The fishing barques from St. Malo, from Dieppe, Rouen, La Rochelle and Havre, kept coming to America’s northern coasts every summer, hundreds of them. They fished for cod on the banks, hunted walrus in the great gulf, and caught whales in the lower parts of the St. Lawrence River. Always, wherever they were, the mariners drove an ever increasing trade with the Indians for valuable pelts. Over the sides of their ships and on shore they bartered for marten, otter, fox and beaver.
Commerce flourished to such an extent through this individual enterprise that ships’ captains frequently found it profitable to turn all hands to bartering for pelts. It was a French vessel in 1569 at Cape Breton whose master drove a “trade with the people of divers sortes of fine furs” that picked up the Englishmen, David Ingram and his two companions, Richard Browne and Richard Twide. Along with a large number of others these three had been abandoned ashore following the defeat of their famous leader, John Hawkins, the slaver, in a piratical engagement in the Caribbean with the Spaniards. Ingram and his two friends, however, struck out into the Florida wilderness, “crossed the River May,” and for twelve months beat their hazardous way northward through lands never before trod by white men, until they reached Cape Breton. They reported seeing “plentie of fine furres” along the way.
Gradually the traffic in furs moved inland via the St. Lawrence as occasional traders, adopting the native mode of travel by canoe, braved the wilderness for choicer pelts. There being no soldiers or forts to fall back on, these traders, born of the fishing fleets, found it expedient to treat the Indians well. The Montagnais and the Algonkins, who had been hostile since Cartier’s last visit, reciprocated in kind. So did the Hurons, eventually. They were all hopeful of allies with fire guns to help them against their powerful enemies, the recently formed league of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who inhabited parts of the St. Lawrence valley in the west and the country to the south.
In 1581 a French bark, sent out exclusively for fur by the merchants of St. Malo, pushed into the upper St. Lawrence. The profits of this venture were so spectacular that organized bulk traffic got under way immediately between France and the St. Lawrence valley.
Within three years Richard Hakluyt, the English geographer, was writing, “And nowe our neighboures, the men of St. Maloe in Brytaine, in the begynnyinge of Auguste laste paste, of this yere 1584 are come home with five shippes from Canada and the contries upp the Bay of St. Lawrence, and have broughte twoo of the people of the contrie home, and have founde suche swete in the newe trade that they are preparinge tenne shippes to returne thither in January nexte....”
Almost overnight New France became noted for its valuable export of pelts, especially beaver. Hakluyt, writing from Paris about this time, said that in one man’s house he had seen Canadian otter and beaver to the value of five thousand crowns.
The French merchants mostly kept to the St. Lawrence valley, for Canada and the valley region in the hinterland teemed with fur-bearing animals. Furthermore, communication with the natives in the valley was relatively easy because of their earlier contact with Frenchmen.
Of course dialects differed, but limited palaver in a language similar to that of the Algonkin tribe was possible with all the Indians in these parts except the Iroquois. Theirs was a different tongue. The Algonkin tribe of Canada, however, was part of a great linguistic family which came to be known as Algonquin and which stretched irregularly over most of the northern woodland and as far south as Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic seaboard.
Intrepid French traders often spent the winter in the wilderness with the different tribes, to learn about their habits and dialects. If they were to know what was really in the minds of the unpredictable savages with whom they dealt, it was best to know as much as possible about them and especially the exact meaning of their words. A good knowledge of the dialect of a particular tribe might mean an advantage over a competitor, a better profit, or even the difference between life and death.
The lonely fur trader in his canoe with his Indian guides soon symbolized the occupation of New France. The deeper he penetrated into the country the farther the fame of his conquest spread abroad. New France was more than a claim; without colonization it was becoming a recognized French possession. Geographers so indicated it on their maps.