Note 36 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

Of the Kutchins or Loucheux Jones says: “Slavery is practised among them. Any poor creature who has no friends is made a slave”36. Hardisty gives more details; he tells us: “As a rule slavery does not exist, but the orphan and the friendless are kept in servitude and treated so harshly as to be really little better than slaves, until such time as they get big enough and bold enough to assert their independence, when they are allowed to shift for themselves”37. Such ill-treated children, who when full-grown are “allowed to shift for themselves”, certainly are not slaves. Therefore we may safely infer, that slavery did not exist here, the more so, as the other authors38 make no mention of slaves.