The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin | Page 3

a foot long, which he said came from a tributary of the Great Lakes.[15] Champlain also reports that among the Canadian Indians village councils were held to determine what number of men might go to trade with other tribes in the summer.[16] Morton in 1632 describes similar inter-tribal trade in New England, and adds that certain utensils are "but in certain parts of the country made, where the severall trades are appropriated to the inhabitants of those parts onely."[17] Marquette relates that the Illinois bought firearms of the Indians who traded directly with the French, and that they went to the south and west to carry off slaves, which they sold at a high price to other nations.[18] It was on the foundation, therefore, of an extensive inter-tribal trade that the white man built up the forest commerce.[19]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Smithsonian Report, 1872.]
[Footnote 9: Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1889, VII., 59. See also Thruston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 79 ff.]
[Footnote 10: Mallery, in Bureau of Ethnology, I., 324; Clark, Indian Sign Language.]
[Footnote 11: Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, 34. Catilinite pipes were widely used, even along the Atlantic slope, Thruston, 80-81.]
[Footnote 12: Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, I., ch. ii.]
[Footnote 13: Minnesota Historical Collections, V., 267.]
[Footnote 14: Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, 230, citing Menendez.]
[Footnote 15: Neill, in Narrative and Critical History of America, IV., 164.]
[Footnote 16: Champlain's Voyages (Prince Society), III., 183.]
[Footnote 17: Morton, New English Canaan (Prince Society), 159.]
[Footnote 18: Shea, Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, 32.]
[Footnote 19: For additional evidence see Radisson, Voyages (Prince Society), 91, 173; Massachusetts Historical Collections, I., 151; Smithsonian Contributions, XVI., 30; Jesuit Relations, 1671, 41; Thruston, Antiquities, etc., 79-82; Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, 25, 27; and post pp. 26-7, 36.]

EARLY TRADE ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST.
The chroniclers of the earliest voyages to the Atlantic coast abound in references to this traffic. First of Europeans to purchase native furs in America appear to have been the Norsemen who settled Vinland. In the saga of Eric the Red[20] we find this interesting account: "Thereupon Karlsefni and his people displayed their shields, and when they came together they began to barter with each other. Especially did the strangers wish to buy red cloth, for which they offered in exchange peltries and quite grey skins. They also desired to buy swords and spears, but Karlsefni and Snorri forbade this. In exchange for perfect unsullied skins the Skrellings would take red stuff a span in length, which they would bind around their heads. So their trade went on for a time, until Karlsefni and his people began to grow short of cloth, when they divided it into such narrow pieces that it was not more than a finger's breadth wide, but the Skrellings still continued to give just as much for this as before, or more."[21]
The account of Verrazano's voyage mentions his Indian trade. Captain John Smith, exploring New England in 1614, brought back a cargo of fish and 11,000 beaver skins.[22] These examples could be multiplied; in short, a way was prepared for colonization by the creation of a demand for European goods, and thus the opportunity for a lodgement was afforded.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 20: Reeves, Finding of Wineland the Good, 47.]
[Footnote 21: N.Y. Hist. Colls., I., 54-55, 59.]
[Footnote 22: Smith, Generall Historie (Richmond, 1819), I., 87-8, 182, 199; Strachey's Travaile into Virginia, 157 (Hakluyt Soc. VI.); Parkman, Pioneers, 230.]

NEW ENGLAND INDIAN TRADE.
The Indian trade has a place in the early history of the New England colonies. The Plymouth settlers "found divers corn fields and little running brooks, a place ... fit for situation,"[23] and settled down cuckoo-like in Indian clearings. Mr. Weeden has shown that the Indian trade furnished a currency (wampum) to New England, and that it afforded the beginnings of her commerce. In September of their first year the Plymouth men sent out a shallop to trade with the Indians, and when a ship arrived from England in 1621 they speedily loaded her with a return cargo of beaver and lumber.[24] By frequent legislation the colonies regulated and fostered the trade.[25] Bradford reports that in a single year twenty hhd. of furs were shipped from Plymouth, and that between 1631 and 1636 their shipments amounted to 12,150 li. beaver and 1156 li. otter.[26] Morton in his 'New English Canaan' alleges that a servant of his was "thought to have a thousand pounds in ready gold gotten by the beaver when he died."[27] In the pursuit of this trade men passed continually farther into the wilderness, and their trading posts "generally became the pioneers of new settlements."[28] For example, the posts of Oldham, a Puritan trader, led the way for the settlements on the Connecticut river,[29] and in their early days these towns were partly sustained