Morton, in the work already referred to, protested against allowing "the
Great Lake of the Erocoise" (Champlain) to the Dutch, saying that it is
excellent for the fur trade, and that the Dutch have gained by beaver
20,000 pounds a year. Exaggerated though the statement is, it is true
that the energies of the Dutch were devoted to this trade, rather than
to agricultural settlement. As in the case of New France the settlers
dispersed themselves in the Indian trade; so general did this become
that laws had to be passed to compel the raising of crops.[32] New York
City (New Amsterdam) was founded and for a time sustained by the fur
trade. In their search for peltries the Dutch were drawn up the Hudson,
up the Connecticut, and down the Delaware, where they had Swedes for
their rivals. By way of the Hudson the Dutch traders had access to Lake
Champlain, and to the Mohawk, the headwaters of which connected through
the lakes of western New York with Lake Ontario. This region, which was
supplied by the trading post of Orange (Albany), was the seat of the
Iroquois confederacy. The results of the trade upon Indian society
became apparent in a short time in the most decisive way. Furnished with
arms by the Dutch, the Iroquois turned upon the neighboring Indians,
whom the French had at first refrained from supplying with guns.[33] In
1649 they completely ruined the Hurons,[34] a part of whom fled to the
woods of northern Wisconsin. In the years immediately following, the
Neutral Nation and the Eries fell under their power; they overawed the
New England Indians and the Southern tribes, and their hunting and war
parties visited Illinois and drove Indians of those plains into
Wisconsin. Thus by priority in securing firearms, as well as by their
remarkable civil organization,[35] the Iroquois secured possession of
the St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario and Erie. The French had accepted the
alliance of the Algonquins and the Hurons, as the Dutch, and afterward
the English, had that of the Iroquois; so these victories of the
Iroquois cut the French off from the entrance to the Great Lakes by way
of the upper St. Lawrence. As early as 1629 the Dutch trade was
estimated at 50,000 guilders per annum, and the Delaware trade alone
produced 10,000 skins yearly in 1663.[36] The English succeeded to this
trade, and under Governor Dongan they made particular efforts to extend
their operations to the Northwest, using the Iroquois as middlemen.
Although the French were in possession of the trade with the Algonquins
of the Northwest, the English had an economic advantage in competing for
this trade in the fact that Albany traders, whose situation enabled them
to import their goods more easily than Montreal traders could, and who
were burdened with fewer governmental restrictions, were able to pay
fifty per cent more for beaver and give better goods. French traders
frequently received their supplies from Albany, a practice against which
the English authorities legislated in 1720; and the _coureurs de bois_
smuggled their furs to the same place.[37] As early as 1666 Talon
proposed that the king of France should purchase New York, "whereby he
would have two entrances to Canada and by which he would give to the
French all the peltries of the north, of which the English share the
profit by the communication which they have with the Iroquois by
Manhattan and Orange."[38] It is a characteristic of the fur trade that
it continually recedes from the original center, and so it happened that
the English traders before long attempted to work their way into the
Illinois country.[39] The wars between the French and English and
Iroquois must be read in the light of this fact. At the outbreak of the
last French and Indian war, however, it was rather Pennsylvania and
Virginia traders who visited the Ohio Valley. It is said that some three
hundred of them came over the mountains yearly, following the
Susquehanna and the Juniata and the headwaters of the Potomac to the
tributaries of the Ohio, and visiting with their pack-horses the Indian
villages along the valley. The center of the English trade was
Pickawillani on the Great Miami. In 1749 Celoron de Bienville, who had
been sent out to vindicate French authority in the valley, reported that
each village along the Ohio and its branches "has one or more English
traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs."[40]