Page 9 - Fur Trade program Curriculum

The Natives had come each year to these great trading posts to exchange their furs for
goods. From then on, the coureurs des bois went directly to their suppliers to collect the
pelts. They mostly went to the regions of the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi,
named the "Pays d'en Haut" ('upper country') because to get there, one had to navigate
upstream from Montréal.

Jesuit priest Le Mercier was the first to write about this turn of events in the fall of 1653.
He described the sudden trading fever that seized the youth of the colony:

"[...] our entire French youth is planning to go trading with the Nations, who are
disseminated all over the territories and they hope to come back with beaver pelts from many
hunting seasons."

Jean de Lauson, Governor of the colony, was the first to act in order to cool this great
eagerness. On April 28, 1654, he decreed that no one would be allowed to go trading
"with the Hurons or other Nations without our previous written consent, under penalty of
a fine" Officially, he simply wanted to know "the number and quality of the individuals
who wish to embark on these voyages".

Governor Jean de Lauson was himself quite interested in pelts, but his motives went
beyond simple accounting. During the winter, he learned that the peace proposal of the
Iroquois was predicated by their wish to capture a group of Hurons who had fled to
Québec. In April, a little time before he published his decree, a young surgeon from
Montréal had been abducted and kept in captivity by the Oneida, one of the five Iroquois
nations. The Iroquois menace having been confirmed by this event, the Governor was
in fact acting in such a way as to be able to control and limit the number of people who
left the colony, in order to have a maximum number of men capable to bear arms.

A few months later, the Iroquois returned their prisoner to Montréal and re-stated their
intention of concluding peace. At the end of June and early in July, a flotilla of canoes
carrying about a hundred Petum and Ottawa tribesmen came to Montreal. When they
left on August 6, they were accompanied by "two young courageous Frenchmen who
had obtained the permission of monsieur le gouverneur of the country".

One of them was no doubt Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers, whose adventures made
him as famous as the Hudson Bay Company, which he was instrumental in founding.
The second was probably Nicolas Forget alias Despatis (Forget) who, on the day of the
departure, put his signature on what could have been the very first partnership
agreement for a 'trading run'. They were the first coureurs des bois to go to the Pays
d'en Haut. When they came back at the end of August 1656, with 50 canoes filled with
pelts, they were welcomed as heroes: "Their arrival caused universal joy in the entire
country". In Québec, gun salvos were fired in their honor, and the population was
exhilarated.

In September 1672, a short time after his arrival at Québec, Louis de Buade de
Frontenac, the new Governor of New France, published a decree reinstating the trading