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PLATE I.
The Feast after a Hunt
Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.
Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 3 The Lanchesters, 162164 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 9ER.
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 1995, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1933, as Rare Americana Series Number Nine, by The Grabhorn Press, San Francisco, where authorship was By a Fur Trader. Illustrations and type were originally in two colors.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ogden, Peter Skene, 1790-1854.
[Traits of American Indian life & character]
Traits of American Indian life and character / attributed to Peter Skeene Ogden. p. cm.
Originally published: Traits of American Indian life & character / by a Fur trader. London : Smith, Elder, 1853.
9780486148489
1. Indians of North AmericaWashington (State) 2. Indians of North AmericaOregon. 3. Indians of North AmericaSocial life and customs. 1. Title.
E78.W3032 1995
970.00497dc20
94-33527
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
Preface
M ODESTLY cloaking himself in anonymity, A Fur Trader has given us intimate sketches of the Far West savage, his life and his contacts with the roving trapper of which even Fenimore Cooper would have been proud to acknowledge the authorship. Authentic reports of the decade from 1830 to 1840 descriptive of the American Indian west of the Rockies are few; yet among those fem this bookbelieved to have been written by Peter Skeene Ogden, one of the Hudsons Bay Companys most esteemed servantsstands forth.
To A Fur Traders text, illustrations made at the period he covers, have been added. The original edition published in London in 1853 was issued without plates. Otherwise no changes have been made.
The Crabhorn Press in publishing Traits of American Indian Life as Number 9 of its Series of Rare Americana truly feels that it is not only preserving a valuable and little known work but that it is providing its readers with an intensely interesting book which covers a subject and a period of our national life but slightly touched upon by historians and writers.
Douglas S. Watson, Editor
TO
LADY SIMPSON,
THE FOLLOWING SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES
ILLUSTRATIVE OF LIFE
ON THE WILD BORDERS OF THE PACIFIC, AND OF THE
SAVAGE TRIBES HOLDING INTERCOURSE WITH THE
HONOURABLE HUDSONS BAY COMPANY,
OVER WHICH
SIR GEORGE SIMPSON
HAS SO LONG AND SO ABLY PRESIDED,
ARE DEDICATED,
AS A SMALL
TRIBUTE OF AFFECTIONATE REGARD,
BY HER LADYSHIPS SINCERE AND DEVOTED FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
Introduction
I T is well known that the life of an Indian trader is one of hazard and adventure; and that he is the witness of scenes, exemplifying the habits and the character of Indians, which it is seldom the lot of an ordinary traveller to look upon. Compelled to penetrate the wilderness, hundreds of miles beyond the resort of civilized men, he surprises the savage inhabitants in their most secluded haunts, and often makes himself a home where the keenness of his observation, his previous knowledge of character, and the material interests of the wild race by which he is surrounded, are the only pledges of his safety. The long established trading posts also, in the neighbourhood of which some degree of civilization may obtain, are lone and isolated spots, the light of which dimly fades away in the surrounding darkness, and but too often brings into strong relief, on its confines, the startling forms and hideous characteristics of a barbaric life, which is yet gilded with some traits of nobleness and generosity, and which the trader, if any man living, is enabled to look upon with an intelligent eye.
Such are the circumstances and such the situation in which the writer of the following pages has been placed, as an agent of the great trading Company whose operations now cover as with a vast network the breast of the North American continent, from Hudsons Bay to the Pacific Ocean. As an actor in the scenes which he has faithfully described, it is just possible that he may sometimes express his opinions with unusual warmth. His sincerity, and the fidelity of his narrations, no one will doubt, when they find the savage virtues as conspicuous in many of his sketches as the darker traits of character which it was his more especial purpose to delineate.
The shifting scene of his narrative may be described, for the most part, as the famous Oregon territory, lying in the watercourse of the great Columbia River and its numerous tributaries. The country is one of wild aspect, diversified by rugged steeps and deep ravines, with here and there a rich valley of green pasture, watered by some mountain torrent pursuing its devious way to the broad waters and boundless prairie lands, or sandy plains. The wild races inhabiting this widely-spread region are of various character; in general, those who follow the chasethe mountain and woodland tribesare the more warlike and generous; while those who live along the banks of the streams in the more fertile regions, are comparatively mean in spirit and treacherous in their intercourse. To this rule, it may be observed, there are many exceptions on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, which it is scarcely necessary to mention.
