THE COUREURS-DE-BOIS
The center and soul of the economic system in New France was the
traffic in furs. Even before the colony contained more than a handful
of settlers, the profit-making possibilities of this trade were
recognized. It grew rapidly even in the early days, and for more than
a hundred and fifty years furnished New France with its sinews of war
and peace. Beginning on the St. Lawrence, this trade moved westward
along the Great Lakes, until toward the end of the seventeenth century
it passed to the headwaters of the Mississippi. During the two
administrations of Frontenac the fur traffic grew to large
proportions, nor did it show much sign of shrinking for a generation
thereafter. With the ebb-tide of French military power, however, the
trader's hold on these western lands began to relax, and before the
final overthrow of New France it had become greatly weakened.
In establishing commercial relations with the Indians, the French
voyageur on the St. Lawrence had several marked advantages over his
English and Dutch neighbors. By temperament he was better adapted than
they to be a pioneer of trade. No race was more supple than his own in
conforming its ways to the varied demands of place and time. When he
was among the Indians, the Frenchman tried to act like one of them,
and he soon developed in all the arts of forest life a skill which
rivaled that of the Indian himself. The fascination of life in the
untamed wilderness with its hair-raising experiences, its romance, its
free abandon, appealed more strongly to the French temperament than to
that of any other European race. _Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum_.
And the French colonist of the seventeenth century had the qualities
of personal courage and hardihood which enabled him to enjoy this life
to the utmost.
Then there was the Jesuit missionary. He was the first to visit the
Indians in their own abodes, the first to make his home among them,
the first to master their language and to understand their habits of
mind. This sympathetic comprehension gave the Jesuit a great influence
in the councils of the savages. While first of all a soldier of the
Cross, the missionary never forgot, however, that he was also a
sentinel doing outpost duty for his own race. Apostle he was, but
patriot too. Besides, it was to the spiritual interest of the
missionary to keep his flock in contact with the French alone; for if
they became acquainted with the English they would soon come under
the smirch of heresy. To prevent the Indians from engaging in any
commercial dealings with Dutch or English heretics meant encouraging
them to trade exclusively with the French. In this way the Jesuit
became one of the most zealous of helpers in carrying out the French
program for diverting to Montreal the entire fur trade of the western
regions. He was thus not only a pioneer of the faith but at the same
time a pathfinder of commercial empire. It is true, no doubt,
that this service to the trading interests of the colony was but
ill-requited by those whom it benefited most. The trader too often
repaid the missionary in pretty poor coin by bringing the curse of the
liquor traffic to his doors, and by giving denial by shameless conduct
to all the good father's moral teachings. In spite of such inevitable
drawbacks, the Jesuit rendered a great service to the trading
interests of New France, far greater indeed than he ever claimed or
received credit for.
In the struggle for the control of the fur trade geographical
advantages lay with the French. They had two excellent routes from
Montreal directly into the richest beaver lands of the continent. One
of these, by way of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, had the drawback
of an overland portage, but on the other hand the whole route was
reasonably safe from interruption by Iroquois or English attack. The
other route, by way of the upper St. Lawrence and the lakes, passed
Cataraqui, Niagara, and Detroit on the way to Michilimackinac or to
Green Bay. This was an all-water route, save for the short detour
around the falls at Niagara, but it had the disadvantage of passing,
for a long stretch, within easy reach of Iroquois interference. The
French soon realized, however, that this lake route was the main
artery of the colony's fur trade and must be kept open at any cost.
They accordingly entrenched themselves at all the strategic points
along the route. Fort Frontenac at Cataraqui was built in 1674; the
fortified post at Detroit, in 1686; the fort at Niagara, in 1678; and
the establishments at the Sault Ste. Marie and at Michilimackinac had
been constructed even earlier.
But these places only marked the main channels through which the trade
passed. The real sources of the fur supply were in the great regions
now covered by the states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. As
it became increasingly necessary that the French should gain a firm
footing in these territories as well, they proceeded to establish
their outposts without delay. The post at Baye des Puants (Green Bay)
was established before 1685; then in rapid succession came trading
stockades in the very heart of the beaver lands, Fort St. Antoine,
Fort St. Nicholas, Fort St. Croix, Fort Perrot, Port St. Louis, and
several others. No one can study the map of this western country as
it was in 1700 without realizing what a strangle-hold the French had
achieved upon all the vital arteries of its trade.
The English had no such geographical advantages as the French, nor
did they adequately appreciate the importance of being first upon the
ground. With the exception of the Hudson after 1664, they controlled
no great waterway leading to the interior. And the Hudson with its
tributaries tapped only the territories of the Iroquois which were
denuded of beaver at an early date. These Iroquois might have rendered
great service to the English at Albany by acting as middlemen in
gathering the furs from the West. They tried hard, indeed, to assume
this rôle, but, as they were practically always at enmity with the
western tribes, they never succeeded in turning this possibility to
their full emolument.
In only one respect were the French at a serious disadvantage. They
could not compete with the English in the matter of prices. The
English trader could give the Indian for his furs two or three times
as much merchandise as the French could offer him. To account for
this commercial discrepancy there were several reasons. The cost of
transportation to and from France was high--approximately twice that
of freighting from London to Boston or New York. Navigation on the St.
Lawrence was dangerous in those days before buoys and beacons came
to mark the shoal waters, and the risk of capture at sea during the
incessant wars with England was considerable. The staples most used in
the Indian trade--utensils, muskets, blankets, and strouds (a coarse
woolen cloth made into shirts)--could be bought more cheaply in
England than in France. Rum could be obtained from the British West
Indies more cheaply than brandy from across the ocean. Moreover, there
were duties on furs shipped from Quebec and on all goods which came
into that post. And, finally, a paternal government in New France set
the scale of prices in such a way as to ensure the merchants a large
profit. It is clear, then, that in fair and open competition for the
Indian trade the French would not have survived a single season.[1]
Their only hope was to keep the English away from the Indians
altogether, and particularly from the Indians of the fur-bearing
regions. This was no easy task, but in general they managed to do it
for nearly a century.
[Footnote 1: In the collection of _Documents Relating to the Colonial
History of New York_ (ix., 408-409) the following comparative table of
prices at Fort Orange (Albany) and at Montreal in 1689 is given:
_The Indian pays for at Albany at Montreal_
1 musket 2 beavers 5 beavers
8 pounds of powder 1 beaver 4 "
40 pounds of lead 1 " 3 "
1 blanket 1 " 2 "
4 shirts 1 " 2 "
6 pairs stockings 1 " 2 "]
The most active and at the same time the most picturesque figure
in the fur-trading system of New France was the _coureur-de-bois_.
Without him the trade could neither have been begun nor continued
successfully. Usually a man of good birth, of some military training,
and of more or less education, he was a rover of the forest by choice
and not as an outcast from civilization. Young men came from France
to serve as officers with the colonial garrison, to hold minor civil
posts, to become seigneurial landholders, or merely to seek adventure.
Very few came out with the fixed intention of engaging in the forest
trade; but hundreds fell victims to its magnetism after they had
arrived in New France. The young officer who grew tired of garrison
duty, the young seigneur who found yeomanry tedious, the young
habitant who disliked the daily toil of the farm--young men of all
social ranks, in fact, succumbed to this lure of the wilderness. "I
cannot tell you," wrote one governor, "how attractive this life is to
all our youth. It consists in doing nothing, caring nothing, following
every inclination, and getting out of the way of all restraint." In
any case the ranks of the voyageurs included those who had the best
and most virile blood in the colony.
Just how many Frenchmen, young and old, were engaged in the lawless
and fascinating life of the forest trader when the fur traffic was at
its height cannot be stated with exactness. But the number must have
been large. The intendant Duchesneau, in 1680, estimated that more
than eight hundred men, out of a colonial population numbering less
than ten thousand, were off in the woods. "There is not a family of
any account," he wrote to the King, "but has sons, brothers,
uncles, and nephews among these _coureurs-de-bois_." This may be an
exaggeration, but from references contained in the dispatches of
various royal officials one may fairly conclude that Duchesneau's
estimate of the number of traders was not far wide of the mark. And
there is other evidence as to the size of this exodus to the woods.
Nicholas Perrot, when he left Montreal for Green Bay in 1688, took
with him one hundred and forty-three voyageurs.[1] La Hontan found
"thirty or forty _coureurs-de-bois_ at every post in the Illinois
country."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York_,
ix., 470.]
[Footnote 2: _Voyages_ (ed. Thwaites), ii., 175.]
Among the leaders of the _coureurs-de-bois_ several names stand out
prominently. François Dauphine de la Forêt, Nicholas Perrot, and Henri
de Tonty, the lieutenants of La Salle, Alphonse de Tonty, Antoine de
La Mothe-Cadillac, Greysolon Du Lhut and his brother Greysolon de la
Tourette, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart de Groseilliers,
Olivier Morel de la Durantaye, Jean-Paul Le Gardeur de Repentigny,
Louis de la Porte de Louvigny, Louis and Juchereau Joliet, Pierre
LeSueur, Boucher de la Perrière, Jean Peré, Pierre Jobin, Denis Massé,
Nicholas d'Ailleboust de Mantet, François Perthuis, Etienne Brulé,
Charles Juchereau de St. Denis, Pierre Moreau _dit_ La Toupine, Jean
Nicolet--these are only the few who connected themselves with some
striking event which has transmitted their names to posterity. Many of
them have left their imprint upon the geographical nomenclature of the
Middle West. Hundreds of others, the rank and file of this picturesque
array, gained no place upon the written records, since they took part
in no striking achievement worthy of mention in the dispatches and
memoirs of their day. The _coureur-de-bois_ was rarely a chronicler.
If the Jesuits did not deign to pillory him in their _Rélations_,
or if the royal officials did not single him out for praise in
the memorials which they sent home to France each year, the
_coureur-de-bois_ might spend his whole active life in the forest
without transmitting his name or fame to a future generation. And that
is what most of them did. A few of the voyageurs found that one trip
to the wilds was enough and never took to the trade permanently. But
the great majority, once the virus of the free life had entered their
veins, could not forsake the wild woods to the end of their days. The
dangers of the life were great, and the mortality among the traders
was high. _Coureurs de risques_ they ought to have been called, as
La Hontan remarks. But taken as a whole they were a vigorous,
adventurous, strong-limbed set of men. It was a genuine compliment
that they paid to the wilderness when they chose to spend year after
year in its embrace.
In their methods of trading the _coureurs-de-bois_ were unlike
anything that the world had ever known before. The Hanseatic merchants
of earlier fur-trading days in Northern Europe had established their
forts or factories at Novgorod, at Bergen, and elsewhere, great
_entrepôts_ stored with merchandise for the neighboring territories.
The traders lived within, and the natives came to the posts to barter
their furs or other raw materials. The merchants of the East India
Company had established their posts in the Orient and traded with the
natives on the same basis. But the Norman voyageurs of the New World
did things quite differently. They established fortified posts
throughout the regions west of the Lakes, it is true, but they did not
make them storehouses, nor did they bring to them any considerable
stock of merchandise. The posts were for use as the headquarters of
the _coureurs-de-bois_, and usually sheltered a small garrison of
soldiers during the winter months; they likewise served as places
of defense in the event of attack and of rendezvous when a trading
expedition to Montreal was being organized. It was not the policy of
the French authorities, nor was it the plan of the _coureurs-de-bois_,
that any considerable amount of trading should take place at these
western stockades. They were only the outposts intended to keep the
trade running in its proper channels. In a word, it was the aim of
the French to bring the trade to the colony, not to send the colony
overland to the savages. That is the way Father Carheil phrased it,
and he was quite right.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carheil to Champigny (August 30, 1702), in R.G. Thwaites,
_Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, lxv., 219.]
Every spring, accordingly, if the great trade routes to Montreal were
reasonably free from the danger of an overwhelming Iroquois attack,
the _coureurs-de-bois_ rounded up the western Indians with their
stocks of furs from the winter's hunt. Then, proceeding to the grand
rendezvous at Michilimackinac or Green Bay, the canoes were joined
into one great flotilla, and the whole array set off down the lakes
or by way of the Ottawa to Montreal. This annual fur flotilla often
numbered hundreds of canoes, the _coureurs-de-bois_ acting as pilots,
assisting the Indians to ward off attacks, and adding their European
intelligence to the red man's native cunning.[1] About midsummer,
having covered the thousand miles of water, the canoes drew within
hail of the settlement of Montreal. Above the Lachine Rapids the
population came forth to meet it with a noisy welcome. Enterprising
_cabaretiers_, in defiance of the royal decrees, had usually set up
their booths along the shores for the sale of brandy, and there was
some brisk trading as well as a considerable display of aboriginal
boisterousness even before the canoes reached Montreal.
[Footnote 1: The flotilla of 1693 consisted of more than 400 canoes,
with about 200 _coureurs-de-bois_, 1200 Indians, and furs to the value
of over 800,000 _livres_.]
Once at the settlement, the Indians set up their tepees, boiled their
kettles, and unpacked their bundles of peltry. A day was then given
over to a great council which, the governor of the colony, in scarlet
cloak and plumed hat, often came from Quebec to attend. There were the
usual pledges of friendship; the peace-pipe went its round, and the
song of the calumet was sung. Then the trading really began. The
merchants of Montreal had their little shops along the shore where
they spread out for display the merchandise brought by the spring
ships from France. There were muskets, powder, and lead, blankets in
all colors, coarse cloth, knives, hatchets, kettles, awls, needles,
and other staples of the trade. But the Indian had a weakness for
trinkets of every sort, so that cheap and gaudy necklaces, bracelets,
tin looking-glasses, little bells, combs, vermilion, and a hundred
other things of the sort were there to tempt him. And last, but not
least in its purchasing power, was brandy. Many hogsheads of it were
disposed of at every annual fair, and while it lasted the Indians
turned bedlam loose in the town. The fair was Montreal's gala event
in every year, for its success meant everything to local prosperity.
Indeed, in the few years when, owing to the Iroquois dangers, the
flotilla failed to arrive, the whole settlement was on the verge of
bankruptcy.
What the Indian got for his furs at Montreal varied from time to
time, depending for the most part upon the state of the fur market
in France. And this, again, hinged to some extent upon the course of
fashions there. On one occasion the fashion of wearing low-crowned
hats cut the value of beaver skins in two. Beaver was the fur of furs,
and the mainstay of the trade. Whether for warmth, durability, or
attractiveness in appearance, there was none other to equal it. Not
all beaver skins were valued alike, however. Those taken from animals
killed during the winter were preferred to those taken at other
seasons, while new skins did not bring as high a price as those which
the Indian had worn for a time and had thus made soft. The trade,
in fact, developed a classification of beaver skins into soft and
half-soft, green and half-green, wet and dry, and so on. Skins of good
quality brought at Montreal from two to four _livres_ per pound, and
they averaged a little more than two pounds each. The normal cargo of
a large canoe was forty packs of skins, each pack weighing about fifty
pounds. Translated into the currency of today a beaver pelt of fair
quality was worth about a dollar. When we read in the official
dispatches that a half-million _livres_' worth of skins changed owners
at the Montreal fair, this statement means that at least a hundred
thousand animals must have been slaughtered to furnish a large
flotilla with its cargo.
The furs of other animals, otter, marten, and mink, were also in
demand but brought smaller prices. Moose hides sold well, and so
did bear skins. Some buffalo hides were brought to Montreal, but in
proportion to their value they were bulky and took up so much room in
the canoes that the Indians did not care to bring them. The heyday
of the buffalo trade came later, with the development of overland
transportation. At any rate the dependence of New France upon these
furs was complete. "I would have you know," asserts one chronicler,
"that Canada subsists only upon the trade of these skins and furs,
three-fourths of which come from the people who live around the Great
Lakes." The prosperity of the French colony hinged wholly upon two
things: whether the routes from the West were open, and whether the
market for furs in France was holding up. Upon the former depended the
quantity of furs brought to Montreal; upon the latter, the amount of
profit which the _coureurs-de-bois_ and the merchants of the colony
would obtain.
For ten days or a fortnight the great fair at Montreal continued. A
picturesque bazaar it must have been, this meeting of the two ends of
civilization, for trade has been, in all ages, a mighty magnet to draw
the ends of the earth together. When all the furs had been sold, the
_coureurs-de-bois_ took some goods along with them to be used partly
in trade on their own account at the western posts and partly as
presents from the King to the western chieftains. There is reason to
suspect, however, that much of what the royal bounty provided for this
latter purpose was diverted to private use. There were annual fairs at
Three Rivers for the Indians of the St. Maurice region; at Sorel,
for those of the Richelieu; and at Quebec and at Tadoussac, for
the redskins of the Lower St. Lawrence. But Montreal, owing to its
situation at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa trade
routes, was by far the greatest fur mart of all.
It has been mentioned that the colonial authorities tried to
discourage trading at the western posts. Their aim was to bring the
Indian with his furs to the colonial settlement. But this policy could
not be fully carried out. Despite the most rigid prohibitions and the
severest penalties, some of the _coureurs-de-bois_ would take goods
and brandy to sell in the wilderness. Finding that this practice could
not be exterminated, the authorities decided to permit a limited
amount of forest trading under strict regulation, and to this end the
King authorized the granting of twenty-five licenses each year.
These licenses permitted a trader to take three canoes with as much
merchandise as they would hold. As a rule the licenses were not issued
directly to the traders themselves, but were given to the religious
institutions or to dependent widows of former royal officers. These in
turn sold them to the traders, sometimes for a thousand _livres_ or
more. The system of granting twenty-five annual licenses did not
of itself throw the door wide open for trade at the western
establishments. But as time went on the plan was much abused by the
granting of private licenses to the friends of the officials at
Quebec, and "God knows how many of these were issued," as one writer
of the time puts it. Traders often went, moreover, without any license
at all, and especially in the matter of carrying brandy into the
forest they frequently set the official orders at defiance.
This brandy question was, in fact, the great troubler in Israel. It
bulks large in every chronicle, every memoir, every _Rélation_, and
in almost every official dispatch during a period of more than fifty
years. It worried the King himself; it set the officers of the Church
and State against each other; and it provoked more friction throughout
the western dominions of France than all other issues put together.
As to the ethics of the liquor traffic in New France, there was
never any serious disagreement. Even the secular authorities readily
admitted that brandy did the Indians no good, and that it would be
better to sell them blankets and kettles. But that was not the point.
The traders believed that, if the western Indians could not secure
brandy from the French, they would get rum from the English. The
Indian would be no better off in that case, and the French would lose
their hold on him into the bargain. Time and again they reiterated the
argument that the prohibition of the brandy trade would make an end to
trade, to French influence, and even to the missionary's own labors.
For if the Indian went to the English for rum, he would get into touch
with heresy as well; he would have Protestant missionaries come to his
village, and the day of Jesuit propaganda would be at an end.
This, throughout the whole trading period, was the stock argument of
publicans and sinners. The Jesuit missionaries combated it with all
their power; yet they never fully convinced either the colonial or the
home authorities. Louis XIV, urged by his confessor to take one stand
and by his ministers to take the other, was sorely puzzled. He wanted
to do his duty as a Most Christian King, yet he did not want to have
on his hands a bankrupt colony. Bishop Laval pleaded with Colbert that
brandy would spell the ruin of all religion in the new world, but the
subtle minister calmly retorted that the _eau-de-vie_ had not yet
overcome the ancient church in older lands. To set his conscience
right, the King referred the whole question to the savants of the
Sorbonne, and they, like good churchmen, promptly gave their opinion
that to sell intoxicants to the heathen was a heinous sin. But that
counsel afforded the Grand Monarch scant guidance, for it was not
the relative sinfulness of the brandy trade that perplexed him. The
practical expediency of issuing a decree of prohibition was what lay
upon his mind. On that point Colbert gave him sensible advice, namely,
that a question of practical policy could be better settled by the
colonists themselves than by cloistered scholars. Guided by this
suggestion, the King asked for a limited plebiscite; the governor of
New France was requested to call together "the leading inhabitants of
the colony" and to obtain from each one his opinion in writing. Here
was an inkling of colonial self-government, and it is unfortunate that
the King did not resort more often to the same method of solving the
colony's problems.
On October 26, 1678, Frontenac gathered the "leading inhabitants" in
the Château at Quebec. Apart from the officials and military officers
on the one hand and the clergy on the other, most of the solid men of
New France were there. One after another their views were called for
and written down. Most of those present expressed the opinion that
the evils of the traffic had been exaggerated, and that if the French
should prohibit the sale of brandy to the savages they would soon lose
their hold upon the western trade. There were some dissenters, among
them a few who urged a more rigid regulation of the traffic. One
hard-headed seigneur, the Sieur Dombourg, raised the query whether the
colony was really so dependent for its existence upon the fur trade as
the others had assumed to be the case. If there were less attention to
trade, he urged, there would be more heed paid to agriculture, and in
the long run it would be better for the colony to ship wheat to France
instead of furs. "Let the western trade go to the English in exchange
for their rum; it would neither endure long nor profit them much."
This was sound sense, but it did not carry great weight with
Dombourg's hearers.
The written testimony was put together and, with comments by the
governor, was sent to France for the information of the King and his
ministers. Apparently it had some effect, for, without altogether
prohibiting the use of brandy in the western trade, a royal decree of
1679 forbade the _coureurs-de-bois_ to carry it with them on their
trips up the lakes. The issue of this decree, however, made no
perceptible change in the situation, and brandy was taken to the
western posts as before. So far as one can determine from the actual
figures of the trade, however, the quantity of intoxicants used by
the French in the Indian trade has been greatly exaggerated by the
missionaries. Not more than fifty barrels (_barriques_) ever went to
the western regions in the course of a year. A barrel held about two
hundred and fifty pints, so that the total would be less than one
pint per capita for the adult Indians within the French sphere
of influence. That was a far smaller per capita consumption than
Frenchmen guzzled in a single day at a Breton fair, as La Salle once
pointed out. The trouble was, however, that thousands of Indians got
no brandy at all, while a relatively small number obtained too much
of it. What they got, moreover, was poor stuff, most of it, and well
diluted with water. The Indian drank to get drunk, and when brandy
constituted the other end of the bargain he would give for it the very
furs off his back.
But if the Jesuits exaggerated the amount of brandy used in the trade,
they did not exaggerate its demoralizing effect upon both the Indian
and the trader. They believed that brandy would wreck the Indian's
body and ruin his soul. They were right; it did both. It made of every
western post, in the words of Father Carheil, a den of "brutality and
violence, of injustice and impiety, of lewd and shameless conduct, of
contempt and insults." No sinister motives need be sought to explain
the bitterness with which the blackrobes cried out against the
iniquities of a system which swindled the redskin out of his furs and
debauched him into the bargain. Had the Jesuits done otherwise
than fight it from first to last they would have been false to the
traditions of their Church and their Order. They were, when all is
said and done, the truest friends that the North American Indian has
ever had.
The effects of the fur trade upon both Indians and French were
far-reaching. The trade changed the red man's order of life, took him
in a single generation from the stone to the iron age, demolished his
old notions of the world, carried him on long journeys, and made him a
different man. French brandy and English rum sapped his stamina, and
the _grand libertinage_ of the traders calloused whatever moral sense
he had. His folklore, his religion, and his institutions made no
progress after the trader had once entered his territories.
On the French the effects of tribal commerce were not so disastrous,
though pernicious enough. The trade drew off into the wilderness the
vigorous blood of the colony. It cast its spell over New France from
Lachine to the Saguenay. Men left their farms, their wives, and their
families, they mortgaged their property, and they borrowed from their
friends in order to join the annual hegira to the West. Yet very few
of these traders accumulated fortunes. It was not the trader but the
merchant at Montreal or Quebec who got the lion's share of the profit
and took none of the risks. Many of the _coureurs-de-bois_ entered the
trade with ample funds and emerged in poverty. Nicholas Perrot
and Greysolon Du Lhut were conspicuous examples. It was a highly
speculative game. At times large profits came easily and were spent
recklessly. The trade encouraged profligacy, bravado, and garishness;
it deadened the moral sense of the colony, and even schooled men in
trickery and peculation. It was a corrupting influence in the official
life of New France, and even governors could not keep from soiling
their hands in it. But most unfortunate of all, the colony was
impelled to put its economic energies into what was at best an
ephemeral and transitory source of national wealth and to neglect the
solid foundations of agriculture and industry which in the long run
would have profited its people much more.