Description 

Fur-Trade on the Upper Great Lakes. 1778-1815

(Reprinted from the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XIX, 1910) 

Introduction to the Fur-Trade
"This commerce of the forest profoundly affected early Wisconsin life; indeed, during the first two centuries of our Commonwealth's history, collecting furs for the European market was the only industry that flourished within our bounds.  The trade developed a peculiar organism, which widely influenced the social development not only of Wisconsin but of the entire continental interior.  Its personal relationships were comparable, in some degree, with those of the Scotch Highlands, under which chieftain and retainer were joined by certain obligations, and an unwritten code of customs. Although this system reached its height of efficiency under the Scotch traders who officered the great trading companies during the most prosperous period of the Northwest fur-trade, it was directly inherited from the French - being a legacy of the semi-feudal seignoirial arrangements of French-Canadian agricultural life, modified by the necessities of wilderness service.  The chief trader was the bourgeois - governor of pack and train, master of the canoe-brigade, despot of the trading post. Under him were the commis, or clerks - gentlemen's sons, apprentices to the business, in arduous training for the responsibilities of a future bourgeois.  These youth shared the appointments of their chief, slept in his tent, partook of his food, kept his accounts, and rote his letters and at his dictation, took charge of subsidiary posts, or of side-expeditions to native villages supposedly rich in peltries.  If successful, the commis became in course of time a wintering partner in the great company to which he was apprenticed.  The third and lowest stratum of the hierarchy was composed of voyageurs - young, hardy French-Canadian peasants, or half-breeds, who, rather than work in the narrow paternal fields, volunteered for this free life of  the forests and waterways, or were apprenticed thereto by their parents and guardians. Their signed contracts (engagements) with the bourgeois bound them to obey the latter in all things, to do his will, seek his profit, avoid his damage, and refrain from trading on their own account.  
Their duties were to propel the canoe, portage the craft and its cargo, provide for the comfort of the bourgeois, pitch his tent, and prepare his meals; while at the trading post, they were to hunt, fish, cut wood, beat and pack furs, run the drouine, defend the post against hostile attacks, and be on good terms with as many Indians as possible.  During his term of probation, the voyageur was known as a mangeur de lard (pork-eater), a derisive term for a dainty person, unused to wilderness fare and needing to be pampered in food and living - equivalent to the "tenderfoot" of the later American frontier.  After one or two seasons the voyageur became a hivenant (or winterer), able to endure privations and fatigues that would appal (sic)  the inexperienced." 

Preface:
"the editor has found it impracticable strictly to limit the range of his material to the present boundaries of Wisconsin. It has been necessary to consider the region of the upper Great Lakes as the geographical unit within which Mackinac and Wisconsin traders operated.  The district was reached by two principal routes: that of the lower Great Lakes, and that of the Ottawa and French rivers and Georgian Bay.  About the close of the eighteenth century, however, there came into common use a third route, via Lake Ontario and the portage from Toronto to the lower arms of Georgian Bay.  Detroit as the natural emporium for the lower lakes route, and Mackinac for the two via Georgian Bay.  After the latter stronghold fell into American hands, the British entrenched themselves some forty miles to the eastward, on St. Joseph Island.  But their fur-traders still resorted to Mackinac, and sent thence canoes to Sault Ste-Marie and Superior posts, to Green Bay and the Mississippi (via the Fox-Wisconsin portage), to the lesser lake posts at Milwaukee and Chicago, and to trading station on the Michigan rivers of Grand and Kalamazoo. 

Description of Book:
The documents selected for this article serve to illuminate the fur-trading era on the Great Lakes. The documents herein given consist principally of business and friendly letters, interspersed with a few selected and typical official manuscripts - engagnemt contracts, customs clearances, licenses, and territorial regulations for the trade.  These inform us as to the routes of travel, the vast extent of territory over which the trade was scattered, the methods of transportation, and the constant intercommunication between commercial centres in this great Northwest region".  [ Ruben Gold Thwaites for the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XIX, 1910, pp xiii - xiv].