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These two agencies of European civilization combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal life. The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of cruelty, but they could and did give them lessons in cunning, trickery and double dealing.
And the national organisation is of service to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far as it furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as against their competitors, whether at home or abroad.
The caravan traveled two full days before her deception was detected. When it was, the princess once again played audience to violent anger. The traders yelled and cursed the girl; then they beat her with fists and even with sticks, accompanied by more curses and threats; but nothing they could do could force her to tell what she had done with the baby.
To the practical men of affairs, the shopkeepers and traders, the land-owners and ship-owners, the soldiers and sailors, the statesmen and politicians, the people who specialized in maneuvering human beings and materials, they were, for this futile devotion to abstract knowledge, marked ridiculous and absurd weaklings, mollycoddles, babies, not to be trusted with the demands and dangers of public life.
The merchants pay for their protection from ten to twenty dollars, according to their means. Frequently a group of traders do not pay more than a single individual; some get off with paying only a dollar. These demands on the merchants are certainly very moderate, and the Touaricks scarcely deserve the epithets of exigeant and extortionate which are so freely applied to them by the merchants.
That place they designated as "Tum-tum," a word that signifies the throbbing of the heart. One of these Indians had a sailor's jacket, and others had a blue blanket and a scarlet blanket. These articles had found their way up the river from white traders on the seashore.
Their extreme cautiousness in dealing with the whites is doubtless due in a great measure to having been so outrageously cheated by many of the early traders.
Volney characterizes this work as exhibiting a most faithful picture of the life and manners of the Indians and Canadian traders. Weld's Travels through North America, 1795-7. 2 vols. 8vo.
The great proportion were of course coasters, like themselves, but there were many large vessels among them, and of these fully half were flying foreign colours. Here were traders from the Netherlands, with the flag that the Spaniards had in vain endeavoured to lower, flying at their mastheads. Here were caravels from Venice and Genoa, laden with goods from the East.
Verplanck Van Antwerp, the secretary of the commission; J. N. Nicollet, the explorer; H. H. Sibley; and many other fur traders watched the negotiations and put their names to the treaty as witnesses. The council began on July 20th. It was with the chiefs that Governor Dodge parleyed, but the warriors and braves felt that they also should have some part in the proceedings.
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