All the way from boundary-line to ice-barrier we had seen Indians tricked out in grotesque garments borrowed from the white man and used in combination with their own tribal covering of skins and furs. These sun-bonnets and shepherd's-plaid trousers, silk hats and red-flannel petticoats, the trader had persuaded the child of the woods to buy. The debonair Eskimo is a re-incarnation of the bastard brother of Aragon's Prince, and, leaning his furry back against the North Pole, says with him, "I smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's pleasure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour."
You cannot induce an Eskimo to think he wants anything just because you have found that thing to your liking. There are two reasons for this. First, long experience in the most rigorous climate which the human race inhabits has taught this man what garments are the most suitable for him in which to live and move and have his being. Second, although the Indian may ape the white man as a superior being from whom eleemosynary grub and gew-gaws may be wheedled, the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta considers himself to be the superior of every created being. The Eskimo knows what he wants; he is always sure of it, and there is no vacillating. When he comes into the H.B. Company's post to trade, skins are his currency, the pelts of the silver-fox his gold coinage. A good silver, or black-fox is worth here about one hundred dollars in barter.
We saw a band of Nunatalmutes come into Fort Macpherson to do their summer shopping. They wanted English breakfast tea, superior rifles and ammunition, and a special brand of tobacco. Failing any or all of these, it was in vain that the Factor displayed before them the wares of John Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any seductive lure made in Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a-sook-tok bought what they found to their liking, took small change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the remaining six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once their savings bank and letter of credit for the season to come. The hungry-eyed H.B. man confided to us that two of these coveted pelts had been thus exhibited to him and thus tucked back into the Eskimo sinking-fund for three successive seasons.