is no country in the world where it is more
imperative, for the preservation of health, that wool be worn.

However much fur the Indian may catch and sell, he is always poor. He is
paid in trade, not in cash; and when the merchant has bought the
Indian's catch of fur he straightway spreads out before him an alluring
display of goods specially manufactured for native trade. Here are
brilliant cotton velvets and sateens and tinselled muslins and gay
ribbons that take the eye of his women folk; here are trays of Brummagem
knickknacks, brass watches, and rings set with coloured glass, gorgeous
celluloid hair combs, mirrors with elaborate, gilded frames, and brass
lamps with "hand-painted" shades and dangling lustres; here are German
accordions and mouth-organs and all sorts of pocket-knives and
alarm-clocks--the greatest collection of glittering and noisy trash that
can be imagined, bought at so much a dozen and retailed, usually, at
about the same price for one. And when the Indian has done his trading
the trader has most of his money back again.

The news that an Indian has caught a black fox, the most exciting item
of news that ever flies around a native village, does not give any great
pleasure to one who is acquainted with native conditions, because he
knows that it will bring little real benefit to the Indian. There will
be keen competition, within limits, of course, amongst the traders for
it; and the fortunate trapper may get three or four hundred dollars in
trade for a skin that will fetch eight hundred or a thousand in cash on
the London market; but if his wife get the solid advantage of a new
cooking-stove or a sewing-machine from it she is doing well.

Food the Indian never buys much beyond his present need, unless it is to
squander it in feast after feast, to which every one is invited and at
which there is the greatest lavishness. If a son is born, or a black fox
is caught, or a member of the family recovers from a severe illness,
custom permits, if it do not actually demand, that a "potlatch" be
given, and most Indians are eager, whenever they are able, to be the
heroes of the prandial hour.

So he, his women, and his children go clad mainly in cotton, and there
is abundant evidence that the tendency to pulmonary trouble, always
latent amongst them, is developed by the severe colds which they catch
through the inadequate covering of their bodies, and is then cherished
into virulent activity by the close a