While they had been securing the trade of the far Northwest and the
Illinois country, the French had allowed the English to gain the trade
of the upper Ohio,[152] and were now brought face to face with the
danger of losing the entire Northwest, and thus the connection of Canada
and Louisiana. The commandants of the western posts were financially as
well as patriotically interested. In 1754, Green Bay, then garrisoned by
an officer, a sergeant and four soldiers, required for the Indian trade
of its department thirteen canoes of goods annually, costing about 7000
livres each, making a total of nearly $18,000.[153] Bougainville
asserts that Marin, the commandant of the department of the Bay, was
associated in trade with the governor and intendant, and that his part
netted him annually 15,000 francs.
When it became necessary for the French to open hostilities with the
English traders in the Ohio country, it was the Wisconsin trader,
Charles de Langlade, with his Chippeway Indians, who in 1752 fell upon
the English trading post at Pickawillany and destroyed the center of
English trade in the Ohio region.[154] The leaders in the opening of the
war that ensued were Northwestern traders. St. Pierre, who commanded at
Fort Le Boeuf when Washington appeared with his demands from the
Governor of Virginia that the French should evacuate the Ohio country,
had formerly been the trader in command at Lake Pepin on the upper
Mississippi.[155] Coulon de Villiers, who captured Washington at Fort
Necessity, was the son of the former commandant at Green Bay.[156]
Beaujeau, who led the French troops to the defeat of Braddock, had been
an officer in the Fox wars.[157] It was Charles de Langlade who
commanded the Indians and was chiefly responsible for the success of the
ambuscade.[158] Wisconsin Indians, representing almost all the tribes,
took part with the French in the war.[159] Traders passed to and from
their business to the battlefields of the East. For example, De
Repentigny, whose post at Sault Ste. Marie has been described, was at
Michillimackinac in January, 1755, took part in the battle of Lake
George in the fall of that year, formed a partnership to continue the
trade with a trader of Michillimackinac in 1756, was at that place in
1758, and in 1759 fought with Montcalm on the heights of Abraham.[160]
It was not without a struggle that the traders yielded their beaver
country.