The fur trade, during the French Regime, went through many changes due to changing circumstances, and the issuing of different regulations from time to time. The discovery of new western lands and tribes spurred literally hundreds of Canadian youths to seek these virgin territories and the riches in furs to be had there. At first traders persuaded the Indians to make the long trip to Montreal with their furs. The presence of so many traders in the forests, however, soon made these long trips unnecessary. By the time Perrot began trading in Wisconsin the traders were carrying their goods to the Indians in their own country.
Regulations required that all traders must be licensed, or buy Conges as they were called. Twenty-five of these were issued each year and permitted the trader to take a designated load of goods into the interior to be traded for the Indian’s furs. The presence of great numbers of unlicensed traders in the woods was responsible for an edict from the king declaring such illegal traders to be outlaws. The punishment for such activities was death. These outlaw traders were known as coureurs de bois and were actually never hampered too much by the stringent laws passed against them.
During the latter part of the 17th century outposts were built to help control the trade. Nicolas Perrot built posts at Mt. Trempealeau, at Lake Pepin, and at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. The Sieur DuLhut (Duluth) built posts in the Lake Superior region.
Since these terms are often misused, it might be best to briefly describe the following occupations: A bourgeois, was an owner of goods and a license; the hired men were called engages; those hired men who only carried the goods and paddled the canoe for a stipulated daily hire were called voyageurs. The coureurs de bois and sometimes the voyageurs were usually the ones who often remained in the forests and “went native.”
PIERRE RADDISON (COURTESY OF WISCONSIN STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY).
The impact of the white man’s civilization was bound to profoundly change the life and geography of the Indians, and, particularly in the early French period, this change was extremely rapid. Three groups were actively working to institute changes in the Indian pattern of life. These were the fur trader, whose goods revolutionized the material culture of the natives, the Jesuit missionaries who hoped to convert the tribes to Christianity, and the French government itself, which attempted at various times to relocate the tribes, form confederacies, and even to “civilize” them.
The fur trader was the only one of the three groups who really succeeded in materially changing the Indian’s way of life, although his success was unintentional. So completely did the materials of the white man replace those of the Indian that within a few short generations almost no one knew how to make stone tools and weapons, pottery vessels, bows and arrows, and many other aboriginal products which were abandoned as rapidly as superior goods of the whites were made available.
The change in tools and weapons naturally changed the Indians’ pattern of life in many ways, but the entire economy of the tribes was affected greatly by the fur trade. The Indian’s need for the white man’s goods was great and he became more and more dependent upon the trader. As the tempo of fur trading increased, the Indian began devoting almost all of his time to hunting and trapping until, in a sense, he became an employee in a great “fur-trade factory” with the goods he received from the trader representing his wages. Much of the Indian’s old life of freedom gradually disappeared, since failure to obtain guns or powder and bullets meant starvation for the Indian and his family.