USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 4
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The arbiter of the destinies of the American Fur Company was its founder, John Jacob Astor. He directed the general policy of the concern, and superintended the conduct of the busi- ness at its headquarters in New York. The management of affairs in the Indian country itself, as well as along the commun- ications to New York and Montreal was entrusted to the two young Scotchmen already named, Ramsay Crooks and Robert Stuart. These agents gathered merchandise and provisions for use in the trade and arranged for transporting them to Mack-
28 An idea of the extent of the company's operations may be readily gained from the list of American Fur Company employees, 1818-1819, published in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, 12:154.
"American Fur Company Letter Book, 1816-1820, p. 50.
80 Ibid., p. 109,'260.
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THE INDIANS AND THE FUR TRADE
inac Island, the general rendezvous of the company in the north- west. It was their business to see that a sufficient number of engagés was hired to perform the labor of carrying goods and furs, as well as enough clerks and traders to carry on the busi- ness in the interior. They organized the different departments in which the traffic was conducted, assigned the traders and engagés to their wintering grounds, and directed the preparation of the outfits. When the peltries came in from the Indian coun- try in the spring, the agents saw to it that they were properly sorted and packed and prepared for shipment to the eastern market. Ramsay Crooks' headquarters were nominally at New York, but he spent a great deal of his time at Mackinac, and occa- sionally made visits to the interior.
Mackinac was in 1818 the great entrepôt of the northwest fur trade, the place of rendezvous of the traders and engagés of the region. When the goods from New York and Montreal arrived, they were made up into outfits, which were supplied to the traders on various terms. Some were turned over to clerks and traders in the regular employ of the concern, who were paid a stipulated wage and instructed to exchange the goods entrusted to their care to the best possible advantage, on the account of the company. Other outfits were traded on shares; that is to say, the company received a certain proportion of the returns and the remainder belonged to the trader who bartered with the Indians. Still other traders purchased their goods outright from the company, which had no interest in them thereafter, save to collect the amount for which they were sold.
The three principal regions of fur trading activity of Illinois interest were that portion of the Mississippi between Prairie du Chien and St. Louis, and the Illinois and Wabash river valleys. In 1817, a clerk named Russell Farnham was sent out from Mackinac with an assortment of goods to be traded along the Mississippi and its tributaries below Prairie du Chien. The goods were to be traded on the account of the company, Farn- ham being merely a salaried employee. The instructions made it clear that while the outfit was nominally under his charge, the business of dealing with the Indians was to be supervised by one
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
St. Jean, a trader of long experience, to whose judgment was left the choice of a spot in which to spend the winter. Before setting out, Farnham was given a license issued by Major Put- huff, Indian agent at Mackinac, authorizing him to trade in any part of the Indian country. He was instructed to proceed to St. Louis, where he was to obtain a territorial and United States license, which would permit him to sell goods on both the Illinois and Missouri sides of the river, in territory which had been ceded by the natives.31
Upon arriving at Prairie du Chien, Farnham and Daniel Darling, another trader who accompanied the outfit, were ordered by Lieutenant Colonel Chambers, who commanded at Fort Craw- ford, to have no dealings with the Indians until new licenses had been obtained from the governor of Missouri territory. The traders defied Colonel Chambers, who thereupon sent them to St. Louis under military escort. Though this mishap injured the trade to a considerable extent, Farnham succeeded in opening up a traffic with certain Indians lying west of the Mississippi, and did fairly well, considering his handicap. In the following year, 1818, Farnham once more returned to the Mississippi, carrying with him an outfit to be traded with the Sauk, in which he himself had an interest. Though some further difficulties were experienced on this second voyage, the reports indicated that the trade in the department was successful. There was at this time strenuous competition on the Mississippi between the American Fur Company and a group of traders with headquar- ters at St. Louis, and this spirit of rivalry may have partially accounted for the difficulties which Farnham experienced during the course of his operations in that quarter.32 The department of the Mississippi was on the whole quite productive, the Sauk and Fox being the principal nations from which returns were secured.
31 American Fur Company Letter Book, 1816-1820, p. 47.
32Chittenden, American Fur Trade, 1:312. The agents of the company made vigorous protests against the interference which their traders met with at the hands of the United States officers. The nominal ground for the interference appears to have been that Farnham's brigade included foreign traders who were excluded from operating in United States territory by the law of 1816.
MONK'S MOUND, MADISON COUNTY [From Wild, Valley of the Mississippi (1841), owned by Chicago Historical Society]
A FRENCH TRADER [Copyright 1900 by Charles Moore]
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THE INDIANS AND THE FUR TRADE
The commerce of the department of the Illinois river was under the supervision of Antoine Deschamps, an experienced trader, who selected the sites for the various posts and assigned the clerks and engagés to their winter quarters. From a list of the employees of the American Fur Company in 1818 and 1819 it appears that some thirty clerks, traders, interpreters, and boat- men were located upon the Illinois river; the reports of Crooks to Astor show that the trade of the Illinois posts was fairly suc- cessful during this period. The number of men engaged in the trade for the company upon the Wabash, according to the same list of employees, was sixteen or seventeen, and it is probable that some of these occasionally penetrated into Illinois. There were also scattered traders of the concern upon the Desplaines and Kankakee rivers, and at least two traders at Chicago in 1818, James Kinzie and Jean Baptiste Chandonnais were equipped by the American Fur Company. Jean Baptiste Beaubien was trans- ferred from Milwaukee to Chicago about this time. The Detroit firm of Conant and Mack also maintained an establishment at a place known as "Hardscrabble" on the south branch of the Chicago river. A trader by the name of John Crafts was in charge and his strategic position enabled him to intercept the Indians on their way to Chicago from the Illinois, the Desplaines, and the Kankakee rivers. It is said that Crafts also sent out- fits to Rock river and other places within a range of about one hundred miles. 33
The men engaged in the fur trade fell into two distinct classes, the voyageurs or engagés, who performed the menial labor,34 and the traders who directed operations-the bourgeois of the French régime. Many of the voyageurs were half-breeds, de- scendants of the coureurs de bois who had taken to the wilder- ness in the early days of French occupation of Canada. Others
83 Andreas, History of Chicago, 1:92 et seq .; Wisconsin Historical Collec- tions, 12:154; American Fur Company Letter Book, 1816-1820, p. 28, 123; Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, 31.
84The terms engagé and voyageur, as generally used, are almost synony- mous, though the former term includes not only the boatmen or voyageurs, but also those who performed other forms of labor incidental to the trade. The persons employed in the trade were obliged to sign contracts, or engage- ments, by which they bound themselves to perform certain stipulated services for a definite period of time. There are at the present day a great many of these engagements preserved in the archives of the District of Montreal.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
were native-born Canadians and had left wives and children in the little parishes in the neighborhood of far-away Montreal, to come into the wilderness and eke out a difficult and precarious livelihood. All observers agree in describing the voyageurs as a happy, care-free lot, cheerfully performing their arduous labors and taking no thought for the morrow with its possible dangers and privations. "These people," wrote Crooks, "are indispen- sable to the successful prosecution of the trade, their places can- not be supplied by Americans, who are for the most part are [sic] too independent to submit quietly to a proper controul, and who can gain any where a subsistence much superior to a man of the interior and although the body of the Yankee can resist as much hardship as any man, tis only in the Canadian we find that temper of mind, to render him patient docile and persever- ing, in short they are a people harmless in themselves whose habits of submission fit them peculiarly for our business."35 The voyageur stood in a sort of feudal relation to the trader who was in command of the brigade, whose word was law, both with regard to the property of the company and the persons in its employ. James H. Lockwood, a former employee of the Amer- ican Fur Company, said of the voyageurs: "They are very easily governed by a person who understands something of their nature and disposition, but their burgeois or employer must be what they consider a gentleman, or superior to themselves, as they never feel much respect for a man who has, from an engagee, risen to the rank of a clerk."36
In spite of the care-free and irresponsible existence which he led, the lot of the voyageur was not a particularly happy one. His average salary was less than one hundred dollars a year, and his daily ration was a soup made of hulled corn seasoned with tallow. The yearly outfit furnished him by his employer consisted of perhaps two cotton shirts, a triangular blanket, a portage collar, and a pair of heavy shoes. All luxuries, such as pipes and tobacco, he was obliged to furnish himself. The toil
85 American Fur Company Letter Book, 1816-1820, p. 12.
"Wisconsin Historical Collections, 2:110.
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THE INDIANS AND THE FUR TRADE
to which the voyageur was subjected was arduous in the extreme. To drive a heavily laden canoe or Mackinac boat through the water was in itself no task for a weakling but this was a trifle in comparison with the labor which confronted him at the portage or at the rapids or falls which occasionally interrupted the streams. Here the craft must be unloaded, and the merchandise- carried to the point where the expedition was to reëmbark. The older voyageurs were often wrecks, broken down by the labor which they were obliged to perform and the exposure to which they were subjected.
The traders in the employ of the American Fur Company in 1818 were partly experienced hands, many of whom were French-Canadians like Antoine Deschamps in charge of the de- partment of the Illinois river, and partly young clerks, most of whom were Americans. These clerks were carefully watched by the agents of the company, for it was upon their initiative and industry that the future prosperity of the concern depended. The advice which Ramsay Crooks gave to Edward Upham, a young clerk located upon the Illinois and Kankakee rivers in 1819 is of interest in this connection. He was told to be industrious, cau- tious, and enterprising and to spend his time in acquiring a knowl- edge of the country and its people rather than in dozing away the winter in his hut.37 The great event in the trader's life was the annual voyage to Mackinac. According to one observer who visited the rendezvous in 1820, "The trader, or interior clerk, who takes his outfit of goods to the Indians, and spends eleven months of the year in toil, and want, and petty traffic, appears to dissipate his means with a sailor-like improvidence in a few weeks, and then returns to his forest wanderings; and boiled corn, pork, and wild rice again supply his wants."38
The goods which the wilderness trader carried to the Indians in exchange for their furs included a great variety of objects, and by no means consisted entirely of trinkets designed to satisfy the vanity of the savage. The assortment of the trader in the Illinois country in 1818 included such goods as blankets, strouds,
" American Fur Company Letter Book, 1816-1820, p. 169.
68Schoolcraft, Discovery of the Sources of the Mississippi, 69.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
handkerchiefs, tools of all sorts, guns, ammunition, and kettles- articles which were really useful or even indispensable to the savage in his everyday life. On the other hand, the outfit usually contained some luxuries, such as ribbons, jewelry, wampum, tobacco, pipes, vermilion, earbobs, and even jew's-harps.
The craft in which the fur traders conveyed their outfits on lakes and streams of the northwest were mainly of two sorts, the bateau, or "Mackinac boat," and the canoe. The former was a light boat, some thirty feet long, cut away at both bow and stern. It was navigated by five men, four of whom propelled it with oars, while the fifth steered. The canoe in which one employee of the American Fur Company navigated Lake Mich- igan in 1818 was made of birch bark and was thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, tapering toward the bow and stern posts. The bark was sewed with wattap, and pine gum was used for the seams. The canoe was propelled by paddles, with the occasional assistance of a sail. There were eight voyageurs to each canoe, those stationed at the bow and stern being men of particular skill, who received double wages. Two or more canoes or boats formed a brigade, which was under the charge of a guide or brigade commander. Each man was allowed to carry a sack containing forty pounds of baggage. The entire cargo of the canoe, including goods, provisions, crew, and baggage, was about four tons. In propelling these boats, the voyageurs moved their oars or paddles to the rhythm of their French-Canadian boat songs, in which the bourgeois often took the lead. Every five miles or so, the bourgeois might shout "Whoop la ! à terre, à terre-pour la pipe !" and the whole bri- gade would pause to rest while the men smoked a welcome pipe of tobacco. Thus distances on the lakes and streams of the interior came to be measured in "pipes" rather than miles.
As the trader advanced into the interior, he gave out goods to the savages whom he passed, the Indians promising to bring in the returns of their winter's hunt in exchange for them. Arrived at the post, the trader unpacked his goods and gave credit to the Indians in the vicinity, who thereupon departed for their hunting grounds. The average value of the goods advanced to each
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man was about forty or fifty dollars, calculated at cost prices, but the honesty and ability of the individual hunter were taken into consideration. The amounts were carefully entered in the books and the trader aimed to secure in exchange furs valued at at least twice the cost of the goods advanced. Of course, bands came in from time to time with furs to be bartered on the spot, while during the winter the trader usually made occasional visits to the Indians at their hunting grounds. In the wilderness trade, the unit of exchange was the plus, originally the value of a pound of beaver skin, but later the equivalent of one dollar. Whiskey, the curse of the fur trade, was used extensively in spite of the vigorous efforts of the United States authorities to keep it out of the Indian country. When the trader and the Indian came together, it was customary to use some liquor to facilitate the traffic, with the result that the proceedings at these meetings were sometimes rather uproarious. Under the stress of com- petition whiskey flowed more freely and the disorder increased.
The policy of the great company in its dealings with the savages is indicated by the advice which Crooks gave to a young trader in 1819. He was told to bear in mind that with the Indian as with the civilized man, "honesty is the best policy." If the Indian could be convinced that the trader was always just, his own disposition to cheat would gradually disappear, particularly when he discovered that the trader, being just himself, would not suffer others to defraud him. Nevertheless, the Indian trade was not regarded as an appropriate field for the application of idealistic principles. When free from the interference of rival traders the Indians could usually be relied upon to fulfill their contracts but the presence of competition was always a demor- alizing factor. Traders would sometimes induce the Indians to steal the credits of their rivals; that is, they persuaded them to give up the furs which they had already pledged to another trader in return for goods advanced to them. There was bound to be more or less uncertainty in the collection of credits so that the traders were obliged to regulate their prices in such a way as to compensate themselves for possible losses. On the whole, however, when the lack of facilities for communication in the
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
Indian country and the roving character of the natives are taken into account, the degree of influence which the trader exercised over his Indian customers was really most remarkable.
One of the young American employees of the fur company, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard by name, has left a narrative of his experiences with the Illinois brigade which presents a vivid picture of the fur trade as it existed in northern Illinois in the year in which the state was admitted to the union.39 On the morning of the thirteenth of May, 1818, the brigade which Hub- bard accompanied to Mackinac departed from Lachine, a little village just above Montreal, the oars keeping time to the rhythm of the Canadian boat song. Nearly two months later, July 4, the brigade reached Mackinac where it was warmly welcomed by Crooks and Stuart, the agents of the company, together with a host of voyageurs and clerks. At Mackinac Hubbard found all the traders and their engagés from the interior gathered on the island, where they added some three thousand to the popula- tion. Indians numbering some two or three thousand more lined the entire beach with their wigwams. These Indians, he says, made day and night hideous with the yells they emitted while performing their war dances and other sports. There were also frequent fights between the champions or "bullies" of the various brigades.
After the traders had disposed of the returns of the past sea- son and secured new outfits, preparations were made for the departure of the brigades for the various posts of the interior. "A vast multitude assembled at the harbor to witness their de- parture, and when all was ready the boats glided from the shore, the crews singing some favorite boat song, while the multitude shouted their farewells and wishes for a successful trip and a safe return; and thus outfit after outfit started on its way for Lake Superior, Upper and Lower Mississippi, and other posts."40 The Illinois and Wabash outfits were among the last to
"The narrative was published first in Incidents and Events in the Life of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard (1888). It is also to be found in The Auto- biography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard (1911). For the material on which the following paragraphs are based see Incidents and Events, II-67 or the Autobiography, 7-64.
"Hubbard, Incidents and Events, 25.
THE BATEAU [From A History of Travel in America, by Seymour Dunbar, used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis]
THE Coureur de Bois AND THE SAVAGE [Copyright 1900 by Charles Moore]
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leave, being followed by the smaller expeditions bound for the shores of Lakes Huron and Michigan. At about noon on the tenth of September, the Illinois brigade left the harbor at Mack- inac in twelve boats, with Antoine Deschamps, who was in charge of the outfit, leading the boat song. Many of the traders were accompanied by their Indian wives, and the brigade must indeed have presented a motley appearance. The boats proceeded down the east shore of Lake Michigan, making about forty miles a day, under oars, but when the wind was favorable, square sails were hoisted by means of which it was possible to make seventy or seventy-five miles a day.
On the evening of September 30, just twenty days after the departure from Mackinac, the expedition arrived at the mouth of the Calumet river, where it was met by a party of Indians returning from a visit to Chicago. They were drunk and started a fight among themselves in which several of their number were killed, necessitating the removal of the trading party to the oppo- site side of the river for safety. The members of the brigade spent a portion of the night in preparation for their arrival at Chicago. "We started at dawn," says Hubbard. "The morn- ing was calm and bright, and we, in our holiday attire, with flags flying, completed the last twelve miles of our lake voyage."41 The brigade spent a few days at Chicago repairing the boats, and then passed up the south branch of the Chicago river into Mud lake, a sort of marsh, which drained partly into the Chicago river and partly into the Desplaines. The boats were half dragged, half floated, through this marsh to the waters of the Desplaines, while the goods were carried on the backs of the engagés. After three days of such labor, the portage was crossed, the boats were reloaded, and the voyage to the Illinois was begun. The water being very low, the progress of the brigade was slow and difficult, and it was three weeks before the expedition reached the mouth of the Fox river. Two days more brought the party to the foot of Starved Rock.
From this point on, the voyage was less difficult, and the bri- gade floated down the river, stopping occasionally to barter
"Hubbard, Incidents and Events, 31.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
powder and tobacco for Indian corn. The first trading house was located at the mouth of the Bureau river near the present site of the town of Hennepin. It was placed in charge of a trader named Bibeau, who, though illiterate, had a wide experience in the In- dian trade. Hubbard was assigned to this post to keep the ac- counts and perform the general duties of clerk. The next post was located three miles below Peoria lake and was placed in charge of another old trader, who was well acquainted with the Indians in the vicinity. The brigade proceeded on down the river, establishing posts every sixty miles or so, the last one being some fifty miles above the mouth of the stream.
Deschamps proceeded with one boat to St. Louis to purchase certain articles needed in the trade and also to obtain flour and tobacco at Cahokia. Hubbard accompanied him on the voyage. About November 20, they started back, distributing various por- tions of the cargo at the posts along the river. Hubbard reached his station at the mouth of the Bureau river about the middle of December and was given final instructions concerning the keeping of his accounts. "The accounts," he says, "had heretofore been kept in hieroglyphics by Beebeau [Bibeau], my ignorant master, who proved to be sickly, cross, and petulant. He spent the greater part of his time in bed, attended by a fat, dirty Indian woman, a doctress, who made and administered various decoc- tions to him."42 The cabin in which Hubbard spent the winter was of logs and very much resembled the cabin of the pioneer settler. The duties of the young clerk were to keep the books and to be present when sales were made for furs or when credit was to be given. Leisure time was spent in hunting, trapping, making oars and paddles, chatting and joking with the men at the post, and making ready for departure in the spring. During the winter, Hubbard made two trading excursions into the inte- rior, one to the mouth of the Rock river, and the other to the Wabash, the latter being particularly successful.
Early in March, orders were received from Deschamps to have everything in readiness to start for Mackinac on the twen- tieth. In the forenoon of the day set, writes Hubbard, "we
"Hubbard, Incidents and Events, 49.
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THE INDIANS AND THE FUR TRADE
heard in the distance the sound of the familiar boat-song and recognized the rich tones of Mr. Deschamps' voice, and we knew the 'Brigade' was coming. We all ran to the landing and soon saw Mr. Deschamps' boat rounding the point about a mile below; his ensign floating in the breeze. We shouted with joy at their arrival and gave them a hearty welcome."43 On the fol- lowing morning, the brigade, consisting of thirteen boats, started on the long return voyage to Mackinac. The same route was followed as on the outward trip, and the destination was reached without mishap about the middle of May, the brigade being among the first to arrive from the Indian country. Thus was finished one cycle in the life of an Illinois fur trader.
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