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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
These were the coureurs de bois, or wood rangers. They became to all intents and purposes more Indian than white man. They were of a happy-go-lucky disposition, entirely beyond the restraints of civilization, with morals somewhat below par and an unquenchable thirst for strong drink.
La Hontan writing from Montreal in 1684 says: "The merchants are the only persons that make money here; for the savages that frequent the great lakes come down hither almost every year with a prodigious quantity of beaver skins to be given in exchange for arms, kettles, axes, knives, and a thousand such things, upon which the merchant clears two hundred per cent. The peddlers, called the coureurs de bois, export from hence every year several canoes full of merchandise which they dispose of among all the savage nations by way of exchange for beaver skins. Seven or eight days ago I saw twenty-five or thirty of these canoes return with heavy cargoes. Each canoe was managed by two or three men and carried twenty hundred weight, or forty packs, of beaver skins, worth a hundred crowns apiece. These canoes had been a year or eighteen months out. You would be amazed if you saw how lewd these peddlers are when they return; how they feast and game and how prodigal they are, not only in clothes but upon women. They lavish, eat, drink, and play all away as long as the goods hold out, and when these are gone they even sell their embroidery, their lace and their clothes. This done, they are forced to
go upon a new voyage for subsistence. " The same writer describes the arrival of the savages with cargoes of furs which they exchange with the merchants for such articles as enumerated above.
MICHIGAN
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