Articles of European manufacture--knives,
hatchets, needles, bright cloths, paints, guns, powder--could only
be bought with furs. The Indian mother sighed in her hut for the
beautiful things brought by the Europeans. The warrior of the
Southwest saw with terror the conquering Iroquois, armed with the
dreaded fire-arms of the stranger. When the bow was laid aside, or
handed to the boys of the tribe, the warriors became the abject
slaves of traders. Guns meant gunpowder and lead. These could only
come from the white man. His avarice guarded the steps alike to
bear-meat and beaver-skins. Thus the Indian became a wandering
hunter, helpless and dependent. These hunters traveled great
distances, sometimes with a pack on their backs weighing from
thirty to fifty pounds. Until the middle of the eighteenth century
horses had not become very common among them, and the old Indian
used to laugh at the white man, so lazy that he could not walk. A
consuming fire was preying on the vitals of an ancient simple
people. Unscrupulous traders, who boasted that they made a
thousand per cent, held them in the most abject thrall. It has
been carefully computed that these hunters worked, on an average,
for ten cents a day. The power of their old village chiefs grow
weaker. No longer the old men taught the boys their traditions,
morals, or religion. They had ceased to be pagans, without
becoming Christians.
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