"There was once," Gersup continued, "a trader at this place by the name of Bean, William Bean. He came in the year 1879, and established a post for the purpose of trafficking in the furs of the Tanana Indians. He found the tribes peaceful enough, their furs were of high quality and, as he had no competition, he was able to get them cheaply and to make a big profit out of it. The natives seemed to be so friendly and the opportunity for making money was so good that he determined to make it a permanent little settlement; he brought his wife to the place, and made arrangements for other families to follow. "But it chanced, one day, that some natives from neighboring tribes, who had visited trading posts, came by the Tanana Indian camps, and when they saw how little their allies were getting from Bean for their skins, they suggested either visiting other posts or demanding more from their own trader. But Bean, so far as can be learned, was harsh and arrogant, and instead of offering a little more, which would still yield a handsome profit, he refused to consider the matter at all, and sneeringly pointing out that they were so far from any other post that they would have to come to him, he drove them away with gibes. "Now the Indian usually has a sense of justice which is peculiar to himself. To us it may at times appear distorted, but it is a sense of justice none the less, and this sense Bean had offended. He made the further mistake of supposing that their quiescence under his sharp rebuff was an evidence either of cowardice or of ignorance of the true values of their furs. So, lulled into a false security by his own conceit, he remained there. One morning, while the whites were at breakfast, a war-party came and attacked the blockhouse, an Indian shooting Mrs. Bean from the doorway. The trader leaped up, seized his small child, and dashed through a rear door to a near-by boat, followed by an Indian servant. Some days later a party came up from the Yukon and buried Mrs. Bean, but the trader never returned. "The country was not settled enough at that time for any question to be taken up of punishing the Indians for the crime, and there is no doubt of the provocation that the trader had given them. But this single incident in the history of the tribe is all too little to brand them with the reputation of treachery which they have borne ever since." The following morning the canoes passed through a section of the country which, as Rivers pointed out to Roger, could be made the garden spot of Alaska. Well timbered, well watered, with a favorable climate and easy of access by steamer up the Yukon, the lower Tanana could be made a fruitful agricultural country.