Part 4 (1/2)
In spite of his faults when in conflict with rivals, it has been the trader living alone, unprotected and unfearing, one voice a a thousand, who has restrained the Indian tribes froress of the West a quarter of a century
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: For example, the Deschamps of Red River]
[Footnote 28: Chittenden]
[Footnote 29: Larpenteur, as there, has given even a edy]
CHAPTER VI
THE FRENCH TRAPPER
To live hard and die hard, king in the wilderness and pauper in the town, lavish to-day and penniless to-ure in Aer on any point between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, or the Great Lakes and the Rockies Ask as the first man to blaze a trail into this wilderness; and wherever you may point, the answer is the salish noble, Spanish dons to piracy and search for gold; but for the young French _noblesse_ the way to fortune was by the fur trade Freedo, and adventurous living all appealed to a class that hated the menial and slow industry of the farm The only capital required for the fur trade was dauntless courage
Merchants were keen to supply h to stock canoes with provisions for trade in the wilderness What would be equivalent to 5,000 of modern h for two years
At the end of that tiht hundred per cent on their capital The original invest the trappers and their outfitters In the heyday of the fur trade, when twenty beaver-skins were got for an axe, it was no unusual thing to see a trapper receive ould be equivalent to 3,000 of ourBut in the days when the French were only beginning to advance up the Missouri from Louisiana and across froer fortunes were ht out as ame preserve between Lake Superior and the head waters of the Missouri after eighteen months' absence from St Louis or fro French nobility what a treasure-shi+p was to a pirate In vain France tried to keep her colonists on the land by forbidding trade without a license Fines, the galleys for life, even death for repeated offence, were the punishments held over the head of the illicit trader The French trapper evaded all these by staying in the wilds till he ah to buy off punishment, or till he had lost taste for civilized life and reeur_, or leader of a band of half-wild retainers who link between the savagery of the New World and the _noblesse_ of the Old
Duluth, of the Lakes region; La Salle, of the Mississippi; Le Moyne d'Iberville, ranging from Louisiana to Hudson Bay; La Mothe Cadillac in Michili from Lake Superior to the Rockies; Radisson on Hudson Bay--all won their fame as explorers and discoverers in pursuit of the fur trade A hundred years before any English one beyond the Yellowstone Before the regions now called Minnesota, Dakota, and Wisconsin were known to New Englanders, the French were trapping about the head waters of the Mississippi; and two centuries ago a co French hunters went to New Mexico to spy on Spanish trade
East of the Mississippi were two neighbours wholish colonists and the Iroquois North of the St
Lawrence was a power that he shunned still ht to plunder the peltries of all who traded and trapped without license But between St Louis and MacKenzie River was a great unclaimed wilderness, whence caround of the French trapper
There were four ways by which he entered his hunting-ground: (1) Sailing from Quebec to the ue or dugout, but this route was only possible for a e (2) From Detroit overland to the Illinois, or Ohio, which he rafted down to the Mississippi, and then taking to canoe turned north (3) Frorand _rendezvous_ for the French and Indian hunters, to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, thence up-stream to Fox River, overland to the Wisconsin, and down-streah ”the Soo” to Lake Superior and ard to the hunting-ground Whichever way he went his course was mainly up-streanated the vast hunting-ground that lay between the Missouri and the MacKenzie River
The French trapper was and is to-day as different froaht from the Missouri to St Louis, or fro-table and dralish trader saves his returns, Pierre lives high and plays high, and lords it about the fur post till he ht forseason
It is now that he goes back to so winter's hunt, peels the bark off in a great seamless rind, whittles out ribs for a canoe froreen bark to the curve of a canoe byon his back in the sun spinning yarns of the great things he has done and will do, he lets the birch harden and dry to the proper fore, lines the inside of the keel with thin pine boards, and tars the seams where the bark has crinkled and split at the junction with the gunwale
It is in the idle summer season that he and his squaw--for the Pierre adapts, or rather adopts, hin the wonderfully bizarre costumes in which the French trapper appears: the beaded toque for festive occasions, the gay ed with horse-hair and leather in lieu of the Indian scalp-locks, the white caribou capote with horned head-gear to deceive game on the hunter's approach, the powder-caseotter-skin, theto the elbow
None of these things does the English trader do If he falls a victi the -post, he takes good care not to spend his all on the spree
He does not affect the hunter's decoy dress, for the si of the difficult gaain_ rather than _game_ For clothes, he is satisfied with cheap lishman marries an Indian wife, he either promptly deserts her when he leaves the fur country for the trading-post or sends her to a convent to be educated up to his own level With Pierre the e of civilization and henceforth identifies hie
After the British conquest of Canada and the Ae in the status of the French trapper Before, he had been lord of the wilderness without a rival Noerful English corounds Before, he had been a partner in the fur trade Now, he must either be pushed out or enlist as servant to the newcomer He who had once come to Montreal and St Louis with a fortune of peltries on his rafts and canoes, now signed with the great English companies for a paltry one, two, and three hundred dollars a year
It was but natural in the new state of things that the French trapper, with all his knowledge of forest and streaeur_, while the Englishman remained the barterer In the Mississippi basin the French trappers mainly enlisted with four co from Michilimackinac to the Mississippi; the American Company, up the Missouri; the Missouri Company, officered by St Louis merchants, ard to the Rockies; and the South-West Coamation of the American and Mackinaw In Canada the French sided with the Nor' Westers and X Y's, who had sprung up in opposition to the great English Hudson's Bay Coh he had become a burden-carrier for his quondalaloire_ and _noblesse_, still lived hard and died gaahed at hardshi+p; courted danger and trolled off one of his _chansons_ brought over to America by ancestors of Normandy, uttered an oath in one breath at the whirlpool ahead and in the next crossed hieurs'_ saint, just before his canoe took the plunge