The success of the Hudson’s Bay Company has rested upon its relations with the Indians. The organization is proud of the fact that it has never engaged in wars with the tribes. The business has always been on a voluntary basis, and the Indians have to come to the Company posts of their own free will. At first the traders’ stocks were limited, but through centuries of contact with civilization the wants of the red man have increased and become more varied. They now include nearly everything that a white man would wish if he were living in the woods. The first skins brought in from Hudson Bay were practically all beavers. This led to the exchange being based on the value of a single beaver skin, or “made beaver.” Sticks, quills, or brass tokens were used, each designating a “made beaver,” or a fraction thereof. The prices of a pound of powder, a gun, or a quart of glass beads were reckoned in “made beaver.” Early in its history the Company decided that Scotchmen made the best traders and were most successful in dealing with the Indians. Young Scotchmen were usually apprenticed as clerks on five-year contracts, and if successful they might hope to become traders, chief traders, factors, and chief factors. Men in these grades were considered officers of the company and received commissions. Mechanics and men engaged in the transport service were known as “servants” of the company, and the distinction between “servants,” clerks, and officers was almost as marked as in the various military ranks of an army. To-day, Canada is divided into eleven districts, each of which is in charge of a manager, and the old titles are no longer used. A trader had to be a diplomat to preserve friendly relations with the Indians, an administrator to manage the Company’s valuable properties in his charge, a shrewd bargainer to dispose of his stock on good terms, and at times soldier and explorer besides. The Company’s charter authorized it to apply the laws of England in the territories under its jurisdiction, and its agents frequently had to administer justice with a stern hand. It early became the inflexible policy to seek out a horse thief, incendiary, or murderer among the Indians and impose punishment, and it was the trader who had to catch his man and sometimes to execute him.