of business so that he is almost constantly in debt to the fur company. Such a debt is not displeasing to the agent since it means that the trapper must bring his furs to the same post the following spring.
Because furs are highly durable and of great value compared with their weight, the mode of transportation and the distance from the market have little effect on their cost. Almost the only means of
transportation in the forest are the canoe, the dog sledge, and the Indian's own back. By such primitive means the trapper carries his skins hundreds of miles to the agent, reserving only a few to be made into winter clothing by the squaws. Then the skins are carried to the fur centers of New York, St. Louis, London, or Leipzig. Because the supply of furs is less than the demands of fashionable women of the far-away cities, the trapper always finds a ready sale for his mink, beaver, Marten, otter and fox skins. Fur farms are as yet too much of an experiment to cut down the sale of wild pelts appreciably.
What slight contact the trapper has with the outside world in his business relations does him little good. His ignorance of the white man's ways is carefully encouraged by the fur companies, since many of the white man's habits lead to degeneration in the half breed, while " civ ilization " reduces the number of pelts that are brought in. Almost the only place where the trappers' contact with the white man results in any attempt to raise him is in the mission schools and churches. The life of his own hunting community does little to raise him in the way in which the dairyman is stimulated by his exacting occupation.