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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Hm!" returns Phipps, "how many beaver-skins are there in store?" M. Radisson looked at the governor. "You must ask my tradespeople that," he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pass. "Your English mind thinks only of the gain," he said to me. "And your French mind?" I asked. "The game and not the winnings," said he.
"This will be an annoyance to your uncle; but we may congratulate ourselves on having secured a fine bear and deer-skin, which will make some amends for our loss," he observed. We had just made up our fire, and stuck the meat on spits to roast before it, when Uncle Denis and his companion arrived, with a dozen more beaver-skins.
The man-wolf dared as much for gain as for love. On the night that Jean Chiquot got the Indians drunk and bore off their beaver-skins, the wood witches, known as "the white women," fell upon him and tore a part of his treasure from him, while a were-wolf pounced so hard on his back that he lost more.
Solid cash included beaver-skins, black and white wampum, beads, and musket-balls, value one farthing. Mr. Woodbridge in Newbury at this same time had £60, and Mr. Epes preached in Salem for twenty shillings a Sunday, half in money and half in provisions. Holy Mr. Cotton used to say that nothing was cheap in New England but milk and ministers.
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.
You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile you get to think yourself a devil of a swell you and the gods! . . . And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?"
"How many beaver-skins?" asks the Englishman, setting down his candle. The Frenchman smiles. "Twenty thousand beaver skins and as many more of other sorts!" The Englishman sits down to pencil out how much that will total at ten shillings each; and Pierre Radisson winks at us. "The winnings again," says he. "Twenty thousand pounds!" cries our host, springing up.
"Let us proceed with the letter," said she, for she had indeed shown her generalship in stopping where she did. "Ah," she went on, pretending to scan the next words for the first time, "Germain needs three thousand livres." "What!" "Only three thousand." "But he kept three thousand out of the beaver-skins; the last draft was for nine hundred; whither is this leading?
Here was argument for endless strife. Other interests, too, were adverse. Poutrincourt, in his discouragement, had abandoned his plan of liberal colonization, and now thought of nothing but beaver-skins. He wished to make a trading-post; the Jesuits wished to make a mission. When the vessel anchored before Port Royal, Biencourt, with disgust and anger, saw another Jesuit landed at the pier.
There stand some school-boys, you observe, in a little group around a drunken Indian, himself a prince of the Squaw Sachem's lineage. He brought hither some beaver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the larger portion of their price, in deadly draughts of firewater.
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