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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
The number of licenses granted in any one year was supposed to be limited to twenty-five, but as a matter of fact there was no limit, and private licenses were issued equal to the full demand. All persons were forbidden to engage in the traffic without a license under penalty of death. The price of a license was six hundred crowns and it permitted the lading of two canoes only with supplies for barter. The operations were practically in the hands of the coureurs de bois and these gentry showed no conscience in their dealings with the savages, but cheated them outrageously. Their two canoe loads of trinkets bought four or five canoe loads of beaver skins, and the profits were distributed in such way as to satisfy all, the merchant who had supplied the cap-tal taking, of course, the lion's share. There was also much clandestine dealing in furs. Unauthorized persons were constantly going up and down the land and
when they saw a good opportunity for a bargain they did not let it slip through their fingers for lack of a royal commission. There were ways of covering up these illicit transactions, and it is more than hinted that persons high in authority had been known to wink at dealings that were somewhat shady.
The prices of beaver skins were fixed at the office of the Farmers General, the Company of the Hundred Associates organized to handle the affairs of the colony. If the furs were sold at that office the payment was in exchange upon Paris or Rochelle; if sold to a private dealer, payment was in the currency of the country, which was greatly depreciated. Here again was a source of profit for the middleman who was ready to take advantage of the possessor of peltries who could not show a clear title to them.
There was a vast amount of intriguing, political and otherwise, which at bottom was chargeable to the fur traffic.
MICHIGAN
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