The goods used in the Indian trade remained much the same from the
first, in all sections of the country.[222] They were chiefly blankets,
coarse cloths, cheap jewelry and trinkets (including strings of wampum),
fancy goods (like ribbons, shawls, etc.), kettles, knives, hatchets,
guns, powder, tobacco, and intoxicating liquor.[223] These goods,
shipped from Mackinaw, at first came by canoes or bateaux,[224] and in
the later period by vessel, to a leading post, were there redivided[225]
and sent to the various trading posts. The Indians, returning from the
hunting grounds to their villages in the spring,[226] set the squaws to
making maple sugar,[227] planting corn, watermelons, potatoes, squashes,
etc., and a little hunting was carried on. The summer was given over to
enjoyment, and in the early period to wars. In the autumn they collected
their wild rice, or their corn, and again were ready to start for the
hunting grounds, sometimes 300 miles distant. At this juncture the
trader, licensed by an Indian agent, arrived upon the scene with his
goods, without which no family could subsist, much less collect any
quantity of furs.[228] These were bought on credit by the hunter, since
he could not go on the hunt for the furs, whereby he paid for his
supplies, without having goods and ammunition advanced for the purpose.
This system of credits,[229] dating back to the French period, had
become systematized so that books were kept, with each Indian's account.
The amount to which the hunter was trusted was between $40 and $50, at
cost prices, upon which the trader expected a gain of about 100 per
cent, so that the average annual value of furs brought in by each hunter
to pay his credits should have been between $80 and $100.[230] The
amount of the credit varied with the reputation of the hunter for
honesty and ability in the chase.[231] Sometimes he was trusted to the
amount of three hundred dollars. If one-half the credits were paid in
the spring the trader thought that he had done a fair business. The
importance of this credit system can hardly be overestimated in
considering the influence of the fur trade upon the Indians of
Wisconsin, and especially in rendering them dependent upon the earlier
settlements of the State.
The system left the Indians at the mercy of the trader when one nation
monopolized the field, and it compelled them to espouse the cause of one
or other when two nations contended for supremacy over their territory.
At the same time it rendered the trade peculiarly adapted to monopoly,
for when rivals competed, the trade was demoralized, and the Indian
frequently sold to a new trader the furs which he had pledged in advance
for the goods of another. When the American Fur Company gained control,
they systematized matters so that there was no competition between their
own agents, and private dealers cut into their trade but little for some
years. The unit of trade was at first the beaver skin, or, as the pound
of beaver skin came to be called, the "plus."[232] The beaver skin was
estimated at a pound and a half, though it sometimes weighed two, in
which case an allowance was made. Wampum was used for ornament and in
treaty-making, but not as currency. Other furs or Indian commodities,
like maple sugar and wild rice, were bought in terms of beaver. As this
animal grew scarcer the unit changed to money. By 1820, when few beaver
were marketed in Wisconsin, the term plus stood for one dollar.[233] The
muskrat skin was also used as the unit in the later days of the
trade.[234] In the southern colonies the pound of deer skin had answered
the purpose of a unit.[235]
The goods being trusted to the Indians, the bands separated for the
hunting grounds. Among the Chippeways, at least, each family or group
had a particular stream or region where it exclusively hunted and
trapped.[236] Not only were the hunting grounds thus parcelled out;
certain Indians were apportioned to certain traders,[237] so that the
industrial activities of Wisconsin at this date were remarkably
systematic and uniform. Sometimes the trader followed the Indians to
their hunting grounds. From time to time he sent his engagés (hired
men), commonly five or six in number, to the various places where the
hunting bands were to be found, to collect furs on the debts and to sell
goods to those who had not received too large credits, and to the
customers of rival traders; this was called "running a deouine."[238]
The main wintering post had lesser ones, called "jack-knife posts,"[239]
depending on it, where goods were left and the furs gathered in going to
and from the main post. By these methods Wisconsin was thoroughly
visited by the traders before the "pioneers" arrived.[240]
The kind and amount of furs brought in may be judged by the fact that in
1836, long after the best days of the trade, a single Green Bay firm,
Porlier and Grignon, shipped to the American Fur Company about 3600 deer
skins, 6000 muskrats, 150 bears, 850 raccoons, besides beavers, otters,
fishers, martens, lynxes, foxes, wolves, badgers, skunks, etc.,
amounting to over $6000.
None of these traders became wealthy; Astor's company absorbed the
profits. It required its clerks, or factors, to pay an advance of 81-1/2
per cent on the sterling cost of the blankets, strouds, and other
English goods, in order to cover the cost of importation and the expense
of transportation from New York to Mackinaw. Articles purchased in New
York were charged with 15-1/3 per cent advance for transportation, and
each class of purchasers was charged with 33-1/3 per cent advance as
profit on the aggregate amount.[241]
I estimate, from the data given in the sources cited on page 63, note,
that in 1820 between $60,000 and $75,000 worth of goods was brought
annually to Wisconsin for the Indian trade. An average outfit for a
single clerk at a main post was between $1500 and $2000, and for the
dependent posts between $100 and $500. There were probably not over 2000
Indian hunters in the State, and the total Indian population did not
much exceed 10,000. Comparing this number with the early estimates for
the same tribes, we find that, if the former are trustworthy, by 1820
the Indian tribes that remained in Wisconsin had increased their
numbers. But the material is too unsatisfactory to afford any valuable
conclusion.
After the sale of their lands and the receipt of money annuities, a
change came over the Indian trade. The monopoly held by Astor was broken
into, and as competition increased, the sales of whiskey were larger,
and for money, which the savage could now pay. When the Indians went to
Montreal in the days of the French, they confessed that they could not
return with supplies because they wasted their furs upon brandy. The
same process now went on at their doors. The traders were not dependent
upon the Indian's success in hunting alone; they had his annuities to
count on, and so did not exert their previous influence in favor of
steady hunting. Moreover, the game was now exploited to a considerable
degree, so that Wisconsin was no longer the hunter's paradise that it
had been in the days of Dablon and La Salle. The long-settled economic
life of the Indian being revolutionized, his business honesty declined,
and credits were more frequently lost. The annuities fell into the
traders' hands for debts and whiskey. "There is no less than near
$420,000 of claims against the Winnebagoes," writes a Green Bay trader
at Prairie du Chien, in 1838, "so that if they are all just, the
dividend will be but very small for each claimant, as there is only
$150,000 to pay that."[242]
By this time the influence of the fur trader had so developed mining in
the region of Dubuque, Iowa, Galena, Ill., and southwestern Wisconsin,
as to cause an influx of American miners, and here began a new element
of progress for Wisconsin. The knowledge of these mines was possessed by
the early French explorers, and as the use of firearms spread they were
worked more and more by Indians, under the stimulus of the trader. In
1810 Nicholas Boilvin, United States Indian agent at Prairie du Chien,
reported that the Indians about the lead mines had mostly abandoned the
chase and turned their attention to the manufacture of lead, which they
sold to fur traders. In 1825 there were at least 100 white miners in the
entire lead region,[243] and by 1829 they numbered in the thousands.
Black Hawk's war came in 1832, and agricultural settlement sought the
southwestern part of the State after that campaign. The traders opened
country stores, and their establishments were nuclei of settlement.[244]
In Wisconsin the Indian trading post was a thing of the past.
The birch canoe and the pack-horse had had their day in western New York
and about Montreal. In Wisconsin the age of the voyageur continued
nearly through the first third of this century. It went on in the Far
Northwest in substantially the same fashion that has been here
described, until quite recently; and in the great North Land tributary
to Hudson Bay the _chanson_ of the voyageur may still be heard, and the
dog-sledge laden with furs jingles across the snowy plains from distant
post to distant post.[245]