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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
We can little appreciate in these days when so many interests of large importance enter into the commercial affairs of the world, how great was the single traffic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It occupied the attention and the capital of men of means and influence. Companies were formed to exploit
the trade, and ultimately these accumulated enormous wealth, exercised imperial authority over extended territory, and controlled the means of subsistence and the destinies of great numbers of people.
In its infancy th'e traffic in furs was confined to the few adventurers who came over with Cartier, Roberval, Champlain, and the early explorers. These saw the beauty and the value of the furs and knowing well that they were readily marketable in the old world stimulated the Indians to bring them in from the forests. The natives had no conception whatever of their intrinsic value and parted with them for a handfull of glass beads of assorted colors. Trinkets of no worth whatever and which cost their owners little beyond freight to this country answered every purpose for exchange. Powder and shot, brandy and rum, were quoted high in the barter. The profits of this business soon came to the ears of the people in France and great numbers of young men set out to make their fortunes in the new world. These were adventurous spirits who had little if anything to tie them to their old homes. Arriving in America, they did not wait for the Indians to bring in the peltries, but plunged boldly into the forests to dicker with the native at close range. Thousands of such in the course of years swarmed through the woods or paddled their canoes through the lakes and streams. They learned the Indian's language, they adopted his mode of life. They married squaws and reared innumerable progeny. They shared the life of the native in all respects, except that they did not join in the war raids
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but gave their undivided attention to hunting and marketing their peltries.
MICHIGAN
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