Salle down the Mississippi, built Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River; and after La Salle's death he laboured many years to carry out the plans of that intrepid leader, "one of the most courageous, loyal and far-sighted among the pioneers of New France." 16

16 Jesuit Relations, LXIII, 304-305. The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, O.

CHAPTER IV

THE COUREURS DE BOIS AND THE FUR TRADE

ACKINAC as a central meeting place for the various tribes of Indians on the upper Great

MA

Lakes early became one of the most important rendezvous for the French fur-traders. When Champlain and the early French explorers first came to Canada the Indians brought to them from their hunting grounds the furs of the beaver, the fox, the otter, the martin, the lynx and other animals in exchange for trinkets, knives, hatchets, etc., of European manufacture. It was clear to these farsighted men that here was the basis for a great trading industry which might rival in wealth the mines which the Spaniards had found in Mexico and Peru.

Champlain was not slow to improve this advantage. From his Indian allies he had heard of the forests of the Ottawas rich with fur-bearing animals. These reports had reached France, and hardy men seeking wealth and adventure were soon added to the little colony at Quebec which rapidly became the centre of a wide-reaching trade with the Indians. Vessels from France loaded with trinkets for exchange found their way over the ocean to the wilderness post. Montreal shared in the trade. Indian chiefs and their dusky warriors with canoes laden with furs threaded the rivers of Canada and thronged the markets at these points. Frenchmen dressed in the toggery of the Indians spent the winters among the savages learning their

language, establishing friendships, and rapidly gaining knowledge of the trapper's craft in the interest of the fur trade.

Among these men we early meet with many generous spirits. There was Jean Nicolet whose qualities as a scout and fur trader recommended him to Champlain for a voyage to the western tribes in 1634. At about that time the "beaver fair" in the spring of the year at Three Rivers was coming to be the great event in Canada among the Indians and traders-it was from Three Rivers that Nicolet started on his voyage of discovery, and it was to this place that he returned in 1635 in company with a flotilla of canoes laden with furs for the trade at Three Rivers, Montreal, and Quebec. It was from Three Rivers that the traders Radisson and Groseilliers set out in 1658, the first of the coureurs de bois, those unlicensed traders, or "wood rangers, " who roamed the forest and trafficked with the Indians in defiance of law, and who were sometimes caught and punished. The right to trade with the Indians was given by the King of France usually to a company by a formal license and through the company to the traders. Such a company, for example, was the "Hundred Associates," of which Champlain was agent; it practically owned Canada with all the rights of trade. The first time Groseilliers returned his misdemeanour was overlooked; the hostile Iroquois had recently cut off the trade of the Indians who were friendly to the French, and even the King's officers were so rejoiced over the renewal of trade that the jealous licensed traders were quieted, but on his second return his large cargo of furs was confiscated. Thereupon he and Radisson went to London and interested several English merchants in the project of finding a northwest passage

to China by way of Hudson's Bay; they were fitted out with a ship and after many adventures brought back to England not the desired news of a route to China but a rich cargo of furs and inviting accounts of great fur lands at the North. Largely through their influence the Hudson's Bay Company was formed in 1670 which was destined to have an important bearing upon the interests of Mackinac.1

"When the French came to know the country we now call Michigan," says a recent writer," "they found it the greatest fur-producing region on the continent. The fierce Iroquois had driven all the Indians out of our Lower Peninsula so that it had no fixed inhabitants. But such a great hunting ground was frequented by many tribes during the hunting season, who came mostly from the North, and the Straits of Mackinac were the great gateway to the Peninsula. This same Strait was the gateway to the great region beyond Lake Michigan; for Green Bay and the Fox and Wisconsin rivers constituted the usual route to all the great territory about the upper reaches of the Mississippi. Hence Marquette's Mission of St. Ignace was really the centre of an enormous fur-bearing region. Thither the coureurs de bois, as the bush-rangers were called, soon found their way, and their presence there soon changed the seat of the Indian trade from the St. Lawrence to these upper regions. Thither they brought from Montreal by the arduous Ottawa route canoe load after canoe load of goods, thence to be distributed to the Indians in every direction; and there were collected the furs for which the goods were exchanged, to be loaded into canoes and paddled back to the St. Lawrence. Thus at certain seasons the coureurs 1 Laut, Conquest of the Great Northwest, pp. 97-131. Moffat, Yard & Co., New York.

2 Webster Cook, Government of Michigan, p. 21. The Macmillan Co., New York.

de bois soon came to gather at St. Ignace by scores and by hundreds and there were wild doings in the little town which pious zeal had founded. At other seasons the place would for a time be about deserted. The presence of these lawless disorderlies in such great numbers was entirely incompatible with the work of the devoted priests, and the missionary character of the station quickly passed away. But so important did St. Ignace become that a fort was soon built, a garrison established, and a military commander placed in charge."

The relation of the coureurs de bois to the government and to the missionaries is thus stated by a recent Canadian writer: 3 "The first risk which the coureur ran was that of being punished by the government. In a community where wealth could be gained in no other way than through the fur trade, every one wished to traffic with the Indians. A large part of the private trading thus carried on was an infringement of the monopoly, and therefore a breach of law. The crown cannot be said to have followed a consistent policy in dealing with offenders, but it always placed restrictions of some kind on barter for peltries. These ranged from a complete prohibition of private trading to the grant of a license at the Governor's discretion; in view of the fact that the King had a long arm, the defiance of his commands involved grave danger. Still the coureur de bois was not without plausible arguments. When told that he must not hunt in the forest at the distance of more than a league from his house, he asked how the King meant to extend his authority over the continent if no one explored it. And obviously exploration could not go forward with

* Prof. Charles W. Colby, Canadian Types of the Old Regime, pp. 191– 193. Henry Holt & Co., New York.