The system left the Indians at the mercy of the trader when one nation monopolized the field, and it compelled them to espouse the cause of one or other when two nations contended for supremacy over their territory. At the same time it rendered the trade peculiarly adapted to monopoly, for when rivals competed, the trade was demoralized, and the Indian frequently sold to a new trader the furs which he had pledged in advance for the goods of another. When the American Fur Company gained control, they systematized matters so that there was no competition between their own agents, and private dealers cut into their trade but little for some years. The unit of trade was at first the beaver skin, or, as the pound of beaver skin came to be called, the "plus."[232] The beaver skin was estimated at a pound and a half, though it sometimes weighed two, in which case an allowance was made. Wampum was used for ornament and in treaty-making, but not as currency. Other furs or Indian commodities, like maple sugar and wild rice, were bought in terms of beaver. As this animal grew scarcer the unit changed to money. By 1820, when few beaver were marketed in Wisconsin, the term plus stood for one dollar.[233] The muskrat skin was also used as the unit in the later days of the trade.[234] In the southern colonies the pound of deer skin had answered the purpose of a unit.[235]
The goods being trusted to the Indians, the bands separated for the hunting grounds. Among the Chippeways, at least, each family or group had a particular stream or region where it exclusively hunted and trapped.[236] Not only were the hunting grounds thus parcelled out; certain Indians were apportioned to certain traders,[237] so that the industrial activities of Wisconsin at this date were remarkably systematic and uniform. Sometimes the trader followed the Indians to their hunting grounds. From time to time he sent his engagés (hired men), commonly five or six in number, to the various places where the hunting bands were to be found, to collect furs on the debts and to sell goods to those who had not received too large credits, and to the customers of rival traders; this was called "running a deouine."[238] The main wintering post had lesser ones, called "jack-knife posts,"[239] depending on it, where goods were left and the furs gathered in going to and from the main post. By these methods Wisconsin was thoroughly visited by the traders before the "pioneers" arrived.[240]
The kind and amount of furs brought in may be judged by the fact that in 1836, long after the best days of the trade, a single Green Bay firm, Porlier and Grignon, shipped to the American Fur Company about 3600 deer skins, 6000 muskrats, 150 bears, 850 raccoons, besides beavers, otters, fishers, martens, lynxes, foxes, wolves, badgers, skunks, etc., amounting to over $6000.
None of these traders became wealthy; Astor's company absorbed the profits. It required its clerks, or factors, to pay an advance of 81-1/2 per cent on the sterling cost of the blankets, strouds, and other English goods, in order to cover the cost of importation and the expense of transportation from New York to Mackinaw. Articles purchased in New York were charged with 15-1/3 per cent advance for transportation, and each class of purchasers was charged with 33-1/3 per cent advance as profit on the aggregate amount.[241]
I estimate, from the data given in the sources cited on page 63, note, that in 1820 between $60,000 and $75,000 worth of goods was brought annually to Wisconsin for the Indian trade. An average outfit for a single clerk at a main post was between $1500 and $2000, and for the dependent posts between $100 and $500. There were probably not over 2000 Indian hunters in the State, and the total Indian population did not much exceed 10,000. Comparing this number with the early estimates for the same tribes, we find that, if the former are trustworthy, by 1820 the Indian tribes that remained in Wisconsin had increased their numbers. But the material is too unsatisfactory to afford any valuable conclusion.
After the sale of their lands and the receipt of money annuities, a change came over the Indian trade. The monopoly held by Astor was broken into, and as competition increased, the sales of whiskey were larger, and for money, which the savage could now pay. When the Indians went to Montreal in the days of the French, they confessed that they could not return with supplies because they wasted their furs upon brandy. The same process now went on at their doors. The traders were not dependent upon the Indian's success in hunting alone; they had his annuities to count on, and so did not exert their previous influence in favor of steady hunting. Moreover, the game was now exploited to a considerable degree, so that Wisconsin was no longer the hunter's paradise that it had been in the days of Dablon and La Salle. The long-settled economic life of the Indian being revolutionized, his business honesty declined, and credits were more frequently lost. The annuities fell into the traders' hands for debts and whiskey. "There is no less than near $420,000 of claims against the Winnebagoes," writes a Green Bay trader at Prairie du Chien, in 1838, "so that if they are all just, the dividend will be but very small for each claimant, as there is only $150,000 to pay that."[242]
By this time the influence of the fur trader had so developed mining in the region of Dubuque, Iowa, Galena, Ill., and southwestern Wisconsin, as to cause an influx of American miners, and here began a new element of progress for Wisconsin. The knowledge of these mines was possessed by the early French explorers, and as the use of firearms spread they were worked more and more by Indians, under the stimulus of the trader. In 1810 Nicholas Boilvin, United States Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, reported that the Indians about the lead mines had mostly abandoned the chase and turned their attention to the manufacture of lead, which they sold to fur traders. In 1825 there were at least 100 white miners in the entire lead region,[243] and by 1829 they numbered in the thousands.
Black Hawk's war came in 1832, and agricultural settlement sought the southwestern part of the State after that campaign. The traders opened country stores, and their establishments were nuclei of settlement.[244] In Wisconsin the Indian trading post was a thing of the past.
The birch canoe and the pack-horse had had their day in western New York and about Montreal. In Wisconsin the age of the voyageur continued nearly through the first third of this century. It went on in the Far Northwest in substantially the same fashion that has been here described, until quite recently; and in the great North Land tributary to Hudson Bay the chanson of the voyageur may still be heard, and the dog-sledge laden with furs jingles across the snowy plains from distant post to distant post.[245]