From that time forward the Plymouth Plantation enjoyed real economic success. In 1628 furs to the value of 659 English pounds were exported in one cargo. Although no total figures are available for 1628 to 1630, a very large amount of peltry went to England according to Governor Bradford. From 1631 to 1636 over 12,000 pounds of beaver and 1,000 pounds of otter were shipped, most of which brought 20 shillings a pound and none less than 14 shillings. Bradford said that the beaver alone during these years brought 10,000 pounds sterling and that the otter was more than sufficient to pay all costs of transport and auction. Considering the size of the plantation this was indeed big business.
In spite of the financial bungling of the partnership’s agents in England, and even outright irregularities there, the debt was paid off. Additional profits from the sale of beaver skins bought many other things the Pilgrims needed, and in the end it was the earnings from the fur trade that provided the foundation for Plymouth’s next economic development, cattle farming.
In the meantime the Pilgrims’ profitable trade in furs on the Maine coast and on rivers leading to the interior was jealously regarded by the French who, after all, considered that territory within their own limits. And neighboring French traders were doing something about it.
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A Border Fixed on the Coast of Maine
The planting of trading posts farther and farther up the coast of Maine by the New Englanders did not go unchallenged by the French. Although in English eyes it had been well established ever since Captain Argall’s raids in the Bay of Fundy that English claims to the coast now extended well above the 45th parallel, even to the St. Lawrence valley, no such admission had ever been made by the French. There were always French traders in Acadia (Nova Scotia) who envisaged their preserves as extending well down the coast of Maine and who intended to resist further encroachments in those parts.
In fact, as it came about, these fur traders protected and maintained the French claim to much of this coastal region during an incident of the Thirty Years’ War which put most of New France under the English flag for three years, from 1629 to 1632.
Prior to this episode the affairs of New France had reached a turning point. In 1627 Samuel de Champlain’s difficulties became acute. That year the Iroquois, his irreconcilable enemies, renewed their bloody savagery in the interior, while along the coast the English were closing off the very entrance to the valley of the St. Lawrence with their plantations and trading posts and their increased shipping.
Although Champlain’s company had a good season in furs, collecting 22,000 that summer which could be sold in France at ten francs each, the expense of operation had made the outlook none too bright relatively for the shareholders who expected huge returns. Besides the salaries of the Viceroy in France and of Champlain as his lieutenant governing the colony, interpreters now cost as much as a thousand francs a season and sailors six hundred, while factors and other servants came correspondingly high. And there were other increased expenses that bid fair to cut deep into profits.
As a result the directors of the company made things difficult for their governor on the St. Lawrence. They particularly balked at his urgent request for extra funds to strengthen the fortifications of Quebec, even though only a wooden palisade and a few small cannon protected the French trading post.