The Wrangell sentinel., 1932-09-02
Low Fur Market Hits
 Llard Post Indians

Oscar Anderson, veteran trader of
 the Liard district, returned on the
 Princess Alice Tuesday morning
 from a trip to Vancouver with a shipment of furs.
 | He reports that fur is plentiful
 in his district, but that it has no
 buying power. His trading post on the Lizard supplies the fifteen white trappers and forty-two Indians who constitute the population of that
 vast district. The Indians hunt down the Lizard river for about 150 miles, then up the Lizard from the post for 150 miles, and out in both directions about the same number of miles.
 Low Fur Market
 The low fur market is hard on the Indians, for they have nothing but fur to trade. The Canadian government has been rationing some of the old Indians, as the
 British Columbia Indians do not re- ceiye treaty money.
 Contrasting the fur market of today, with the market of a few Iyears ago, Anderson said that even the choice Interior furs were very cheap. Beaver averages around $8. Inow at Vancouver, in contrast to the BPS of a few years ago. He bought 567 beaver skins last winter and the loss he took is something | he does not like to think about.
 Lynx are starting to come in, he says, with the rabbits coming back. The snowshoe rabbits show a steady increase for seven years then as steadily decrease for seven years, ap- parently from a disease caused by an intestinal parasite. AS the rab- bits decrease, the other fur bearers
 leave the district.
 Lynx commands a good price av- eraging around $30. There is a demand for marten but the skins sell around $11. He says that he | found practically no market for fox of any kind Cross fox, which four or five years ago brought $200, now
 has few buyers at $22, while sill vers average about $40.
 q got 500 English silver pounds | for a silver once," said Anderson. Tt was a heavy, dark silver of finest quality but today that skin
 would probably bring not more than $60."
 High Freight Rates
 Anderson brought with him three tons of supplies for his post to sup I plement what had already gone in.
 It was unloaded from the steamer
 to the Hazel B No and at Tele- graph Creek would be trucked to
 the head of Dease Lake where he
 has his own power boat to take in the freight the 200 miles to his post.
 The distance from Telegraph Creek to the head of the lake is "A miles,
 but the going is so hard on the roads that cling to the sides of the
 mountains that one way is days l trip. Every pound of freight has cost in many instances as much for more than the original cost by the time it has arrived at the post. | Consequently his customers pay
 30 cents a pound for sugar, $1.25
 a pound for coffee and butter, while flour costs $40 a barrel. Salt is 50
 cents a pound, a 14-ounce tin of milk costs 50 cents, evaporated
 fruits sell for 60 cents a pound and evaporated vegetables $1.00 a pound. Potatoes are a luxury, to be
 used only on festive occasions at
 30 cents pound.
 The men at the Hudson's Bay
 Post, 100 yards distant from the
 Anderson post, usually grow pota-
 toes in their garden during the
 summer. This year the potatoes
 were killed by summer frosts, bu; 1 (Continued on Page Four)