[191] Amer. State Papers, For. Rels., III., 705.
[192] Amer. State Papers, Ind. Affs., L, 562. See map in Collet's Travels, atlas.
[193] On this company see Mackenzie, Voyages; Bancroft, Northwest Coast, I., 378-616, and citations; Hunt's Merch. Mag., III., 185; Irving, Astoria; Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West; Harmon, Journal; Report on the Canadian Archives, 1881, p. 61 et seq. This fur-trading life still goes on in the more remote regions of British America. See Robinson, Great Fur Land, ch. xv.
[194] Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 123-5.
[195] Mackenzie, Voyages, xxxix. Harmon, Journal, 36. In the fall of 1784, Haldimand granted permission to the Northwest Company to build a small vessel at Detroit, to be employed next year on Lake Superior. Calendar of Canadian Archives, 1888, p. 72.
[196] Besides the authorities cited above, see "Anderson's Narrative," in Wis. Hist. Colls., IX., 137-206.
[197] An estimate of the cost of an expedition in 1717 is given in Margry, VI., 506. At that time the wages of a good voyageur for a year amounted to about $50. Provisions for the two months' trip from Montreal to Mackinaw cost about $1.00 per month per man. Indian corn for a year cost $16; lard, $10; eau de vie, $1.30; tobacco, 25 cents. It cost, therefore, less than $80 to support a voyageur for one year's trip into the woods. Gov. Ninian Edwards, writing at the time of the American Fur Company (post, p. 57), says: "The whole expense of transporting eight thousand weight of goods from Montreal to the Mississippi, wintering with the Indians, and returning with a load of furs and peltries in the succeeding season, including the cost of provisions and portages and the hire of five engages for the whole time does not exceed five hundred and twenty-five dollars, much of which is usually paid to those engages when in the Indian country, in goods at an exorbitant price." American State Papers, VI., 65.
[198] This distinction goes back at least to 1681 (N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 152). Often the engagement was for five years, and the voyageur might be transferred from one master to another, at the master's will.
The following is a translation of a typical printed engagement, one of scores in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the written portions in brackets:
"Before a Notary residing at the post of Michilimakinac, Undersigned; Was Present [Joseph Lamarqueritte] who has voluntarily engaged and doth bind himself by these Presents to M[onsieur Louis Grignion] here present and accepting, at [his] first requisition to set off from this Post [in the capacity of Winterer] in one of [his] Canoes or Bateaux to make the Voyage [going as well as returning] and to winter for [two years at the Bay].