The poor Indian, as might have been expected, was generally outrageously swindled; in fact, I am inclined to believe, always. I never was present on an occasion when he was not.
The savage's idea of values was very crude until the government, in attempting to civilize and make a gentleman of him, has transformed him into a bewildered child. Very soon after his connection with the white trader, he learned that a gun was more valuable than a knife; but of their relative cost to manufacture he had no idea. For these reasons, obviously, he was always at the mercy of the unscrupulous trader who came to his village, or met him at the rendezvous to barter for his furs. I know that the price of every article he desired was fixed by the trader, and never by the Indian, consequently he rarely got the best of the bargain.
Uncle John Smith, Kit Carson, L. B. Maxwell, Uncle Dick Wooton, and a host of other well-known Indian traders, long since dead, have often told me that the first thing they did on entering a village with a pack-load of trinkets to barter, in the earlier days before the whites had encroached to any great extent, was to arrange a schedule of prices. They would gather a large number of sticks, each one representing an article they had brought. With these crude symbols the Indian made himself familiar in a little while, and when this preliminary arrangement had been completed, the trading began. The Indian, for instance, would place a buffalo-robe on the ground; then the trader commenced to lay down a number of the sticks, representing what he was willing to give for the robe. The Indian revolved the transaction in his mind until he thought he was getting a fair equivalent according to his ideas, then the bargain was made. It was claimed by these old traders, when they related this to me, that the savage generally was not satisfied, always insisting upon having more sticks placed on the pile. I suspect, however, that the trader was ever prepared for this, and never gave more than he originally intended. The price of that initial robe having been determined on, it governed the price of all the rest for the whole trade, regardless of size or fineness, for that day. What was traded for was then placed by the Indian on one side of the lodge, and the trader put what he was to give on the other. After prices had been agreed upon, business went on very rapidly, and many thousand dollars' worth of valuable furs were soon collected by the successful trader, which he shipped to St. Louis and converted into gold.