Essential McLuhan 42 THE FURLOINED EMPIRE In his History of the Fur Trade, H.A.Innis explains how the North American colonies, British and American, were deeply indebted to the fur traders for their origins. Washington and Jefferson were land surveyors eager to advance settlement of the fur traders’ territories. Hence conflict. Settlers ruined trap lines. The igloo was also a fur-lined job. Until the trapper got the Eskimo on the trail, there were no igloos. The Eskimos still live in stone houses, ignored by cameramen as not photogenic. Multi-sensuous hunters, they proved the greatest mechanics at Gander, to the Surprise of the American Air Force. As the totem pole is tied to the lineality of the missionaries’ Bible, so the igloo was made possible by the primus stove. The Eskimo, like any pre-literate, leaps easily from the Paleolithic stone age to the electric age, by-passing the Neolithic specialism.