USA > Indiana > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, together with historic notes on the Wabash Valley; gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic sources > Part 23
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"The old voyageurs derisively called new hands at the business mangeurs de lard (pork eaters), as, on leaving Montreal, and while en route to Mackinaw, their rations were pork, hard bread and pea
* The merchandise was neatly tied into bundles weighing sixty or seventy pounds; the furs received in exchange were compressed into packets of about the same weight, so that they could be conveniently carried, strapped upon the back of the voyageur, around the portages and other places where the loaded canoes could effect no passage. + Sir Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages, etc., and An Account of the Fur Trade, etc. # Henry's Travels, p. 52.
213
THE COUREUR DES BOIS.
soup, while the old voyageurs in the Indian country ate corn soup and such other food as could be conveniently procured."*
"The coureur des bois were men of easy virtue. They would eat, riot, drink and play as long as their furs held out," says La Hontan, "and when these were gone they would sell their embroi- dery, their laces and their clothes. The proceeds of these exhausted, they were forced to go upon new voyages for subsistence."+
They did not scruple to intermarry with the Indians, among whom they spent the greater part of their lives. They made excel- lent soldiers, and in bush fighting and border warfare they were more than a match for the British regulars. "Their merits were hardihood and skill in woodcraft; their chief faults were insubor- dination and lawlessness."+
Such were the characteristics of the French traders or coureur des bois. They penetrated the remotest parts, voyaged upon all of our western rivers, and traveled many of the insignificant streams that afforded hardly water enough to float a canoe. Their influence over the Indians (to whose mode of life they readily adapted themselves) was almost supreme. They were efficient in the service of their king, and materially assisted in staying the downfall of French rule in America.
There is no data from which to ascertain the value of the fur trade, as there were no regular accounts kept. The value of the trade to the French, in 1703, was estimated at two millions of livres, and this could have been from only a partial return, as a large per cent of the trade was carried on clandestinely through Albany and New York, of which the French authorities in Canada could have no knowledge. With the loss of Canada, and the west to France, and owing to the dislike of the Indians toward the English, and the want of experience by the latter, the fur trade, controlled at Montreal, fell into decay, and the Hudson Bay Company secured the advan- tages of its downfall. During the winter of 1783-4 some merchants
1
* Vol. 2 Wisconsin Historical Collection, p. 110. Judge Lockwood gives a very fine sketch of the coureur des bois and the manner of their employment, in the paper from which we have quoted.
+ La Hontan, vol. 1, pp. 20 and 21.
# Parkman's Count Frontenac and New France, p. 209. Judge Lockwood, in the paper referred to, speaking of the coureur des bois as their relations existed to the fur trade in 1817, thus describes them: "These men engaged in Canada, generally for five years, for Mackinaw and its dependencies, transferrable like cattle, to any one who wanted them, at generally about 500 livres a year, or, in our currency, about $83.33, furnished with a yearly equipment or outfit of two cotton shirts, one three-point or triangular blanket, a portage collar and one pair of shoes. They were obliged to pur- chase their moccasins, tobacco and pipes at any price the trader saw fit to charge for them. At the end of five years the royageurs were in debt from $50 to $150, and could not leave the country until they paid their indebtedness."
214
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
of Canada united their trade under the name of the "Northwest Company "; they did not get successfully to work until 1787. Dur- ing that year the venture did not exceed forty thousand pounds, but by exertion and the enterprise of the proprietors it was brought, in eleven years, to more than-triple that amount (equal to six hundred thousand dollars), yielding proportionate profits, and surpassing any- thing then known in America .*
The fur trade was conducted by the English, and subsequently by the Americans, substantially upon the system originally estab- lished by the French, with this distinction, that the monopoly was controlled by French officers and favorites, to whom the trade for particular districts was assigned, while the English and Americans controlled it through companies operating either under charters or permits from the government.
Goods for Indian trade were guns, ammunition, steel for striking fire, gun-flints, and other supplies to repair fire-arms; knives, hatchets, kettles, beads, men's shirts, blue and red cloths for blankets and petticoats ; vermilion, red, yellow, green and blue ribbons, gener- ally of English manufacture; needles, thread and awls ; looking- glasses, children's toys, woolen blankets, razors for shaving the head, paints of all colors, tobacco, and, more than all, spirituous liquors. For these articles the Indians gave in exchange the skins of deer, bear, otter, squirrel, marten, lynx, fox, wolf, buffalo, moose, and particularly the beaver, the highest prized of them all. Such was the value attached to the skins and fur of the last that it became the standard of value. All other values were measured by the beaver, the same as we now use gold, in adjusting con- mercial transactions. All differences in exchanges of property or in payment for labor were first reduced in value to the beaver skin. Money was rarely received or paid at any of the trading-posts, the only circulating medium were furs and peltries. In this exchange a pound of beaver skin was reckoned at thirty sous, an otter skin at six livres, and marten skins at thirty sous each. This was only about half of the real value of the furs, and it was therefore always agreed to pay either in furs at their equivalent cash value at the fort or double the amount reckoned at current fur value. +
When the French controlled the fur trade, the posts in the interior of the country were assigned to officers who were in favor at head- quarters. As they had no money, the merchants of Quebec and Montreal supplied them on credit with the necessary goods, which
* Mackenzie's Voyages, Fur Trade, etc.
+ Henry's Travels and Pouchot's Memoirs.
215
THE FUR TRADE.
were to be paid for in peltries at a price agreed upon, thus being required to earn profits for themselves and the merchant. These officers were often employed to negotiate for the king with the tribes near their trading-posts and give them goods as presents, the price for the latter being paid by the intendant upon the approval of the governor. This occasioned many hypothecated accounts, which were turned to the profit of the commandants, particularly in time of war. The commandants as well as private traders were obliged to take out a license from the governor at a cost of four or five hundred livres, in order to carry their goods to the posts, and to charge some effects to the king's account. The most distant posts in the north- west were prized the greatest, because of the abundance and low price of peltries and the high price of goods at these remote estab- lishments.
Another kind of trade was carried on by the coureurs des bois, who, sharing the license with the officer at the post, with their canoes laden with goods, went to the villages of the Indians, and followed them on their hunting expeditions, to return after a season's trading with their canoes well loaded. If the coureurs des bois were in a condition to purchase their goods of first hands a quick fortune was assured them, although to obtain it they had to lead a most danger- ous and fatiguing life. Some of these traders would return to France after a few years' venture with wealth amounting to two million five hundred thousand livres .*
The French were not permitted to exclusively enjoy the enormous profits of the fur trade. We have seen, in treating of the Miami Indians, that at an early day the English and the American colonists were determined to share it, and had become sharp competitors. We have seen (page 112) that to extend their trade the English had set their allies, the Iroquois, upon the Illinois. So formidable were the inroads made by the English upon the fur trade of the French, by means of the conquests to which they had incited the Iroquois to gain over other tribes that were friendly to the French, that the latter became "of the opinion that if the Iroquois were allowed to proceed they would not only subdue the Illinois, but become masters of all the Ottawa tribes, t and divert the trade to the English, so that it was absolutely necessary that the French should either make the Iroquois their friends or destroy them .; You perceive, my Lord,
* Pouchot's Memoirs.
t Whose territories embraced all the country west of Lake Huron and north of Illinois,- one of the most prolific beaver grounds in the country.
# Memoir of M. Du Chesneau, the Intendant, to the King, September 9, 1681, before quoted.
216
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
that the subject which we have discussed [referring to the efforts of the English of New York and Albany to gain the beaver trade] is to determine who will be master of the beaver trade of the south and southwest."*
In the struggle to determine who should be masters of the fur trade, the French cared as little, -perhaps less, - for their Indian allies than the British and Americans did for theirs. The blood that was shed in the English and French colonies north of the Ohio River, for a period of over three-quarters of a century prior to 1763, might well be said to have been spilled in a war for the fur trade. +
In the strife between the rivals, - the French endeavoring to hold their former possessions, and the English to extend theirs, -the strait of Detroit was an object of concern to both. Its strategical position was such that it would give the party possessing it a decided advantage. M. Du Lute, or L'Hut, under orders from Gov. De Nonville, left Mackinaw with some fifty odd coureurs des bois in 1688, sailed down Lake Huron and threw up a small stockade fort on the west bank of the lake, where it discharges into the River St. Clair. The following year Capt. McGregory, -Major Patrick Ma- gregore, as his name is spelled in the commission he had in his pocket over the signature of Gov. Dongan, -with sixty Englishmen and some Indians, with their merchandise loaded in thirty-two canoes, went up Lake Erie on a trading expedition among the In- dians at Detroit and Mackinaw. They were encountered and cap- tured by a body of troops under Tonty, La Forest and other officers, who, with coureur de bois and Indians from the upper country, were on their way to join the French forces of Canada in a campaign against the Iroquois villages in New York .; The prisoners were sent to Quebec, and the plunder distributed among the captors. Du Lute's stockade was called Fort St. Joseph. In 1688 the fort was placed in command of Baron La Hontan. §
Fort St. Joseph served the purposes for which it was constructed, and a few years later, in 1701, Mons. Cadillac established Fort Pont- chartrain on the present site of the city of Detroit, for no other pur-
* M. De La Barre to the Minister of the Marine, November 4, 1683: Paris Docu- ments, vol. 9, p. 210,
+ War was not formally declared between France and England, on account of colonial difficulties, until May, 1756, but the discursory broils between their colonies in America had been going on from the time of their establishment.
# Tonty's Memoir, and Paris Documents, vol. 9, pp. 363 and 866.
§ Fort Du Luth, or St. Joseph, as it was afterward called, was ordered to be erected in 1686, " in order to fortify the pass leading to Mackinaw against the English." Du Luth, who erected it, was in command of fifty men. Several parties of English were either captured or sent back from this post within a year or two from its establishment. Vide Paris Documents, vol. 9, pp. 300, 302. 306, 383.
217
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN TRADERS.
pose than to check the English in the prosecution of the fur trade in that country .*
The French interests were soon threatened from another direc- tion. Traders from Pennsylvania found their way westward over the mountains, where they engaged in traffic with the Indians in the valleys of eastern Ohio, and they soon established commercial rela- tions with the Wabash tribes. + It appears from a previous chapter that the Miamis were trading at Albany in 1708. To avert this danger the French were compelled at last to erect military posts at Fort Wayne, on the Maumee (called Fort Miamis), at Quiatanon and Vincennes, upon the Wabash .¿ Prior to 1750 Sieur de Ligneris was commanding at Fort Ouiatanon, and St. Ange was in charge at Vincennes.
As soon as the English settlements reached the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, their traders passed over the ridge, and they found it exceedingly profitable to trade with the western Indians. They could sell the same quality of goods for a third or a half of what the French usually charged, and still make a handsome profit. This new and rich field was soon overrun by eager adventurers. In the meantime a number of gentlemen, mostly from Virginia, procured an act of parliament constituting "The Ohio Company," and grant- ing them six hundred thousand acres of land on or near the Ohio River. The objects of this company were to till the soil and to open up a trade with the Indians west of the Alleghanies and south of the Ohio.
The French, being well aware that the English could offer their goods to the Indians at greatly reduced rates, feared that they would lose the entire Indian trade. At first they protested "against this invasion of the rights of His Most Christian Majesty " to the gov- ernor of the English colonies. This did not produce the desired effect. Their demands were met with equivocations and delays. At last the French determined on summary measures. An order
* Statement of Mons. Cadillac of his reasons for establishing a fort on the Detroit River, copied in Sheldon's Early History of Michigan, pp. 85-90.
t An Englishman by the name of Crawford had been trading on the Wabash prior to 1749. Vide Irving's Life of Washington, vol. 1, p. 48.
# The date of the establishment of these forts is a matter of conjecture, owing to the absence of reliable data. A " Miamis" is referred to in 1719, and in the same year Sieur Duboisson was selected as a suitable person to take command at Quiatanon, and in 1735 M. de Vincenne is alluded to, in a letter written from Kaskaskia, as com- mandant of the Post on the Wabash. However, owing to the successive migrations of the Miami Indians, the " Miamis " mentioned in such documents, in 1719, may have referred to the Miami and Wea villages upon the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph rivers, in the state of Michigan. The post at Vincennes, it may be safely assumed, was garri- soned as early as 1735, and Quiatanon, below La Fayette, and Miamis, at Fort Wayne, some years before, in the order of time.
218
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
was issued to the commandants of their various posts on Lake Erie, the Ohio and the Wabash, to seize all English traders found west of the Alleghanies. In pursuance of this order, in 1751, four English traders were captured on the Vermilion of the Wabash and sent to Canada .* Other traders, dealing with the Indians in other locali- ties, were captured and taken to Presque Isle, t and from thence to Canada.
The contest between the rival colonies still went on, increasing in the extent of its line of operations and intensifying in the ani- mosity of the feeling with which it was conducted. We quote from a memoir prepared early in 1752, by M. de Longueuil, commandant at Detroit, showing the state of affairs at a previous date in the Wabash country. It appears, from the letters of the commandants at the several posts named, from which the memoir is compiled, that the Indian tribes upon the Maumee and Wabash, through the successful efforts of the English, had become very much disaffected toward their old friends and masters. M. de Ligneris, commandant at the Ouyatanons, says the memoir, believes that great reliance is not to be placed on the Maskoutins, and that their remaining neutral is all that is to be expected from them and the Kickapous. He even adds that "we are not to reckon on the nations which appear in our interests ; no Wea chief has appeared at this post for a long time. M. de Villiers, commandant at the Miamis, -Ft. Wayne, -has been disappointed in his expectation of bringing the Miamis back from the White River, - part of whom had been to see hin, - the small-pox having put the whole of them to rout. Coldfoot and his son have died of it, as well as a large portion of our most trusty Indians. Le Gris, chief of the Tepicons, ; and his mother are likewise dead ; they are a loss, because they were well disposed toward the French."
The memoir continues : "The nations of the River St. Joseph, who were to join those of Detroit, have said they would be ready to perform their promise as soon as Ononontio§ would have sent the necessary number of Frenchmen. The commandant of this post writes, on the 15th of January, that all the nations appear to take
* Paris Documents, vol. 10, p. 248.
t Near Erie, Pennsylvania.
# This is the first reference we have to Tippecanoe. Antoine Gamelin, the French merchant at Vincennes,-whom Major Hamtramck sent, in 1790, to the Wabash towns with peace messages,-calls the village, then upon this river, Qui-te-pi-con-nae. The name of the Tippecanoe is derived from the Algonquin word Ke-non-ge, or Ke-no-zha -from Kenose, long, the name of the long-billed pike, a fish very abundant in this stream, vide Mackenzie's and James' Vocabularies. Timothy Flint, in his Geography and History of the Western States, first edition, published at Cincinnati, 1828, vol. 2, p. 125, says: "The Tippecanoe received its name from a kind of pike called Pic-ca-nau by the savages." The termination is evidently Frenchified.
§ The name by which the Indians called the governor of Canada.
219
FRENCH TRADERS KILLED.
sides against us; that he would not be responsible for the good dispositions these Indians seem to entertain, inasmuch as the Miamis are their near relatives. On the one hand, Mr. de Jon- caire" repeats that the Indians of the beautiful rivert are all English, for whom alone they work; that all are resolved to sustain each other; and that not a party of Indians go to the beautiful river but leave some [of their numbers] there to increase the rebel forces. On the other hand, "Mr. de St. Ange, commandant of the post of Vincennes, writes to M. des Ligneris [at Quiatanon] to use all means to protect himself from the storm which is ready to burst on the French ; that he is busy securing himself against the fury of our enemies."
"The Pianguichias, who are at war with the Chaouanons, ac- cording to the report rendered by Mr. St. Clin, have declared entirely against us. They killed on Christmas five Frenchmen at the Ver- milion. Mr. des Ligneris, who was aware of this attack, sent off a detachment to secure the effects of the Frenchmen from being plun- dered ; but when this detachment arrived at the Vermilion, the Piankashaws had decamped. The bodies of the Frenchmen were found on the ice.#
"M. des Ligneris was assured that the Piankashaws had commit- ted this act because four men of their nation had been killed by the French at the Illinois, and four others had been taken and put in irons. It is said that these eight men were going to fight the Chick- asaws, and had, without distrusting anything, entered the quarters of the French, who killed them. It is also reported that the French- men had recourse to this extreme measure because a Frenchman and
* A French half-breed having great influence over the Indians, and whom the French authorities had sent into Ohio to conciliate the Indians.
+ The Ohio.
# Col. Croghan's Journal, before quoted, gives the key to the aboriginal name of this stream. On the 22d of June, 1765, he makes the following entry: " We passed through a part of the same meadow mentioned yesterday; then came to a high wood- land and arrived at Vermilion River, so called from a fine red earth found there by the Indians, with which they paint themselves. About a half a mile from where we crossed this river there is a village of Piankashaws, distinguished by the addition of the name of the river " (that is, the Piankashaws of the Vermilion, or the Vermilions, as they were sometimes called). The red earth or red chalk, known under the provincial name of red keel, is abundant everywhere along the bluffs of the Vermilion, in the shales that overlay the outcropping coal. The annual fires frequently ignited the coal thus exposed, and would burn the shale above, turn it red and render it friable. Carpen- ters used it to chalk their lines, and the successive generation of boys have gathered it by the pocketful. Those acquainted with the passion of the Indian for paint, particu- larly red, will understand the importance which the Indians would attach to it. Hence, as noted by Croghan, they called the river after the name of this red earth. Vermilion is the French word conveying the same idea, and it is a coincidence merely that Ver- milion in French has the same meaning as this word in English. On the map in "Volney's View of the Soil and Climate of the United States," Phila. ed. 1804, it is called Red River. The Miami Indian name of the Vermilion was Piankashaw, as ap- pears from Gen. Putnam's manuscript Journal of the treaty at Vincennes in 1792.
220
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
two slaves had been killed a few days before by another party of Piankashaws, and that the Indians in question had no knowledge of that circumstance. The capture of four English traders by M. de Celoron's order last year has not prevented other Englishmen going to trade at the Vermilion River, where the Rev. Father la Richardie wintered."*
The memoir continues: "On the 19th of October the Pianka- shaws had killed two more Frenchmen, who were constructing pirogues lower down than the Post of Vincenne. Two days after- ward the Piankashaws killed two slaves in sight of Fort Vincenne. The murder of these nine Frenchmen and these two slaves is but too certain. A squaw, the widow of one of the Frenchmen who had been killed at the Vermilion, has reported that the Pianguichias, Illinois and Osages were to assemble at the prairies of -- , the place where Messrs. de Villiers and de Noyelle attacked the Foxes about twenty years ago, and when they had built a fort to secure their families, they were to make a general attack on all the French. "The Miamis of Rock Rivert have scalped two soldiers belong- ing to Mr. Villiers' fort.# This blow was struck last fall. Finally, the English have paid the Miamis for the scalps of the two soldiers belonging to Mr. de Villiers' garrison. To add to the misfortunes, M. des Ligneris has learned that the commandant of the Illinois at Fort Charters would not permit Sieurs Delisle and Fonblanche, who had contracted with the king to supply the Miamis, Ouyaton- ons, and even Detroit with provisions from the Illinois, to purchase any provisions for the subsistence of the garrisons of those posts, on the ground that an increased arrival of troops and families would consume the stock at the Illinois. Famine is not the sole scourge we experience ; the smallpox commits ravages; it begins to reach Detroit. It were desirable that it should break out and spread gen- erally throughout the localities inhabited by our rebels. It would be fully as good as an army."
The Piankashaws, now completely estranged from the French, withdrew, almost in a body, from the Wabash, and retired to the Big Miami, whither a number of Miamis and other Indians had,
* Father Justinian de la Richardie came to Canada (according to the Liste Crono- logique, No. 429) in 1716. He served many years in the Huron country, and also in the Illinois, and died in February, 1758. Biographical note of the editor of Paris Documents : Col. Hist. of New York, vol. 9, p. 88. The time when and the place at which this missionary was stationed on the Vermilion River is not given. The date was before 1750, as is evident from the text. The place was probably at the large Piankashaw town where the traders were killed.
+ The Big Miami River of Ohio, on which stream, near the mouth of Loramies Creek, the Miamis had an extensive village, hereafter referred to.
# Ft. Wayne, where Mr. Villers was then stationed in charge of Fort Miamis.
221
PICKAWILLANY.
some years previous, established a village, to be nearer the English traders. The village was called Pickawillany, or Picktown. To the English and Iroquois it was known as the Tawixtwi Town, or Miamitown. It was located at the mouth of what has since been called Loramie's creek. The stream derived this name from the fact that a Frenchman of that name, subsequent to the events here nar- rated, had a trading-house at this place. The town was visited in 1751 by Christopher Gist, who gives the following description of it :* "The Twightee town is situated on the northwest side of the Big Min e ami River, about one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. It consists of four hundred families, and is daily increasing. It is accounted one of the strongest Indian towns in this part of the con- tinent. The Twightees are a very numerous people, consisting of many different tribes under the same form of government. Each tribe has a particular chief, or king, one of which is chosen indiffer- ently out of any tribe to rule the whole nation, and is vested with greater authority than any of the others. They have but lately traded with the English. They formerly lived on the farther side of the Wabash, and were in the French interests, who supplied them with some few trifles at a most exorbitant price. They have now revolted from them and left their former habitations for the sake of trading with the English, and notwithstanding all the artifices the French have used, they have not been able to recall them." George Croghan and Mr. Montonr, agents in the English interests, were in the town at the time of Gist's visit, doing what they could to inten- sify the animosity of the inhabitants against the French. Speeches were made and presents exchanged to cement the friendship with the English. While these conferences were going on, a deputation of Indians in the French interests arrived, with soft words and valu- able presents, marching into the village under French colors. The deputation was admitted to the council-house, that they might make the object of their visit known. The Piankashaw chief, or king, "Old Britton," as he was called, on account of his attachment for the English, had both the British and French flags hoisted from the council-house. The old chief refused the brandy, tobacco and other presents sent to him from the French king. In reply to the speeches of the French ambassadors he said that the road to the French had been made foul and bloody by them; that he had cleared a road to our brothers, the English, and that the French had made that bad. The French flag was taken down, and the emissaries
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